Strafe jumping is a technique by which players can break the “speed limit” of games built on the Quake family of engines, and achieve up to double the normal movement speed. It exploits a bug deep in the physics engine, where the player’s ground friction is calculated, to minimize this friction and speed up the player’s movement through successive jumps. This speedup drastically increases the pace of gameplay and contributes to the sense that Quake III Arena (id Software, 1999) is a twitch shooter which rewards quick reflexes (Juul, 2005). Although it was possible to fix the glitch, the player community intervened to preserve it. It is a strange example, in which a glitch enters into the game design space, and is eventually adopted by the player community (followed by some designers and developers) as a key game mechanic.
This paper argues that a full account of strafe jumping requires an understanding of the context in which it emerged, both socially and technically. The distinct features of software platforms, specifically the game engine, must be taken into consideration. This paper characterizes game engines as software platforms, and uses this to conduct a brief platform study of idTech3, the engine underneath Quake III Arena. This study includes a code reading of the function that enables strafe jumping, and references John Carmack’s extensive development notes to provide social and historical context. We consider the significance of strafe jumping to the player community’s play experience, profiling the DeFrag movement mod. Finally, we consider the lessons this study can provide to future work on software platforms and game engines.
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