WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014!

If you are a game designer, use this one weird tip to annoy your players—it’s for their own good.

Background:

Modern video games are, with a few notable exceptions, generally designed to minimize the amount of irritation and aggravation that the player experiences.

The issue:

However, one flip side to the general “smooth sailing” experience of gameplay is the lack of any “stake” of the user in the gameworld, which reduces the tension and (frequently) enjoyment as well.

Generally, any setback is extremely minor. Careless play leads to your character impacting the ground at 100 m/s? No problem—instantly respawn nearby, or load the previous save. Thus, there is no sense of danger associated with this form of escapist entertainment.

Proposal:

We can add back the sense of danger (and investment in the well-being of one’s video game avatar) by making the consequences of failure more dire. However, this is often difficult to reconcile with game design. For example, if a player walks onto a land mine after exploring a huge ruin, it seems excessive to make them re-explore the entire ruin. But with this proposal, the player can still be punished, yet without making them repeat content that they have already experienced.

Specifically, every time the player encounters a significant setback (i.e., crashes a racecar, gets exploded in a war game, fails to clear the viruses from the Dr. Mario bottle), they are faced with a timer that must count down to 0 before the game can be restarted. Perhaps this would increase; the first failure within an hour would result in a 30 second penalty, then the second one would result in a 2-minute penalty, until finally perhaps the player has to wait a full hour to resume the game.

Fig 1: The respawn timer increases as the player continues to meet their demise in a short period of time. This would probably work especially well for an open-world game like Fallout (or any other game that allows quick-saves), which otherwise have few feasible ways of punishing the player for setbacks.

PROS: Adds danger and excitement even to the most generic open-world game and/or game with generous save slots.

CONS: Probably would result in lots of whining on message boards.

Clawed beasts will rend your flesh unless you obey this one weird tip! Cats and homeowners hate it!

Background:

As you are no doubt aware, the humble housecat is one of the world’s most popular pets.

Fig 1: A standard issue cat. This is the base model.

The issue:

Sometimes, a cat needs to be taken somewhere, and this typically requires a cat carrier. But most cats are hesitant to enter a cat carrier, and a cat-stewarding individual may have to resort to increasingly desperate measures in order to solve the cat-to-carrier conundrum.

Fig 2: The cat needs to go into the cat carrier. BUT HOW?? This clawed feline has its own ideas about where it should be. Specifically: elsewhere.

Proposal:

Although it may be possible to disguise the cat carrier and somehow trick the cat into enter it, the most straightforward solution is to simply purchase a giant funnel and bolt it to the wall of a house (Fig 3). Then, the cat-loading procedure is straightforward, as seen in figure 3.

Fig 3: The process is simple: Once the cat carrier is in place below the funnel, we must simply 1) raise the cat to the lip of the funnel and drop it in. 2) gravity does the rest! Note: for especially fragile felines, a pillow may be placed on the side (bottom, in this orientation) of the carrier in order to soften the deceleration process. If the cat fails to slide down the funnel properly, one may apply olive oil or an industrial engine lubricant to the sides of the funnel to expedite the procedure.

PROS: Makes loading a cat into a cat carrier a straightforward and pleasant process.

CONS: Having an industrial-grease-covered cat in a cat carrier is actually a new problem of its own, which unfortunately we do not have the space to solve here.

Sponsored Tip (BELOW): One weird tip to reducing the number of annoying comments on your web site! Filter out comments by keyword using these three words, and watch your comment problems evaporate. (Tip is optimized for the English language, and may fail to detect many spam comments.)

Stop fighting over toilet paper roll orientation! Peace in our time.

Background:

There are two common orientations for toilet paper; “over” (sheet falls forward, away from the wall) and “under” (sheet falls backward, next to the wall).

Fig 1: Two toilet paper roll orientations. Left: the proper “over” orientation, for civilized individuals. Right: the incorrect “under” orientation, favored by subhuman beasts who can barely be considered human, such is their depravity.

Issue and proposal:

Some individuals have strong opinions about toilet paper roll orientation. But in the interest of peace and harmony, here in Figure 2 is proposed a method that will cause both sides to be content.

