Easter Eggs in Video Games: Meaning, History, Examples

Easter Eggs: Game Developers' Hidden Messages

Anyone who has played video games for a while has surely come across the term: Easter egg. But what exactly is an Easter egg, and how do you find one? This article explores these questions, explains the origin and meaning of the phenomenon, and shows why developers still hide such secrets in their games today.

What Are Easter Eggs?

Easter eggs are hidden elements and objects that developers deliberately place in a video game. By now, the phenomenon also appears in other media such as films or series. Most often, Easter eggs take the form of text, an image, a special cutscene, or a reference to another game. As a rule, they are well hidden and have to be found by the player. Importantly, they are optional and provide no gameplay advantage. This clearly distinguishes them from cheats or collectibles. They take their name from the real-life Easter egg hunt.

History

Easter eggs have existed almost as long as video games themselves. The first known example is in the 1980 game Adventure for the Atari 2600. Its developer Warren Robinett was unhappy that Atari kept the names of developers secret. So he secretly built in a hidden room displaying the text "Created by Warren Robinett". This went undiscovered until the game's release. Atari ultimately decided to leave the hidden greeting in the game. Steve Wright, then head of software development, compared the searching players to children on an Easter egg hunt, and the name was born.

Examples

Since Adventure, countless Easter eggs have been discovered in thousands of games across every genre, from big blockbusters to small roguelikes. Many are references to other titles, often from the same studio. In Uncharted 3, for example, a newspaper on a counter carries a headline about a deadly fungus, a direct reference to The Last of Us, which also comes from Naughty Dog.

Other Easter eggs are simply small jokes. In Crysis 2, after interacting with a fuse box, an elevator opens in which soldiers dance under disco lights for a few seconds. A category of its own is the so-called developers' room, a hidden space where the player can talk to avatars of the developers. A famous example is in the RPG classic Chrono Trigger for the SNES. Some Easter eggs even run through a studio's entire body of work, such as Totaka's Song, a melody hidden in many Nintendo games.

Easter eggs create moments of surprise that no one saw coming

Why Are Easter Eggs Hidden?

Many wonder why developers include such extras when, on a tight schedule, they only mean additional work. For one thing, Easter eggs are a way to communicate directly with the community. For another, they give a game that certain something. Some are only discovered after years, while others, as more obvious gags, provide welcome variety. In both cases, they reward players for exploring a game world truly thoroughly. This loving level of detail is precisely a sign of good game design.

Conclusion

Easter eggs are a firm part of gaming culture, from hidden developer greetings to elaborate references. Because their definition is so broad, there are far more categories than the ones shown here, and they have long appeared not only in games but also in films and on websites. If you are thinking about a game project of your own with exactly this kind of loving detail, we develop it at Studio Merkas. Feel free to get in touch with us.