First shots from an enemy in BioShock always miss

Jennifer Scheurle opened up a can of game-design whoopass on Thursday.

Scheurle, a designer with Opaque Space (whose current project is the virtual reality game Earthlight) tossed out an open question on Twitter that will make you question what really is underneath the hood of your favorite game.

Given the chance to confess their sins of rubber-banding, regenerating boss health or worse, many developers took it.

Ng (the lead artist for Firewatch) went on to explain that ignoring someone in Firewatch had a consequence and thus made other characters “real.”

Ever wonder if ratings were meaningful? Alex Trowers, a designer for the racing/car-combat game Hi-Octane on the original PlayStation, also confessed his sins.

Paul Hellquist, designer on BioShock, admitted to goosing the player’s health meter to contrive desperate confrontations.

Then Rick Lesley, a designer for Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, confessed to the same thing:

Developer Chevy Ray revealed that there is a thumb on the scale when applying the law of gravity.

Tommy Thompson revealed the secret of Alien: Isolation.

and Left 4 Dead.

Sometimes, it isn’t about the game’s design. Lee Perry, a gameplay designer on Gears of War, Gears of War 2 and 3, offered this fact.

Even Ken Levine jumped in with this jaw-dropper:

Steve Thornton, who has worked on five different LEGO video games for Traveller’s Tales, spilled these beans:

On and on it goes.

It’s like finding out Santa Claus does not exist, but still admiring the lengths to which Mom and Dad went to preserve his myth. There’s much more within the original thread.

But I am still waiting for Bob Whitehead to admit that he tried to make it impossible to throw a perfect game in Hardball! on the Commodore 64. Tried. Because I threw one anyway.