Fig 2: The roll holder. Toilet paper roll goes onto the gold-colored section (at left). Instead of being fixed to the wall, the holder can pivot 180 degrees. Although in this diagram, the roll would slip right off the gold section, ingenious designers have figured out many mechanisms for affixing toilet paper rolls in this fashion (for example, a mushroom-shaped “cap” piece, or rounded pins that can be pressed in to add or remove a roll, but prevent it from sliding out under normal conditions).

P.S. While this image kind of looks like a duck face & beak (looking to the left) in thumbnail form, note that 1) the yellow part is NOT a duck beak, and 2) a duck cannot be ethically used as a paper roll holder.

Fig 3: Artist’s rendition of pivoting roll.

Fig 4: A detailed examination of the pivoting process.

Conclusion:

It is actually baffling that this device is not a commonly seen item in “Skymall”-like catalogues of household oddities. “Pivoting toilet paper holder” sounds like it would be an online search term that would find such a thing, but somehow it did not!

PROS: Prevents strife due to toilet paper roll orientation disagreement.

CONS: Perhaps it is true that humans will fight the same amount no matter what their situation; maybe the lack of “release valve” strife due to toilet paper towel orientation will end up eventually causing a national bloodbath due to arguments over how to properly hold a fork instead.

Clean up old files on your computer easily with this ONE BIZARRE TRICK. Scholars of ancient languages hate it!

Background:

Over time, old files tend accumulate on one’s computer. However, cleaning out a computer is an annoying and time-consuming task.

In the past, storage increased at a rate such that old files could be safely ignored forever. But modern laptops may actually have less (although faster) storage than ones from five years ago. Now it’s important to be able to tell which files are old and which are not!

The proposal:

Here is an example of a normal file (Fig. 1):

Fig 1: A standard file, modified recently. Nothing remarkable about it!

We don’t really need to pay much attention to this file; we used it recently, and may want to use it again.

But an older file (which we should probably either archive or delete) could be called out by using an old computer font and icon, as seen in figure 2.

Fig 2: This older file is visually apparent, thanks to the classic font and pixelated icon.

Fig 3: Even older files may be marked with different fonts, as seen above. The hieroglyphic font (of randomly-chosen hieroglyphs) could be reserved for the very oldest files on the system.

Fig 4: Finally, some files are accidentally set to a “future” modification time. Although this is currently impossible with our understanding of physics, these files nevertheless brazenly display a creation / modification date far in the future. We assume that robots will rule the earth in the far future, and thus have chosen a barcode font to represent the data for these files.

PROS: Accurately displays computer file age in easy-to-read visual form. Assists in freeing disk space.

CONS: Historical accuracy is questionable; hieroglyphs were not in widespread use during the early days of computing in the 1970s.

Your city can save millions of dollars a year by employing this one weird animal!

Background:

Modern buildings with large windows generally do not provide any way of opening the windows. This means that window washers are required and, additionally, that the window washers must work from the exterior of the building.

Fig 1: Window washing is a hazardous dangerous occupation that can be streamlined by making use of an ecologically-friendly natural and organic cage-free solution that already exists—the humble snail.

Proposal:

Specifically, we can use a terrestrial variant of the common aquarium snail to clean all the dirt and grime off a building.

All we need to do is:

Find a type of snail that can climb up glass (easy) and is air-breathing (easy)
Find a food source for this snail that will motivate it to climb all around the glass
Coat our skyscraper / other building with this substance. For example, if the snail likes to eat honey, then we would pour honey off the roof of the building until the skyscraper was covered in it (as the honey slowly drips down the building).
Finally, unleash the cleaning snails to clean off both the honey and any assorted window grime.

Conclusion:

This is an eco-friendly way of washing windows that does not use any harsh chemicals.

PROS: Reduces snail unemployment.

CONS: Increases human unemployment.

One weird tip to having every meeting end punctually! It involves sharks, though.

TITLE: One weird tip to having every meeting end punctually! It involves sharks, though.

Background:

People giving presentations are famous for going over their allotted time. However, presentations are frequently unmoderated or have a lax moderator, leading to time overages being the norm rather than the exception.

