Gaming Stories: BrickBreaker

This screenshot doesn’t look right to me because this is the starting board, and the player already has 600 points.

Click the back button, confirm that I want to quit, click the play button. A ball clipped through the end of my paddle again. I know it’s going to happen every time it comes in at that angle, but I always expect it to change the next time it comes in that way. How annoying that I’ve managed to lose a ball on the first stage again. I guess I’ll click the back button, confirm that I want to quit, and click the play button again.

I hate BrickBreaker. I’m starved of other options on my BlackBerry Curve, so I inevitably go back to BrickBreaker for another emotional beating. My relationship with BrickBreaker has survived three phones so far; why should I stop now, especially since Klondike and Texas Hold’Em King 2 load so slowly on my phone. At least BrickBreaker loads quickly.

Hitting restart, either because I’ve lost all of my lives or because I lost a life in the first stage and restarted in frustration, means that I feel like I’m trapped in the worst feedback loop. I never feel like I’m making progress in the game; when I reached a new high score this week for the first time in more than a year, I wasn’t even sure how to react.

Forget this. Time to restart and go through the cycle again.

My frustration with BrickBreaker also involves the dissonance between my visual expectations and how the game engine works. If a ball comes in at a steep angle to my pad, it will phase through my pad into the infinite abyss, thus costing me a life. I know that  the ball will clip through my paddle when it comes in at those steep angles at the ends of the pad, but I’m continue to be surprised and annoyed when it does. Also, the ball’s trajectory will occasionally change on a rebound for no discernible reason. Is it because the game thinks that the ball is stuck? Is it because the phone actually detects tilt, even though I’m pretty sure the BlackBerry Curve I’m playing BrickBreaker on doesn’t detect tilt? Or is it because the game is just terrible? How can you engage with a game when the game reacts contrary to expectations that have been built over time? When a violation of expectations takes place, trust between two parties is violated. Maybe that’s why I’m almost never happy with BrickBreaker.

Mobile games seem to be the untapped area for FAQs. If I were to load up GameFAQs, I can find guides for all kinds of games regardless of platforms. For some reason, I hadn’t thought that there would be a guide for what is ostensibly a geometry-driven game. It was only in the course of researching for this post that I found the Ultimate BlackBerry BrickBreaker Guide, which dates back to 2008.

It’s strange to have such an extensive history with a game that I hate-play. I rarely enjoy the experience of playing BrickBreaker; I pay no attention to it; I never think of it after I put the phone away. It’s as disposable an experience as I can think of, and yet it’s been a significant element of my life. When I’m bored at a meeting, I might play BrickBreaker. When I’m bored on the train, I might play BrickBreaker. When I have no other entertainment options, I might play BrickBreaker. It’s a game of last resort.

One day, I’d love to talk to whomever programmed BrickBreaker. Here are my questions:
1. What was your vision when you designed it?
2. Why does the ball clip through the paddle’s ends?
3. Why does the ball sometimes unexpectedly change trajectories?
4. Did you design the boards by hand, or did you just generate them through math?
5. Did you ever think about letting a player keep track of progress so I could just continue from the last stage I completed? I know it’s a score attack game, but I feel like I’m just seeing the same first six or seven stages over and over again.
6. How many players actually even see the more advanced stages?