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At the nexus of a few personal projects lies a question about how we enjoy games. This “how” can be used in a variety of ways. The actual psychological mechanisms that constitute this enjoyment. The ways in which we choose to engage with games. And the ways in which talk about how we enjoy games.
But lurking underneath that is a question of how well we understand our own minds. To what extent we claim to enjoy something, only for the truth to reveal that we actually hate it. It is a difficult question because it is impossible to literally peer into another person’s head. Only we ourselves can engage in the reflective process of asking whether we are really having fun. But it’s a process that we should strive to undertake.
As nice and easy as it would be to say that enjoyment is nothing more than a set of stimuli that make us happy, there’s a lot more to it. Often enjoyment is as much about narrative. Not stories in the sense of what is given to us by a game, but stories that we create. Stories about ourselves, stories about what we like, stories about why we like it, and stories that we share or create with others. We can enjoy a game – or at least claim that we enjoy a game – based on the world around us. If other people like it, if we want to fit in, if we think that enjoyment of that game says something about our status as gamers, these things all contribute to a narrative that influences our judgments.
I wanted to revisit this topic as a way to dig more deeply into how these stories that we tell ourselves impact the way we engage with games. Because I have written before not just on self-deception, but also on the ways in which we can play in ways that serve as roadblocks to our own enjoyment. And where these subjects meet is a problem that has to some extent taken over a segment of gaming culture.
Difficulty, Struggle, and Frustration
I am, at time of writing, watching a compatriot tackle Elden Ring as he posts videos of his playthrough to YouTube. Like many new players, he is struggling to get a handle on the game, even though he is familiar with other FromSoftware games. And like many fans of these games, he is playing blind – he does not want help from his audience, he does not want to look up guides, he does not want to engage with any content right now outside of what the game gives him.
So far, there is no problem. In fact, I’ve argued before that this kind of engagement is actually good – it allows us to build more authentic experiences with the game itself as we are surprised by what we find. But then, I wouldn’t be writing this essay if that’s all there was to it.
I’ve also talked a lot previously about tutorialization and how games try to communicate to us in a variety of ways. How enemy placement, enemy strength, and the like can all serve as a way for the game to tell us what we should and should not be doing.
If you’ve played Elden Ring before, you probably already know where this is headed.
In my essay on how Elden Ring teaches its players, I talked about how one of the first things it tries to do once you enter the world proper is push you to explore. And the way it pushes you to explore is by facing you against opponents that are genuinely too tough for you. Now technically a sufficiently skilled player can defeat any boss or enemy in the game at the lowest level with the worst equipment. The design of these games is meant to be built around skill to a large extent. That is why the concept of “git gud” has surrounded these games and the genre as a whole for over a decade, now. The social context around these games is that it all boils down to a skill issue – if you die, just try again and play better.
But as I said in that same tutorialization essay, this is not what the game is actually telling you to do. In fact, quite the opposite. By handing you a challenge that is “too tough,” the game is telling you to go do something else. To come back later once you have become stronger. To grind, or find materials, or get new weapons, or do anything else other than just bang your head against the wall.
So what does that all have to do with this guy? I am watching this dude fight Margit (he did, in fact, eventually give up against the first boss you encounter – the Tree Sentinel – on the grounds that that boss was too tough for now), and lose again and again and again. But more importantly, I am able to see and hear the frustration he is experiencing as he dies. Up to and including the player just outright saying he hates the boss.
I said that there’s no way for us to peer into one another’s heads, but that doesn’t mean our emotions are completely hidden. We do express ourselves in a variety of ways depending on what we’re experiencing. And from the perspective of any outside observer, the conclusion here is obvious: this guy isn’t having fun.
So why does he keep doing it?
And here’s where a variety of stories come into play. The first layer of storytelling has to do with that “git gud” mentality I mentioned just a bit ago. The narrative surrounding these kinds of difficult games is that they’re hard and you’re just supposed to keep trying until you win. It’s just a matter of skill. You keep trying because that’s just what you’re supposed to do. That story, of course, is not really correct. It is a story at odds with the design of the game. But it’s a story that exists, and that story has power.
Of course, the answer to the question I’ve posed is that the fun isn’t in the fight itself, but the victory. You go through a temporary period of frustration because it all makes the elation of victory all that much sweeter. If there were no struggle, the success just wouldn’t be worth it.
However, this reasoning crumbles under the fact that first-time success often brings out the most surprise and joy. We might suggest that those first-time victories only become meaningful themselves in the face of hardship at other times. But even then, we still identify an underlying fault in the argument: the mere existence of hardship does not equal a better experience once we prevail.
Indeed, if this were true, we would expect to see so many players ignore most of the upgrades the game provides. Because the harder the game is, the better the victory feels. And if it’s truly just a matter of skill, then we can “git gud” enough to prevail over any of the fights in the game. But players don’t do this precisely because there is a limit to the challenge they are willing to accept. They want something tough, but not “too tough.” Whatever is too much will differ from player to player, but what matters is that the limit exists.
But what does this have to do with this particular player, or with how we approach challenge in games more broadly?
The problem I want to highlight here is how these two narratives – that failure in these kinds of games is simply a “skill issue” and that struggle makes victory feel better – combine to create a toxic mindset. One in which we end up banging our head against a wall repeatedly when we don’t need to or even really want to.
Those narratives work by creating a feeling of inadequacy on the one hand and a willingness to ignore game design on the other.
