glitch#Video game glitches

Some reference books, including Random House's American Slang, state that the term comes from the German word {{lang|de|glitschen}} {{gloss|to slip}}{{cn|date=April 2025}} as well as the Yiddish word {{lang|yi|glitshn}} {{gloss|to slide, to skid}} and {{lang|yi|glitsh}}, meaning "slippery place". Glitch was used from the 1940s by radio announcers to refer to an on-air mistake. During the following decade, the term became used by television engineers to indicate technical problems.{{cite web |last=Vespe |first=Jim |title=It Was John Glenn Who Popularized the Word “Glitch” |website=Smithsonian Magazine |date=19 September 2019 |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/just-right-word-180973113/#:~:text=Glitch%20is%20derived%20from%20glitsh,to%20refer%20to%20technical%20problems. |access-date=22 April 2025}}

According to a Wall Street Journal article written by Ben Zimmer,{{Cite news|last=Zimmer|first=Ben|date=November 2, 2013|title=Yiddish Meets High Tech in 'Glitch'|language=en-US|work=Wall Street Journal|url=https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303618904579169783922025374.html|access-date=November 11, 2020|issn=0099-9660}} the Yale University law librarian Fred Shapiro came up with the new earliest use of the word yet found: May 19, 1940. That was when the novelist Katharine Brush wrote about glitch in her column "Out of My Mind" (syndicated in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and other papers). Brush corroborated Tony Randall's radio recollection:

When the radio talkers make a little mistake in diction they call it a "fluff," and when they make a bad one they call it a "glitch," and I love it.

In the 1950s, glitch made the transition from radio to television. In a 1953 ad in Broadcasting magazine, RCA boasted that their TV camera has "no more a-c power line 'glitches' (horizontal-bar interference)". And Bell Telephone ran an ad in a 1955 issue of Billboard showing two technicians monitoring the TV signals that were broadcast on Bell System lines: "When he talks of 'glitch' with a fellow technician, he means a low frequency interference which appears as a narrow horizontal bar moving vertically through the picture".

A 1959 article in Sponsor, a trade magazine for television and radio advertisers, gave another technical usage in an article about editing TV commercials by splicing tape. {{" '}}Glitch' is slang for the 'momentary jiggle' that occurs at the editing point if the sync pulses don't match exactly in the splice". It also provided one of the earliest etymologies of the word, noting that, {{" '}}Glitch' probably comes from a German or Yiddish word meaning a slide, a glide or a slip".{{Citation needed|date=January 2021}}

It was first widely defined for the American people by Bennett Cerf on the June 20, 1965, episode of What's My Line as "a kink ... when anything goes wrong down there [Cape Kennedy], they say there's been a slight glitch". The astronaut John Glenn explained the term in his section of the book Into Orbit, writing that

Another term we adopted to describe some of our problems was "glitch". Literally, a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical circuit which takes place when the circuit suddenly has a new load put on it. You have probably noticed a dimming of lights in your home when you turn a switch or start the dryer or the television set. Normally, these changes in voltage are protected by fuses. A glitch, however, is such a minute change in voltage that no fuse could protect against it.quoted in Ben Zimmer, "The Hidden History of Glitch", visualthesarus.com {{cite web |url=https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/the-hidden-history-of-glitch/|title=The Hidden History of "Glitch"|access-date=2017-06-30|archive-date=November 6, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131106030441/http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/the-hidden-history-of-glitch/|url-status=live}}

An electronics glitch or logic hazard is a transition that occurs on a signal before the signal settles to its intended value, particularly in a digital circuit. Generally, this implies an electrical pulse of short duration, often due to a race condition between two signals derived from a common source but with different delays. In some cases, such as a well-timed synchronous circuit, this could be a harmless and well-tolerated effect that occurs normally in a design. In other contexts, a glitch can represent an undesirable result of a fault or design error that can produce a malfunction. Some electronic components, such as flip-flops, are triggered by a pulse that must not be shorter than a specified minimum duration in order to function correctly; a pulse shorter than the specified minimum may be called a glitch. A related concept is the runt pulse, a pulse whose amplitude is smaller than the minimum level specified for correct operation, and a spike, a short pulse similar to a glitch but often caused by ringing or crosstalk.

