On Defeat
“ALL HANDS! ABANDON SHIP, CRITICAL CONTAINMENT FAILURE IN 3, CRITICAL CONTAINMENT FAILURE IN 2, CRITICAL CONTAINMENT FAILURE IN 1, CRITICAL C-…….”
And thus ended the 100th run of the Kestrel. Futilely blasting away at the impenetrable shields of the rebel flagship, unable to deal the final few points of damage to the behemoth ship.
And two hours of my hard work evading rebel patrols, slugging it out with evil slavers, and fighting off giant alien spiders vanished in front of my eyes, along with all my progress. Two hours of watching my little ship develop into a true warship, shedding its initial armament of four basic lasers, acquiring a flak weapon, upgraded shields and thrusters, and two combat drones: a tried and true battle plan.
And I smiled. And I picked up the game again.
I love roguelike games because you will die. You will lose everything. You will lose everything a hundred times. You will lose dozens if not hundreds of hours of effort.
And then you will win. Like escaping a vast cave system, like emerging from the jungle to civilization. Like a breath of air when you surface from a dive.
God himself descends and congratulates you on your mighty accomplishment.
And you will start all over again.
The merits of killing your players
When you lose in a game, you might feel frustrated. “God what a cheap way to get killed.” “FUCK THAT” and “GOD DAMNIT” have come out of my mouth probably a hundred thousand times when I play an action RPG or an FPS, often because of some unexplained or unforseeable element is creating fake difficulty.
What is fake difficulty? Take it away, TvTropes!
“When you play a video game, you expect be able to use your skills as a gamer to beat whatever challenges the game throws at you. If the challenges require a lot of skill, the game is hard to win. If it doesn’t require much skill, it should be an easy game. However, some games that should be relatively easy are actually quite hard. It could be due to shoddy programming, a Game-Breaking Bug, poor implementation of gameplay elements or time constraints, or the developers threw in something which makes the game harder, but which has nothing to do with the player’s or AI’s skills. This is fake difficulty.”
But when I die in a game that doesn’t expect me to succeed? A game that is designed to challenge and defeat me? I might get upset for a second, but really? It just makes me want to play more.
Many games, especially in the first person shooter or adventure/action games, almost hand the player victory. But the most rewarding victories are those that are hard fought, hard earned.
FTL is probably the first roguelike game that most people on steam have played. But it became fantastically popular not despite its difficulty, but because of it. The same is true for Dark Souls - The game’s relentless difficulty and constant demand for the player to improve, along with its beautiful and unique aesthetics allowed the game to reach series high levels of popularity. Those who played XCOM loved the series for its difficulty, and the success of the reboot hinged heavily on the games ability to make every decision meaningful, impactful. If your soldiers couldn’t be lost to a single full volley when out of cover, the game wouldn’t have half of the claustrophobic and tense atmosphere that characterize the series, and hardcore mode only made the game more intense.
So what is my point?
I want you to play hard games. I want you to lose. I want you to suffer and fail. Because when you don’t? When at long last, you overcome that challenge? You will be better for it. You will enjoy it that much more.
And developers, We like games because they challenge us, they engage us, they make us think. So please, Give us more hard games. Don’t water down the challenge for fear that some of us will miss your hard developed content. Because we will appreciate that content that much more if you make us work for it.
Sunday April 13, 2014 3:34 AM By nevermindormore Published by siegarettes