Flushable

November 27, 2016 6:25 AM

“If there’s a bathroom, there should be a toilet. And if there’s a toilet, it should flush. It’s these little pieces of seemingly pointless interactivity that maintain the illusion of being inside a functional other place, not just a place-shaped box.” - What virtual toilets can teach us about the art of game design
posted by Artw (54 comments total)

In-game interior design always breaks my immersion. Not because there aren't flushable toilets or working faucets, but because the interior spaces never seem to be inhabited by real people. They are too clean, too simplistic. I'm not asking for pointless interactions (flushing the toilet) but design that tells a story, just like it does in the real world (why yes, you can flush the toilet because that's one way of getting ride of stolen loot before the guards catch you). But I guess it's just too expensive to model and code realistic living spaces down to the last patch of dust.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 6:54 AM on November 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Turns out I want to read a longform article about video game toilets. Thanks for this!
posted by Room 641-A at 7:02 AM on November 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

A game toilet without an Alligator_NPC to flush is like a day without a double espresso.
posted by sammyo at 7:22 AM on November 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Toilets are a finite source of potable water in The Long Dark. I suppose I know in theory that toilet water is drinkable but still, it makes me slightly uncomfortable every time I find myself restocking my imaginary water supply direct from the bowl.
posted by jontyjago at 7:23 AM on November 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Is This Gaming’s Greatest Toilet?
posted by Artw at 7:28 AM on November 27, 2016

Someone made a Fallout 4 plugin that changes the direction the toilet paper hangs.
posted by RobotHero at 7:32 AM on November 27, 2016 [29 favorites]

I am almost diametrically opposed to this position - if flushing the toilet doesn't have any in-game significance, don't make it flushable!

For a certain species of player, adding extras like that is just a source of frustration - you get to the endgame and you are still wondering if flushing the toilet back in level 1 was in any way important, and maybe you could have gotten a secret toilet-weapon by flushing the correct signal pattern.
posted by Dr Dracator at 7:37 AM on November 27, 2016 [17 favorites]

I have opinions on this that I will share after I play a few hours of the Sims 4 today. 🤓 The new City Living expansion pack features a talking toilet that lets you per AND play games with it as it talks to you. While you pee. Game design at its finest, tbh.
posted by Hermione Granger at 7:50 AM on November 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

With the flushable toilets, it at least becomes clear very quickly that they don't do anything, and any quest that requires toilet interaction will generally give you a strong hint in that direction.

No, the truly unforgivable gaming sin are Bethesda Mountains. Because, as the video points out, they're scalable at weird angles just often enough that trying to scale every one you see by walking at weird angles is actually a rational thing to do.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:52 AM on November 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

Spaces are almost never to scale in games because video game characters don't move the way people move. They rocket around with lightning speed and terrible clumsiness. This is particularly true of doors: if doors in games were the same size as an actual house door it would be a needle-threading achievement just to get into your house. Not to mention that a screen is an awful substitute for the eye's fuzzy FOV.

If designers actually fitted game spaces with all the clutter we have in our lives they would be essentially unnavigable.
posted by selfnoise at 7:54 AM on November 27, 2016 [15 favorites]

(That's a Jimquisition video, BTW, so the audio is NSFW.)
posted by tobascodagama at 7:54 AM on November 27, 2016

Someone made a Fallout 4 plugin that changes the direction the toilet paper hangs.

Next up a mod addressing sit versus stand and the ignition of the greatest war between gamers since, I don't know, Tuesday.
posted by Artw at 7:54 AM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I gotta admit that I was terribly amused when I found out I could not only use the toilets and urinals in Duke Nukem 3D, but that you got +10 health by doing so.

But I was also twelve at the time.
posted by SansPoint at 8:33 AM on November 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Flushable toilets are defensible only in the way that combination locks that open to 0451 are defensible: as an in-joke for gamers of a certain age, who right now have a lot of disposable income to spend on games. Like Wilhelm Screams, and travel companies named "Oceanic"
posted by GameDesignerBen at 8:45 AM on November 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

...it makes me slightly uncomfortable every time I find myself restocking my imaginary water supply direct from the bowl.

It should make you uncomfortable, if not actually sick. You refill your canteen from the tank, not from the bowl.

Also, there are civilized societies that make definite separation between the room where you wash yourself and the room where you dispose of bodily wastes. The reason our society does not has more to do with plumbing convenience than with logic.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:46 AM on November 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Next up a mod addressing sit versus stand ...