A computer glitch is the failure of a system, usually containing a computing device, to complete its functions or to perform them properly. It frequently refers to an error which is not detected at the time it occurs but shows up later in data errors or incorrect human decisions. Situations which are frequently called computer glitches are incorrectly written software (software bugs), incorrect instructions given by the operator (operator errors, and a failure to account for this possibility might also be considered a software bug), undetected invalid input data (this might also be considered a software bug), undetected communications errors, computer viruses, Trojan attacks and computer exploiting (sometimes called "hacking").

Such glitches could produce problems such as keyboard malfunction, number key failures, screen abnormalities (turned left, right or upside-down), random program malfunctions, and abnormal program registering.

Examples of computer glitches causing disruption include an unexpected shutdown of a water filtration plant in New Canaan, 2010,{{cite web|url=http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=75429|archive-url=https://archive.today/20110809072444/http://www.watertechonline.com/news.asp?N_ID=75429|url-status=dead|archive-date=August 9, 2011|title=Water filtration plant temporarily shut down due to computer glitch|date=December 6, 2010|access-date=December 11, 2010|work=watertechonline.com}} failures in the Computer Aided Dispatch system used by the police in Austin, resulting in unresponded 911 calls,{{cite web|url=http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/investigations/911-computer-glitch-led-to-police-delay|title=911 computer glitch led to police delay|work=Austin News kxan.com|date=November 15, 2010|access-date=December 11, 2010|archive-date=January 28, 2013|archive-url=https://archive.today/20130128111043/http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/investigations/911-computer-glitch-led-to-police-delay|url-status=dead}} and an unexpected bit flip causing the Cassini spacecraft to enter "safe mode" in November 2010.{{cite web|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna40364176|title=NASA revives Saturn probe, three weeks after glitch |work=NBC News|date=November 24, 2010|access-date=December 11, 2010}} Glitches can also be costly: in 2015, a bank was unable to raise interest rates for weeks resulting in losses of more than a million dollars per day.{{cite web|url=http://www.afr.com/business/banking-and-finance/financial-services/interest-rate-computer-glitch-costs-westpac-over-1m-a-day-20150728-gilh37|title=Interest rate computer glitch costs Westpac over $1m a day|work=www.afr.com|date=July 29, 2015|access-date=July 29, 2015}}

{{See also|Software bug}}

File:Virtual Boy glitch in right eyepiece.jpg is affected by a visual glitch.]]

Glitches in video games may include graphical and sound errors, collision detection problems, game crashes, and other issues. Quality assurance (QA) testers are commonly employed throughout the development process to find and report glitches to the programmers to be fixed, then potentially start over with a new build of the game.{{cite web |url=http://www.montrealmirror.com/2008/030608/games1.html |title=Testing, testing, testing |access-date=June 17, 2008 |last=Ofoe |first=Emmanuel-Yvan |author2=William Pare |date=March 6–12, 2008 |publisher=Montreal Mirror |archive-date=April 8, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080408030104/http://www.montrealmirror.com/2008/030608/games1.html |url-status=live }} If insufficient bug fixes are performed, numerous glitches and bugs can make their way to the final product. Bethesda Softworks, for example, is notorious for the amount of glitches in their games, though some players even prefer them to a glitch-free experience.{{Cite web |last=Chilton |first=Maddi |date=2016-09-06 |title=In defense of Bethesda's notorious videogame glitches |url=https://killscreen.com/previously/articles/defence-bethesdas-notorious-videogame-glitches/ |access-date=2024-09-11 |website=Kill Screen - Previously |language=en-US}}

Some players may seek to induce glitches in a game for fun, using methods such as cartridge tilting to disrupt the data flow.{{cite web|url=http://kotaku.com/5933722/its-not-a-glitch-its-a-feature-its-art-its-beautiful|title=It's Not A Glitch. It's A Feature. It's Art. It's Beautiful.|date=August 10, 2012|access-date=November 10, 2012|archive-date=May 2, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170502005016/http://kotaku.com/5933722/its-not-a-glitch-its-a-feature-its-art-its-beautiful|url-status=live}}

