TheSameButMore NOTE: The clock was reset on 2/23: Unwinnable By Insanity

We have two related tropes, Unwinnable by Design and Unwinnable by Mistake. The distinction is clear: in both cases, a video game becomes unwinnable as a result of certain player actions. In the former, the developers intentionally made it unwinnable, and in the latter, a bug does so unintentionally.

And then there's this trope. It describes itself as a subtrope of both, except that the player action to make the game unwinnable is so unlikely that you'd have to be insane to actually do that.

Predictably, this attracts examples that aren't "insane"; I've just removed a couple. But I'm wondering: first, why this is not a subjective trope, as one man's insanity is another man's regular gameplay. And second, why we have this page in the first place; the trope is not clearly distinct from the other two unwinnable tropes.

Thoughts please?

"Insanity" might not be the best word for it - after all, after a while, someone will experiment with something that will cause this. I remember the first time I found something like this, in Super Mario Bros 3 - it's not like what I did was insane or anything, but it clearly wasn't something they had planned on.

I think the dividing line between this and Unwinnable by Mistake is that "mistake" is supposed to be something that could reasonably come up during play, and "insanity" is supposed to be something that isn't at all reasonable.

That does go into the issue of just what counts as reasonable, though, so I'd personally lump them back together.

To clarify the Ultima Underworld example that you cut: when you're told about the spell, it's more or less explained to you that you'll break the game, so you're acting insanely if you go ahead and try it without at least saving first. I still think it counts.

As for the trope, you may be right; it could very well be covered under the "Tough" part of the Unwinnable by Design scale - you can break the game, but you're given fair warning that what you're about to do is a bad idea.

I got the feeling that the insanity part was basically where the unwinnable scenario is so specific/hard to achieve that in order to do it you'd essentially have to be purposefully trying to do it.

Whereas if it's "unwinnable by mistake", it's because it's something that's not that hard to accidentally accomplish.

edited 31st Aug '11 11:40:13 AM by Jeysie

Okay, so the question is whether "insane" means that you're doing something that the game tells you not to do, or that it means doing something convoluted and complex that you're highly unlikely to come across in normal gameplay.

And I believe that both of these are subjective.

Yes, it would, and given that its inclusion was deliberate and signposted, it would be an Unwinnable by Design scenario. Based on the scale there, I think that counts as a Merciful example.

I'd be willing to agree that Unwinnable By Insanity might be a YMMV trope. I just feel it is separate enough from Unwinnable By Mistake to be its own trope.

If it weren't so long, I'd want to call this one "Unwinnable By...Wait, Why Did You Even Do That?"

It's not enough to feel that there's a difference, though - there has to be something concrete that one can point to and say "this is why these are different."

Also, upon reflection, I think arguing for such cases to be "insanity" is mistaking Wrong Genre Savvy for lunacy.

From a video gamer's perspective, think about it. How often does a Violation of Common Sense work? How often is it required? Heck, sometimes such violations prove to be things that the developers didn't plan on but are the best route to victory.

I've seen just enough situations where I'm supposed to jump down the supposedly Bottomless Pits to think that jumping down those is always a bad idea. Don't care if the game has warned me; I know enough aversions of Infallible Babble that I'm never sure until I see the consequences.

In short, if there's any lesson I've learned from video gaming, it's that success frequently comes from complete nonsense. So for those cases that it doesn't apply, is it because of insanity that I've made it unwinnable? Or is it that I just haven't learned the specific rules of this game yet?

^If it's something you might reasonably do in normal gameplay (even if you wouldn't in reality), I'd consider that Unwinnable by Mistake.

But, say, going to that island in Pokemon that you need Surf to leave, then releasing every Pokemon that can learn a move to let you leave it? There's no reason to do that unless you're testing if the game can be unwinnable.

edited 31st Aug '11 1:09:40 PM by INUH

Unwinnable By Stupidity?

