Games
Discover facts about games. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
Games
How WoW players learned to speak to the enemy
To limit cross-faction abuse, WoW scrambled messages sent to the enemy into gibberish. Players spent hours working out which strings mapped to which words,…
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Magical fireballs casually ignore standard thermodynamics
Tabletop rules confine the flames to a defined grid area, so the blast doesn’t bounce off a wall and engulf the wizard.
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Nintendogs delayed Metal Gear Solid 4
A story from the development of Metal Gear Solid 4 says the team was so hooked on Nintendogs that the game’s release was delayed. The virtual puppies…
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A game cave can echo because you crossed an invisible boundary
A reverb zone tells the audio system to give sounds a particular acoustic character. Walk into the marked area and footsteps gain the cave's echo without…
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Why gamers save powerful items until the end
Players often finish a game with powerful items still unused because they keep saving them for a future challenge that never comes.
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Insomniac Games was originally Xtreme Software
The studio began as Xtreme Software, but changed its name to Insomniac after discovering another company had already trademarked the original name.
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Crowning checkers grants the basic ability to move backward
A crowned piece can move backward, unlike an uncrowned checker, giving it a way to retreat from danger.
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Why Ryu and Ken originally looked identical
They began as identical pixel sprites, with different colors distinguishing them and saving memory.
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Officer Tenpenny controls the entire city underworld
In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, corrupt cop Frank Tenpenny controls territory, pushes gangs into violence, and forces the protagonist to do his dirty work…
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Why smart teams miss the obvious in escape rooms
Some escape-room teams search for elaborate hidden clues while overlooking an obvious one, like a brass key sitting on the center table.
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Why ray tracing turns computers into space heaters
It traces millions of virtual photons as they bounce off surfaces, demanding enough computation to create realistic reflections—and turn your computer into a…
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In Shenmue, revenge can wait for the arcade
The game lets players detour into arcade games and capsule-toy collecting, despite its urgent revenge plot.
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Why is there always a shop in the dungeon
Even deep inside a monster-infested cavern, the potion seller somehow keeps a fully stocked shop and never gets attacked.
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Playing cards did not always agree on what a suit should be
The familiar hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades come from the French tradition. Other European decks use combinations such as cups, swords, coins, bells or…
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A Ferrari was a Quake tournament prize
Dennis 'Thresh' Fong won the 1997 Red Annihilation Quake tournament and took home John Carmack's Ferrari 328 GTS. The prize came from one of the game's own…
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The browser games that became escape rooms
The format grew out of early-2000s point-and-click browser games, where players searched pixels for keys.
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Ice luge drinking aggressively chills liquids via gravity
Gravity pulls the drink down the carved channel, where it absorbs heat from the ice and chills before reaching the glass.
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Kamchatka is an essential Risk territory for holding Asia
On the game board, Kamchatka borders North America, making it a key route between the continents. Holding it helps protect Asia’s eastern edge from attacks.
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Seven shuffles became famous because mathematicians defined the shuffle
Bayer and Diaconis studied a model of riffle shuffling, where two packets interleave irregularly. For a 52-card deck, the mixing improves sharply around the…
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Moving a running console can put a circular scratch on its disc
In some disc-based consoles, tilting the machine during playback can let the spinning disc contact internal parts. Rotation then carries the damage around the…
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Big Daddy almost looked very different
One early concept was a hulking man fused into a weaponized wheelchair. The designers instead chose the massive atmospheric diving suits that became the…
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Why The Price Is Right locks up its Plinko chips
The chips are customized to fall down the board in a particular unpredictable way, so producers lock them up after filming.
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Mario Kart routinely features the villain driving around
Bowser may kidnap royalty in the story, then happily race Mario and toss shells at him on the track.
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Esports practice is more than playing another match
Professional preparation can include scrimmages, reviewing recordings, and drilling particular situations. Long hours alone do not explain the work: a team…
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