Proposal:

An automated system that made the presentation stage increasingly unpleasant as the presenter reached (and went past) their assigned time would greatly improve efficiency both at conferences and in college lecture halls.

Specifically, the proposal is as follows:

The lecture stand is in a small sunken area of the stage (or surrounded by small walls). This area is also connected up to a large tank of water by a pipe (see figure 1, tank is on right hand side).
As the lecturer goes over time, water is pumped into the lecture stand area, gradually increasing the water level until the presenter is knee-deep (or neck-deep) in water.
This will encourage the presenter to quickly wrap things up, instead of going over time with no consequences.

Fig 1: Orange / red: lecture stand with laptop. The lecture area is surrounded by a low transparent wall. Right: a tank of water is connected to the lecture stand area, allowing water to gradually be pumped in to encourage the presenter to wrap up their talk.

Fig 2: An alternative arrangement, where the lecture area (B, C) is slowly lowered into an ever-present aquarium (D) by a system of overhead cables on winches (A). The audience sits in the seats marked at E.

Fig 3: Some presenters may not be fazed by mere water; in these cases, we might want to introduce denizens of the deep to also encourage the presenter to finish their talk. Pictured: a rare purple octopus and extremely lethargic shark.

PROS: Saves many hours of time for college students and professionals in various fields. Encourages presentation discipline for both the talk and any subsequent Q&A sessions.

CONS: Would probably exacerbate any existing “stage fright” due to the presence of deadly animals. Presenters with rivals in the audience may find their talk extended by irrelevant questions as their foes attempt to cause them to descend into the aquarium with an over-long talk.

Fix the justice system and prevent railroading of suspects with one unlikely tip: purposefully arrest and charge innocent people with crimes!

Background:

If television police procedurals (or the first episode of the show “Making a Murderer”) have taught us anything, it is that occasionally, during a criminal investigation, the police may be certain that they have the correct person in custody for a crime, causing them to stop investigating other leads.

So the underlying problem is:

There is a great degree of certainty that a specific suspect is in fact guilty

And

There is incentive to obtain a conviction

Which may lead to:

Bending the rules (or brutalizing a suspect) to gather evidence or secure a conviction.

After all, if a person is certain that they have apprehended a deadly murderer, there is a certain appeal to bending the rules to ensure a conviction. But 1) this is technically not allowed, and 2) the apprehended person is occasionally innocent.

But this can be addressed with the following modification to the criminal justice system:

Proposal

But what if the suspect was not at all clearly guilty? Or what if there were 4 possible suspects, only one of whom could possibly have committed the crime, but all with substantial amounts of evidence pointing toward them?

So the specific proposal here is a variant of the police lineup:

When an individual is about to be arrested for a crime…
A special branch of investigation, the “Fabricated Evidence Bureau” (“F.E.B.”) will now ALSO arrest 3 additional randomly-chosen citizens from the same approximate “suspect” demographic (e.g. sex, ethnicity, nationality, educational background, etc…), and falsely charge them with the same crime.
Then, the F.E.B. will fabricate evidence implicating these 3 definitely-innocent individuals in the crime as well.
Only after this process is done will the suspects be turned over to the “real” police, who will now be uncertain of which (if any) of the suspects is actually guilty.
But the actual police will know for certain that at least 3 of their suspects have been falsely accused, and will thereby be more likely to follow the due process of law.

People might object to the idea of systematically accusing innocent individuals of heinous crimes on purpose, but this could be seen as just part of the cost of a modern society, much like jury duty or compulsory military service.

Conclusion:

This idea would revolutionize the justice system and, more importantly, might make a good TV show.

PROS: Reduces the stigma of being falsely accused of a crime. May lead to better investigation of crimes.

CONS: Probably increases legal system costs and prison / jail overcrowding.

With this amazing new conveyor belt diet, YOU TOO can lose weight without any pain! Don’t listen to all those other fad diets—this one is here to stay.

TITLE: With this amazing new conveyor belt diet, YOU TOO can lose weight without any pain! Don’t listen to all those other fad diets—this one is here to stay.

Background:

Losing weight is difficult, due to the amazing variety of instantly-accessible food options in the modern world.

But the same technology that creates a surplus of food can also be harnessed to keep you on a healthy diet!

