# jankyness as a game design aesthetic on janky (rough around the edge) video game design and mechanics there seem a lot of (unintentionally) janky games - featuring vehicles that handle like cows animations that look as though constructed with straw and duct tape levels with poorly fitting parts - featuring gaps breaks distortions and other unique and undocumented features; such games often appear broken the term "janky" here means: clunky clanky jerry-rigged slap-dash uncertain suspect dubious un-polished non-fluid cheap feeling odd - unrealistic'. another connotation is of junk it's not too different from "glitchy"; jankyness usually refers to specific design failures or oversights. often downright laziness andor the pressure to release something quickly to the market may generate a lot of jankyness yet as with glitches janky game features or aspects make one feel there's something that does not (often literally) fit or feel right a lot of 90's video games have janky aspects whereas the common perception about the 80's golden era of garming were that they were often pixel perfect in design and construction that is all the elements of these games - graphics and aesthetics movement mechanics and level design etc. fit seamlessly together in a unified whole. there's little fragmentation or dissonance since many modern games feature what's (bizarrely) called physics - manifested as movement voice and gesture recognition - these games are often filled with jank rather than janky "steel battalion: heavy armor" is simply poor design implementation made ugly virtual flesh "stir drek" is a better example of jankyness at work (though not necessarily at play) // video here the positive aspect of jankyness however is that it often provides considerable character or unexpected / un programmed interest to games that would otherwise be dull safe samey bland or generic in concept design and execution while there are many gamespaces with built in jankyness: girp surgeon simulator ampu-tea octodad amazing frog - truer jankyness exists *despite* design and programming efforts to eliminate it the janky aesthetic in video games implies that all systems are inherently incomplete and that by being simple inherently abstract and limited generate noise or display unexpected emergent properties if only video games were not so self-serious about providing fun (in set directions) and allowed for jankyness to spring forth in un-scripted ways // republic of bob