Surely, that would come after one giving extra points for putting the seat down.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:49 AM on November 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm trying, and failing, to find a video by Matt Lees where he gushes over the home of Nathan and Elena Drake in Uncharted 4. It's really fantastic, it's a house that feels like it's actually lived in. It's super cluttered and messy and there are towels on the ground in the bathroom. I don't know if the toilet flushes but I'll probably play through it again and find out.

It's sort of interesting too because I'm trying to think of games where stuff actually happens in the bathroom. Like, things of importance. Usually they're just full of pickups or easter eggs. The only ones I can think of are David Cage games (Heavy Rain, Indigo Prophecy, Beyond: Two Souls) where you can shave and shower, as well as Jazzpunk. Oftentimes they're the only rooms with mirrors in them. But other than that I'm struggling to think of any.
posted by Neronomius at 8:51 AM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, there are civilized societies that make definite separation between the room where you wash yourself and the room where you dispose of bodily wastes. The reason our society does not has more to do with plumbing convenience than with logic

Well, you also probably want to minimize the number of door handles you touch between using the toilet and washing your hands. But yeah, that makes me think of cultures with different expectations when it comes to bathrooms ... Are there Japanese games with scary robot toilets? Are there French gamers thinking "where the hell is the bidet?"
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 9:02 AM on November 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

The game Hot Tin Roof: The Cat Who Wore a Fedora has the best toilets of all time, as they're not only functional, they serve as the save points for the game!
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:09 AM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's sort of interesting too because I'm trying to think of games where stuff actually happens in the bathroom.

Goldeneye!
posted by oulipian at 9:15 AM on November 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

they serve as the save points for the game!

I've always assumed that save points were stand-ins for the bathrooms you never see.

"Excuse me for a sec; I have to go use the save point."
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:16 AM on November 27, 2016 [15 favorites]

There's nothing doting as I recall about the toilet functionality in the Silent Hill 2 and 3 but there is a nice continuity and rebuke built in to those two games.

In 2, you play as a forlorn man looking for his missing wife in the foggy haunted town-or-plane-of-existence-or... of Silent Hill, and at some point you can find a dark bathroom with a filthy toilet that the game allows a prompted interaction with: you can reach into the shitty depths of its bowl to retrieve an item.

In 3, you play as a teenage girl who gets likewise swept into Silent Hill through a series of unfortunate events, and at some point in the game she's in a similar position where a gross toilet beckons with a prompt to reach in. But if you go for it, she just sort of double takes and says fuck that noise and moves on with her day.

That the prior game made the toilet interaction a gross possible behavior (maybe even required? might have been a quest item in there?) was sort of solid gross out horror/existential goofery by the designers. That the later game built on that established expectation of gross behavior and then used it to mess with the player by having the protagonist blanch at the idea was a great followup.
posted by cortex at 9:16 AM on November 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

The game Hot Tin Roof: The Cat Who Wore a Fedora has the best toilets of all time, as they're not only functional, they serve as the save points for the game!

Same goes for both No More Heroes games: Not only are the toilets save points, but the look of them varies by level: the one in Travis' bathroom has anime posters, the one in a sports stadium is a public stall amidst others, and one in a construction site is a blue port-a-john.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:19 AM on November 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's sort of interesting too because I'm trying to think of games where stuff actually happens in the bathroom.

The bathrooms in Fallout 4 frequently have loot, enemies, booby traps, weird posed scenes involving teddy bears, toy aliens, or mannequins, or all of the above. And character creation takes place in your character's bathroom, which is pretty important!
posted by tobascodagama at 9:33 AM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's to the author's credit that I can't tell how serious this is.

Outside of The Sims, I can't say that toilet mechanics offered much more than a few seconds of entertainment. Except maybe Borderlands 2 where all the toilets appear to be clogged with ammunition or firearms.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 9:43 AM on November 27, 2016

Slayer Shock's toilets all feature toilet paper hung incorrectly. Hitting the use key lets you fix that.
posted by Pope Guilty at 10:06 AM on November 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Building working, flushable toilets in Minecraft is almost its own genre. Now I know why, I guess.
posted by monospace at 10:28 AM on November 27, 2016

https://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Toilet
posted by xiw at 10:38 AM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

you get to the endgame and you are still wondering if flushing the toilet back in level 1 was in any way important

This is life.
posted by pracowity at 10:38 AM on November 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

I've always assumed that save points were stand-ins for the bathrooms you never see.