In terms of inadequacy, if your failures are simply a matter of skill, then the only thing you need to do to prevail is practice and hone those skills. Every problem can be solved in this, and in fact ought to be solved this way. If you don’t win on try 1,000, then try again. If 1,001 doesn’t do it, just try again. Eventually you’ll win. You just need to “git gud.”
In terms of ignoring game design, we end up overlooking what the game gives us in terms of tools and teaching. In many of these games, the ability to summon other players (or NPCs) becomes a mechanic that is ignored because we see victory as something that we need to do ourselves. We ignore various items and other tools that might be at our disposal because we don’t want to use those items.
And in the case of Elden Ring, we might face an enemy that is far too strong for us and fail to realize that what we’re supposed to do is just go somewhere else. We push against the wall because we think that giving up – whether that means going to do something else, taking a break, or just not fighting the boss at all – is a sign of weakness on our part.
Repetition, Boredom, and Frustration
Let me switch to a different game and my own play.
I was playing through Final Fantasy VII – Rebirth, which I was looking forward to. And at a certain point I came upon a minigame that was…pretty awful. It had terrible controls, a terrible camera, it was slow, and completing the ultimate rank in this minigame required playing it perfectly (as opposed to just about every other minigame, which gave you a decent amount of leeway). And the reward was going to be pretty minimal. Just some materials that I could gather elsewhere.
And so I spent about an hour the night I got there trying over and over again to complete the minigame perfectly. Since the controls were so terrible, I of course spent a lot of time just trying to figure out how to get through the minigame. After that hour I got through half of the course. It was a process that would take about a minute or two each attempt, but I continually felt like my life was wasting away as I played. I needed to go to bed, so I stopped.
The next day I picked the game back up and kept at it. It felt so obvious that continuing with the minigame was what I needed to do. I went for another hour, and was able to get to the end of the minigame…but not well enough to do it perfectly. The poor configuration of the challenge made it unclear what you were supposed to do (a frustration that was shared by a number of other players). I looked up some tips to see if there was something I was missing, tried a trick, didn’t find it helped, and so just going for about another 30 to 45 minutes I kept trying it on my own, and eventually figured out the trick.
But by then I had to ask myself: why am I doing this? For the sake of completion? For the potential of getting some special achievement? Because it was there?
I did one more attempt, just barely messed up getting a perfect score, and then stopped.
I’ve talked about completionism before, and it is a particular weakness of mine. And it’s worth asking to what extent “completing” a game – getting 100%, doing every quest, getting all the trophies, or even getting to the end – is an exercise in frustration.
And it’s worth examining the narratives surrounding completing games. Whereas the narratives about difficulty stem from an interplay between ourselves and other players, completionism often stems more from us alone.
At the core is the idea that games as products must have their value extracted via play. I have spent X amount of money on this game, and I need to get an equivalent amount of…something…out of it. That something is, presumably, fun. But if I’m bored and frustrated doing the same thing over and over again, am I really having fun? Surely the answer is “no.” So I’m actually not getting fun, but instead just play. Though even “play” assumes a kind of fun. It’s just activity. I have spent $70, so I must get $70 worth of activity out of it. I don’t care what kind of activity, as long as it is activity.
The extraction of value then coincides with the idea of waste. If I don’t extract sufficient value, then I have wasted my money. Or I have wasted the time I’ve already put in. I must get to the end, or I must get 100%, because without doing those things, I haven’t really played the game.
And on top of all that is this idea that we need to beat a game, or else it will beat us. That the mere act of completing a game is a challenge that we must surmount, or else we are failures. Which is where the social aspect can creep back in. Because we may find ourselves judged by the games we do and don’t complete. By the challenges we can and can’t beat. And even if we are not literally being judged by others, that comparison creates a judgment all on its own – I don’t need others to judge me, because I can do the judging all on my own.
But these are all stories. Just as much stories as anything else. They are stories we tell ourselves to push ourselves to do something we don’t actually want to do.
Being able to stop and ask “why am I doing this?” and properly assessing whether it’s actually worth doing is a muscle that requires exercise. The more we do things mindlessly, the easier it is to fall into frustration. Our games become less fun because they feel like a chore. And the narratives surrounding these behaviors help keep us constrained, urging us to never exercise that muscle and ask that simple question.
Concluding Remarks
I enjoy difficult games. I enjoy minigames. I am fine with a bit of downtime or frustration when I play. Having fun with a game is partially about having fun in the moment and partially about having an overall enjoyable experience. We do not need to be ecstatic with every single moment of gameplay to say we find it fun.
But by the same token, we should not let that idea create a narrative that we should accept all frustration in service of some pretended “overall enjoyment.” Because an overall enjoyable experience requires a bunch of smaller enjoyable experiences along the way. If we’re spending far more time frustrated – if the lows really are that low – then we should stop and ask if it’s worth it.
Sometimes the answer will be yes. But maybe it shouldn’t always be.
But it’s also worth asking if there’s something else to do, or some other way to approach a problem. Because engaging in frustrating behaviors is not merely about playing a game more than we should, but also playing a game in a way that creates frustration. Knowing how to step back and ask if we are really enjoying what we’re doing may lead to us realizing that there are alternatives. Different ways to fight a boss, minigames that don’t need to be played, different quests to pursue, and so on.
It’s often fairly easy to identify when we’re not having fun if the game doesn’t “click.” But when it’s a game we have been enjoying, or think we’re supposed to like, realizing when we’re not having fun becomes a much more difficult task.
Abstracting Games 