"Glitch hunters" are fans of a game who search for beneficial glitches that will allow them to speedrun the game faster, usually by skipping portions of a level, or quickly defeating enemies. One example of a speedrunning scene with large amounts of glitch hunters is the Souls series.{{Cite web |last=Donnelly |first=Joe |date=2022-01-19 |title=Exploring the art of Dark Souls glitch hunting with world champion speedrunners |url=https://www.gamesradar.com/exploring-the-art-of-dark-souls-glitch-hunting-with-world-champion-speedrunners/ |access-date=2024-09-16 |website=gamesradar |language=en}} The use of glitches during speedruns is a controversial topic, with some frowning upon their use as subverting the intent of the developers. Those in favor of glitch use believe that using the glitches can in itself take a great deal of skill. Multiple categories of speedruns exist, with "any%" allowing the use of any type of glitch, while "glitchless" indicates the speedrun was performed without them.{{cite web | url = http://kotaku.com/why-speedruners-use-glitches-1582919382 | title = Why Speedrunners Use Glitches | access-date = March 17, 2015 | archive-date = January 4, 2017 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170104094019/http://kotaku.com/why-speedruners-use-glitches-1582919382 | url-status = live }}

Some games purposely include effects that look like glitches as a means to break the fourth wall and either scare the player or put the player at unease, or otherwise as part of the game's narrative.{{cite magazine | url = https://www.pcgamer.com/meet-the-developers-making-bugs-and-glitches-on-purpose/ | title = Meet the developers making bugs and glitches on purpose | first = Edwin | last = Evans-Thirlwell | date = March 24, 2021 | accessdate = March 24, 2021 | magazine = PC Gamer | archive-date = March 24, 2021 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20210324134639/https://www.pcgamer.com/meet-the-developers-making-bugs-and-glitches-on-purpose/ | url-status = live }} Games like Eternal Darkness and Batman: Arkham Asylum include segments with intentional glitches where it appears that the player's game system has failed.{{cite web | url = https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/a-circular-wall-reformulating-the-fourth-wall-for-video-games | title = A Circular Wall? Reformulating the Fourth Wall for Video Games | first = Steven | last = Conway | date = July 22, 2009 | access-date = January 23, 2017 | work = Gamasutra | archive-date = October 5, 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20161005141051/http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132475/a_circular_wall_reformulating_the_.php?print=1 | url-status = live }} The Animus interface in the Assassin's Creed series, which allows the player-character to experience the memories of an ancestor though their genetic heritage, includes occasional glitches as to enforce the idea that the game is what the player-character is witnessing through a computer-aided system.

In broadcasting, a corrupted signal may glitch in the form of jagged lines on the screen, misplaced squares, static looking effects, freezing problems, or inverted colors. The glitches may affect the video and/or audio (usually audio dropout) or the transmission. These glitches may be caused by a variety of issues, interference from portable electronics or microwaves, damaged cables at the broadcasting center, or weather.{{cite web | url = http://www.highdefforum.com/local-hdtv-info-reception/98525-signal-strength-variables.html | title = Signal Strength Variables | access-date = March 17, 2015 | archive-date = March 18, 2016 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160318082139/http://www.highdefforum.com/local-hdtv-info-reception/98525-signal-strength-variables.html | url-status = live }}

Multiple works of popular culture deal with glitches; those with the word "glitch" or derivations thereof are detailed in Glitch (disambiguation).

• The nonfiction book CB Bible (1976) includes glitch in its glossary of citizens band radio slang, defining it as "an indefinable technical defect in CB equipment", indicating the term was already then in use on citizens band.{{cite book|author-link=Porter Bibb|last=Bibb|first=Porter|title=CB Bible|page=94|location=New York|publisher=Doubleday and Company|year=1976}}
• The short film The Glitch (2008), opening film and best science fiction finalist at Dragon Con Independent Film Festival 2008, deals with the disorientation of late-night TV viewer Harry Owen (Scott Charles Blamphin), who experiences "heavy brain-splitting digital breakdowns".{{cite web|last=Doto|first=Bob|url=http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2008/11/16/NY-Horror-Film-Fest-Night-4-The-Shorts|title=NY Horror Film Fest Night 4: The Shorts|date=November 7, 2008|access-date=March 3, 2011|archive-date=January 21, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100121023129/http://www.quietearth.us/articles/2008/11/16/NY-Horror-Film-Fest-Night-4-The-Shorts|url-status=dead}}

{{Commons category|Glitch in digital electronics}}

{{wiktionary}}

• Fuzzing
• Glitch art
• Glitch removal
• Hazard (logic)
• Hardware bug
• Software bug

{{Reflist|40em}}

{{Authority control}}

Category:Digital electronics

Category:Software bugs

Category:Software anomalies

Category:Computer errors