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Everyone remembers this moment Gate when they first noticed that the strings appeared, so to speak, and that the sleek science fiction test chamber you were served by GLaDOS’s seemingly friendly sound was nothing but smoke and mirrors. At some point, everyone notices cracks in the walls, scribbled scribbles telling you “the cake is a lie”, and discarded trash some one who experienced all of this before you. It’s all the things the game says you shouldn’t “should” see, but when you do, it marks the point where Gate stops being a fun puzzle game, and starts to get a little scary. Reality is not real. These are tricks designed to get you to complete a specific task.

This is also a trick that has been implemented in many other games, from Stanley’s parable to Bioshock, and while it can be cool and unsettling if done right, you are still only seeing the reality the game developer intends you to witness. If you ask me, this sort of thing gets downright terrifying when you stumble upon a crack that the developers never intended and manage to peer into a dark and abandoned world that no one should see.

If you’ve ever played 3D video games, especially those that had the type of bug affectionately referred to as “jank” (cough Bethesda cough), You’ve probably seen an error where your character falls through an invisible hole in the floor and you can look up to see the thin cardboard structure and the endless expanse of “sky” where this world was created. I’ve always found that sort of thing really creepy, because it violates established rules about the reality that video games present. If you fall to the floor, for example, there is no way of knowing what you will see in the bottomless abyss that consumes you because the fabric of reality has effectively left the window.

YouTube channel likes Boundary Limits have built up a successful following by exploring this sort of thing from an archaeological perspective, using mods or hacks to take control of a video game camera so they can fly it or aim it wherever they want. The idea is that you can see the Easter eggs that developers are smuggling in just to make themselves laugh, or maybe learn about how the game loads the interior of a building by actually hiding it deep underground and moving players to it when they walk through the door. It’s like going backstage at Chuck E. Cheese, but instead of looking at a rat costume and empty machine, you’ll find a vast desert of darkness, a mysterious black cube serving some unknown function, and creepy close-up eyeballs. .

In 2019, PT fans know that if you hack into the camera and pull it from your usual first-person perspective, you can see that Lisa, the ghost that haunts you during the short game, is actually hovering over your back and disappearing from view the entire time. There’s no way to see it there in the game, and he’s probably just there as some kind of spooky sound trigger (or maybe so the game doesn’t have to load his model separately and be able to move it right away where it needs to be), but knowing that he’s being there all the time and you can’t turn around and catch it – no matter how fast you are – making things that much creepier.

To me, this isn’t just scary because PT is a horror game. I find all of these things extremely terrifying, but in a way I almost don’t want to forget. I like to see what’s behind the walls, say, school level Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2, because I was curious to see what the developers would put in a room that the average player would never see. But I still cringe about it. Maybe because this is something unique to video games (or at least a virtual world)? Turn the camera on a film or TV show, and you’ll see crew members watching everything that happens. Look behind a wall in real life and you will not see a bottomless hole becoming an unmarked void; You will only see whatever is behind that wall.

As Gate test room, video games are all smoke and mirrors (Google “frustum culling” some time for some real superficial magic). But the thing about smoke and mirrors is that they usually cover something ordinary. That’s how developers think about the empty expanse surrounding their game world, but it seems to me to be haunting. So covering it up is not a trick, and is more of a compassion.