I'd that's the case, then my character in the Arcanum game I was playing last night really should see a doctor. Or maybe it's s nervous reaction to being on quests. "Oh this is the location of the ancient elven statue we need to steal? Excuse me for a moment. "
posted by happyroach at 10:57 AM on November 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

No More Heroes games: Not only are the toilets save points, but the look of them varies by level

You can even decorate Travis' bathroom with tacky nonsense you collect over the course of the second game!

I think unnecessary details add a lot to games, but I'm with Foci for Analysis in that a lot of them feel too rote. Too much pointless interactivity and you can sort of lose something if nothing feels especially lovingly crafted. Little details that tell a story, or indicate a wider world outside your character or simply bring some goofy charm to a title do more to enrich a game as a fictional world than "random object you can pick up."

These sorts of details don't necessarily have to be interactive, or don't necessarily have to be interactive in the same way as other mechanics. It can be something like NPCs with names and ongoing stories that just happen in parallel to yours, environmental details that build up a world or give a place a sense of being inhabited, unique interactives that you can play with in special ways (like Bioshock's guitar and Xenogears' telescope) or some combination therein. Just something that kind of indicates why this is a game instead of something else, without reducing a title to nothing but its abstract mechanics (which is too boring for me).
posted by byanyothername at 10:58 AM on November 27, 2016

Oh hey, and just to point out a non-FPS interactive toilet: Final Fantasy VI
posted by byanyothername at 11:01 AM on November 27, 2016

i have flushed every toilet in karnaca and i will flush every toilet in dunwall and no one can stop me, not even the dozens of guardsmen who burst in every time they hear a sound
posted by poffin boffin at 11:05 AM on November 27, 2016 [10 favorites]

First time playing Fallout 3: LOL, let's see if you can flush the toi--OH GOD HE'S DRINKING FROM IT!!! OH GOD!!!
posted by dirigibleman at 11:17 AM on November 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

1984's flipscreen object-collect platformer Jet Set Willy famously ends with your titular protagonist sticking his 8-bit top-hatted head down the toilet and wiggling his legs in the air. Not actually interactive though.
posted by comealongpole at 11:18 AM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh, also, the '80s Text Adventure/IF scene in the UK was strongly homebrew/indie led. Zenobi Software put out Pratchett-esque Tolkien spoofs (which were actually amusing in case you're worried). Some of their b-sides featured single room escape-the-outdoor-toilet mini-adventures, the Behind Closed Doors series. Very highly recommended, legally available bundled with an emulator via the IF archive or whatever it's called.
posted by comealongpole at 11:26 AM on November 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Like in life, flushing the toilet has no measurable positive effect on your story, while not flushing has significant immediate negative consequences.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:27 PM on November 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

If you have a stool I shall give you a stool. If you have no stool I shall take it from you.
posted by comealongpole at 12:41 PM on November 27, 2016

Thief 2 (set in a Victorianesque fantasy world) has outhouse-style commodes. Fan-made missions tend to have moss arrows in them (which look like this, except green).

See also: The Videogame Toilet Museum on Tumblr, and a fairly obsessive Imgur collection.

I guess it's just too expensive to model and code realistic living spaces down to the last patch of dust.

That's a big part of it, but it's also technology limitations. Including a million bits of clutter adds to the polygon count, which degrades graphics quality.

Perhaps more importantly, video game avatars aren't as nimble as real people. Most games represent the player avatar as a rigid cylinder – that's why it's so easy to get snagged on geometry if the level design is too crowded, i.e. too realistic (this is a common problem in fan-made levels). So interiors in video games tend to be more spread out than real interiors, with wide walkways between furniture, lots of room to allow the player to negotiate around open doors, improbably large rooms in general, etc. It's easy for that to feel spare and a little uncanny.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 12:46 PM on November 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

Like a sitcom! Interesting!
posted by comealongpole at 12:56 PM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Experience (and absentmindedness) teaches me that the most significant negative consequences of not flushing are not immediate.
posted by traveler_ at 1:10 PM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

You could see it as like the Shandification of Fallout question, "What do they eat?" Including a toilet is an indication of yes, this is a place where people live or once lived.

For an example of the sorts of concessions made to accommodate video game movement, check out Gone Home. They acknowledge the size of the house by mentioning it's inherited. But there are also a lot of things like a filing cabinet that contains only one file, drawers that contain only a pen, etc. Because a place that was really full of stuff would become kind of impenetrably dense. Oh, and all the doors open away from you no matter which side you're on. IIRC, you could flush the toilets, and turn on the faucets on all the sinks.
posted by RobotHero at 2:21 PM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

For an example of the sorts of concessions made to accommodate video game movement, check out Gone Home. They acknowledge the size of the house by mentioning it's inherited. But there are also a lot of things like a filing cabinet that contains only one file, drawers that contain only a pen, etc. Because a place that was really full of stuff would become kind of impenetrably dense. Oh, and all the doors open away from you no matter which side you're on. IIRC, you could flush the toilets, and turn on the faucets on all the sinks.

