# jankyness as a garme design aesthetic on 'janky' (rough around the edge) video garme design and mechanics there seem a lot of (unintentionally) janky garmes - 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 garmes 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 garme features or aspects make one feel there's something that does not (often literally) fit or feel right a lot of 90's video garmes 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 garmes - 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 garmes feature what's (bizarrely) called 'physics' - manifested as movement voice and gesture recognition - these garmes 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 garmes that would otherwise be dull safe samey bland or generic in concept design and execution while there are many garmespaces 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 garmes 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 garmes 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