The issue:

Most diets require a significant commitment from the dieter in order to succeed.

And many fad diets are actively harmful due to their bizarre combination of food sources, which may lack essential nutrients.

But with the following conveyor belt diet plan, anyone can maintain the perfect balanced diet with no effort whatsoever!

Proposal:

The diet plan works as follows:

Your main food sources at home and at work (for example, a refrigerator at home, perhaps a deli or vending machine at work) are replaced by a large industrial conveyor belt and a hopper, in which a balanced diet of food is loaded.

Every week, the hopper is refilled with a healthy mix of food for the individual(s) in question. This food is slowly dispensed onto the slow-moving conveyor belt. Any food on the conveyor belt is fair game for the dieter to eat. If the dieter isn’t hungry, they can just let food accumulate on the long conveyor belt until they are hungry enough to devour it all.

Fig 1: Top: transparent (green glass, in this diagram) hopper with food loaded in it. Bottom: the conveyor belt. Food is dropped onto it from the hopper at specific predefined intervals. In the full production model, the conveyor belt would be dramatically longer, to allow more food to accumulate on it. The belt would move very slowly—perhaps only one food per hour, or less (just enough to keep dispensed food items from overlapping).

Conclusion:

This is a way for anyone to maintain their ideal diet with no effort whatsoever!

PROS: Will improve health and well-being of all individuals.

CONS: Hungry dieters might try to claw ineffectually at the reinforced glass of the food dispenser, leading to potential finger injuries.

One cell phone alarm weird trick: Stop annoying your loved ones with the ringing phone alarm that you are discourteously ignoring while you take a shower!

Background:

You’ve probably encountered the situation where you can hear your phone’s alarm going off, but are in a situation where it isn’t easy to actually pick up the phone to tell it to turn the alarm off.

For example, if you’re in the shower, tending to a boiling cauldron, or driving a car, you probably won’t be able to easily press the “alarm off” button.

Fig 1: The alarm requires you to actually physically interact with the phone in order to disable it, despite the fact that modern phones all have a voice recognition feature built in.

Fig 2: Ideally, you would be able to tell the alarm to turn itself off by just shouting at it from the shower.

Proposal:

This problem is very simple to fix!

Background: all modern phones have voice recognition built in. Usually this listening mode is activated by a button press or a set phrase (e.g. “Hey Siri” or “Ok, Google”).

So all we need to do is set up the phone so that the listening mode is automatically engaged whenever the alarm is going off (even if the phone is locked or the user normally doesn’t use voice commands), and the phone should be listening for some specific phrase, like “Alarm, OFF!” or “Alarm, snooze!” , which it will then obey. Now you don’t have to get out of the shower to turn off your phone alarm!

Fig 3: Since the phone knows that it should be listening, it will be ready to deactivate the alarm when you yell at it from the shower.

PROS: Can be implemented entirely in software!

CONS: If you are a heavy sleeper, someone else could possibly disable your alarm by yelling at it to turn off before you actually manage to wake up.

Is the origin of the necktie to be found in the Old Norse word “šnæktie,” literally meaning “snake tie”? Technically speaking, it is not possible to disprove this assertion with 100% confidence!

Background:

The necktie is, in modern society, a useless relic of a bygone era. But it could still be redeemed!

Proposal:

While the necktie serves no purpose currently, it occupies valuable clothing real-estate that might be put to better use.

Specifically, a snake could be trained to coil itself around the user in such a fashion as to approximate the shape of a necktie.

Then, this snake could be trained to leap away from the user and chomp on anyone who was assaulting the user; essentially serving as a “concealed carry” guard animal.

This could reduce the number of robberies and other assaults, since criminals would be unable to distinguish between easy marks with garish ties and “concealed snake-tie protected” individuals.

Fig 1: This attractively patterned spitting cobra would make a fine snake tie.

Conclusion:

While snakes are relatively neglected in the world of animal training, this could be the opportunity for the snake to rehabilitate its poor reputation.

PROS: Could reduce crime and decrease the user’s prejudice against venomous reptiles.

CONS: Snakes may have difficulty distinguishing between random passersby and legitimately threatening individuals.