People called it a walking simulator, but its status as a Wet Bandits simulator goes underappreciated.
posted by Pope Guilty at 3:05 PM on November 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Someone made a Fallout 4 plugin that changes the direction the toilet paper hangs.

People denigrate the "power fantasy" aspect of video games, but who among us can be indifferent to the idea of a button that would instantly fix every roll of toilet paper in the world to be hanging the correct way?

This is second only to a GTA mod that would put Calvin peeing stickers on the back window of 5% of the cars, make the glass breakable, and give the player a baseball bat.
posted by straight at 5:48 PM on November 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I know there's a Skyrim toilet mod but I always thought this one in the vanilla game was kinda funny, right? A book and a potion of "true shot?" I was trying to think of a more effective toilet potion but I guess that one is pretty good...
posted by capnsue at 7:56 PM on November 27, 2016

"By the way, Denton, stay out of the ladies restroom. That kind of activity embarrasses the agency more than it does you."
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:49 PM on November 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

In Leather Goddesses of Phobos the first bathroom you entered would determine your gender. Also there was a stool joke.
posted by Artw at 8:55 PM on November 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

(maybe even required? might have been a quest item in there?)

It was required, and it's one of a couple moments in Silent Hill 2 where the game asks you if you want to do something gross or suicidal and then refuses to let you advance until you say "yes". To this day, I mutter the phrase, "Stick hand in toilet: Yes/No?" when confronted with a railroaded decision in a game.

Side note, all castles/buildings/dungeons/etc. in pen and paper RPGs that I run have era-appropriate bathrooms or similar facilities. Everybody poops -- even cybernetic assassins and wizards!
posted by tocts at 11:53 AM on November 28, 2016

"I am almost diametrically opposed to this position - if flushing the toilet doesn't have any in-game significance, don't make it flushable! "

That's like saying glass shouldn't be breakable inside games nor anything in the environment interactive.
posted by I-baLL at 11:58 AM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

> Spaces are almost never to scale in games because video game characters don't move the way people move. They rocket around with lightning speed and terrible clumsiness.

One of the Bayonetta dev diaries talks about how they started off with things at a semi-realistic size, but ended up just scaling the entire first area up by 50% because of how fast she moves. I do like the fantastical feel of the enormous architecture they ended up with though.

For more grounded games, hopefully modern, flexible movement systems are doing away with getting stopped dead because your hitbox grazed a door jamb. I remember the revelation in Mirror's Edge when Faith just automatically squeezed through a gap, because of course that wouldn't stop an actual human, and that was nearly a decade ago now.
posted by lucidium at 12:19 PM on November 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

That's like saying glass shouldn't be breakable inside games nor anything in the environment interactive.

Game devs can't wire everything within a given level, and it's weird that toilets apparently get more thought than other objects in the world that offer meaningful play.

I love Dishonored 2, but when I encounter glass-roofed overhangs that break and windows that don't, the advertised promise of non-linearity falls a bit short. The window doesn't break likely to force you through the apartment from the other side, directing you to a cutscene and an encounter. Still it seemed weird that I wasn't able to either fiddle the window or the louvered door as an alternate entrance. That puzzle took me about an hour to figure out.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:02 PM on November 28, 2016

How about pinball? There's a flushing toilet in Williams Junk Yard. You can even buy one.
posted by lagomorphius at 1:08 PM on November 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Leisure Suit Larry - In the Land of the Lounge Lizards had this issue all solved back in 1987.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 8:06 PM on November 28, 2016

Game devs can't wire everything within a given level, and it's weird that toilets apparently get more thought than other objects in the world that offer meaningful play.

Toilets are the hitchhiker's towels of game development.

A toilet has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a gamer discovers that a game has a fully-simulated working toilet, he will automatically assume that the game also simulates day/night cycles, weather, hair physics, skin translucency, sound propagation, thirst, hunger, friction, gravity, air resistance, etc. Furthermore, the gamer will then happily overlook any of these definitely-included features that are currently "bugged." What the gamer will think is that any studio that can model a toilet with a moving lid, a working tank lever, water, grime, and that delightful flushing sound is clearly a game developer to be reckoned with.

posted by straight at 2:10 PM on November 29, 2016 [4 favorites]