My point, though, is that games have taught me to do so many things that would seemingly be stupid even in context of the game's rules (like the one pit that isn't bottomless, despite seeming to be so) that I'd argue that absolutely nothing at all could truly be argued to be insane. In fact, huge sections of the Guide Dang It! pages prove that developers are obviously expecting some player, somewhere, to do every stupid thing they can and tell everyone all about it.

After a certain point of seeing these things constantly, seeing the game that punishes these outlanding actions isn't an example of insanity causing unwinnable. It's an example of guessing wrong whether this particular part of the game wants you to act like a sensible person or a loon.

Eh, I'm with INUH on this one. Speaking as someone who's always considered it something of a hobby to try to deliberately break games after I finish playing them normally, it's not that hard to find a difference between normal but slightly off ways to play a game and stuff you have to either deliberately go out of your way to do wrong or be insanely stupid.

^^I don't think examples like "jumping into the wrong bottomless pit because you thought it was the exit" should count. I thing only examples of things that people would never do for any other reason but to test if it makes the game unwinnable should count. Do you seriously think someone's done the Pokemon thing I mentioned because they thought it would help win?

edited 31st Aug '11 1:24:37 PM by INUH

The difference between odd things you would normally do in gameplay, and ridiculous things you would not normally do, is very blurry and extremely subjective. It's useful to point out such a difference at the top of a page, but not to split a page in two over such a criterion. Splitting will lead to lots of examples being duplicated or on the wrong page (and indeed, that already has happened to some extent).

Tropes Are Not Narrow. Not every possible difference turns a trope into two distinct tropes.

We are still talking about the series where something being said by a guy in one city affects where a 'mon will appear elsewhere, right? Or a series where playing Capture The Flag with a local wifi connection will result in another 'mon appearing, right? Or a series where you can break the level cap just by talking to the right person then flying to a seashore where they programmedthe tiles wrong?

On the face of it, yes, that example from Pokemon does appear stupid. But given how many other things one can do in that series that could cause things to go south but yet benefit you exist, not to mention what other crazy things happen from apparently unconnected events, I can't call the example from that game insane.

No, I don't know what a player doing that would expect to happen, but it doesn't seem like it'd be insane, unless the player in question did it every single time they played (as per the truism, insanity is performing the same action repeatedly and expecting a different result this time).

I've Seen It All... can't blame anyone for trying anything once. Or fifty times, really - thank you, Final Fantasy IX.

I think the problem is that the extremes are clear, but it's the border that's muddled.

And sometimes it's not clear what the distinction would be for insane actions. For the Pokemon, is that by design or by mistake? Is it really a 'mistake' to expect people to release the tools they'd need to even leave the island? Or was it by design, expecting that anybody who does so deserves to make their game unwinnable?

Really, why WOULD you release all surfing pokemon? Or, for instance, destroy all your ropes when you're in the bottom of the mine shaft, meaning there's no way to climb back out?

I can see there's a blurry line between a reasonable character action and a ridiculous character action when they're not terribly absurd, or if the game rewards odd logic regularly.

I don't know making the game unwinnable by doing something so insanely stupid like

is quite different than the other unwinnable tropes. You have to be the biggest idiot ever to pull that one off.

I don't even think "deliberately putting yourself in unwinnable situations" is a trope.

More like "Game is unwinnable when you do something that's totally outlandish or mind-bogglingly stupid" versus "Game is deliberately unwinnable" and "Game is accidentally unwinnable while doing normal gameplay things".

edited 31st Aug '11 7:34:38 PM by Jeysie

^^Yeah, the trope is less about the player actions and more about the fact that the game:

a)Can be made unwinnable, but

b)only if you do something that is extremely obviously going to make it unwinnable.

"Unwinnable by Design" does not mean "game is deliberately unwinnable". Rather, it means "Game can become unwinnable while doing certain gameplay actions, and the designers intended this". Come to think of it, that trope could have been named better.

...yes, that's... what I said. Guess I should have clarified that I didn't mean "Game is deliberately always unwinnable", but that "Game was deliberately made possibly unwinnable."

So is there any reason why the examples currently in Unwinnable by Insanity can't go under Unwinnable by Mistake, given that it doesn't seem that any of them are Unwinnable by Design?