A Reasonable Defense to Challenge

During the summer of last year I decided to write an article titled “Challenge Matters” which was my take on a recurring debate throughout the gaming landscape. Does every video game need difficulty settings? Otherwise, does every single video game need to be made easier for the sake of appeasing a wider audience? It was an interesting conversation to have and I always wanted to give my response on the issue, but I chose to write this article at the wrong time. At the time I was going through some rough events and needed a way to vent all the stress off. I went and wrote about a belief I had, and for the time was proud of what I wrote. However, a terrible ideology started to form around in my head. The idea that the defense I gave was the truth and that anyone who disagreed with me was wrong. That they lacked intelligence, common sense, and were on the side who just didn’t understand. Looking back at my article there were sections where I downright insulted the intelligence of others, and didn’t do a great job backing up the topic at hand. This then led to the idea that I was the only person I knew who would work hard enough towards success, and those around me were just lazy and incomprehensible. I hurt a few people around me and some began to believe I was insane. Luckily, some of those problems were fixed and a few of my closest friends helped me have a better understanding of the difficulty debate. How to address such a well debated topic. I still believe in a majority of the arguments I made in my previous article about challenge, but there are some points I wish to bring up that I originally didn’t. That’s what we are here for today. I deleted the original article not only because I'm displeased with it, but I wanted to deliver a more professional take on this issues. A more reasonable defense on why I believe challenger matters in games. Without having to attack the side and having understanding where they may be coming from. So please enjoy this fresh new take on my beliefs on this issue.

Part 1: To Match The Setting (Laws)

Let’s start off with the three defenses I provide whenever it comes to discussing challenges in video games. Those three defenses would be the laws of the world you are in, encouraging the player to play better than before, and the intention the developers had towards their project. Let’s start with my first claim, “To Match The Setting.” The two games I'll mainly use for this section are Fallout: New Vegas and Bloodborne. Actually, Bloodborne will most likely be my go to reference for a majority of this essay. Not just because it’s one of my favorite games of all time, but because it’s my go to standard when it comes to challenge and difficulty in video games.

When you are creating the setting of your video game it’s important to note the conditions of the world. What type of place will your player be placed in and what must be done to match up to the characteristics of this world. If your game is aiming for a lighthearted setting and plot then most likely it shouldn’t be more difficult than this looks. On the other end of the spectrum we have grim worlds, otherwise the settings with more depth and complexity. These are worlds that have utterly gone to hell and everything is trapped within the clutches of disparity. It may be the apocalypse, wartime, demonic onslaught, or whatever you may imagine. If you are aiming to have a world that is deadly or place the player into the shoes of a protagonist who must be highly skilled to survive the upcoming threats then you need the world to be deadly. If you had a deadly world that is easier to overcome than it actually looks then it might not make that much sense. It’s like going out into the wilderness and setting up camp. You must pack the supplies you need, set off on a long hike, find a place to rest, and set your tent up for the night. You must utilize the tools on hand and make due with your surroundings. When you are knee deep in the woods, miles away from an urban area, you wouldn’t expect there to be a gas station or five star hotel waiting for you. That defeats the whole purpose of preparing your supplies and understanding the woods you’d be marching through. Another more common example you all may have heard of in some shape or form would be a desert and an oasis. The desert is an extremely dangerous place. There’s no water in sight and dozens of creatures want to kill you. The oasis serves as not only a replenishment site, but also a safe haven along your journey. A reminder that you won’t die out here of dehydration or something else. If the desert weren’t deadly then the oasis would serve no purpose at all. It would just be another ignorable landmark with a wide open space surrounding it.

That’s what I want you to see when looking at these deadly worlds. They are made hard not just for the sake of being difficult towards the player, but to justify the conditions you are in. This is a setting where you can die easily if you don’t play carefully, and you have to study the world you are in if you want to overcome insurmountable odds. Let’s look towards Bloodborne. The once lustrous kingdom of Yharnam has been overrun with beasts, and your goal as a hunter is to clean the streets. You quickly discover that the citizens themselves are beasts and it was due to the administration of ancient blood that they mutated. It is made very clear to the player that Yharnam is desolate. That a majority of the population are now monsters. Those who are human are barricading themselves in their own homes, and the ones brave enough to navigate the streets are other skilled hunters who are beginning to lose their sanity. Every beast, mutant, mad hunter, and boss you fight along your journey will curbstomp you into the ground if you dash in willy nilly. This makes sense, because remember that Yharnam is a place that has transformed into utter ruins. The mutations that the people have gained went and disfigured their bodies. Giving them powers beyond their comprehension. It also makes sense that other hunters are harder to kill than you, because they have been training for an extremely long time. You were just hired for the job and you barely have an idea of how to swing a blade. It makes sense that a giant monster who is as tall as a building can slam you into the ground and kill you stone dead, because logically you would be a pile of mush if you were slammed into the ground so many times. This world and these monsters really inforce into the player’s head that they must become skilled now or die repeatedly. They must master their equipment, analyze their foes, and brave the night. The one word that defines the world of the Soulsborne series is “dying”, and has made sense since the beginning. In a dying world it is difficult to survive, and that’s why it has to be challenging in order to make any sense. Enough with me rambling on about how glorious Bloodborne is again.

Fallout: New Vegas has a dying world as well, but it’s not because of a curse or a plague. The nuclear bombs dropped hundreds of years beforehand and ever since then mankind has been attempting to rebuild. Mutants may scour the wasteland, but elsewhere tribes and factions have been formed. Spreading their ideologies and trying to get others to join them. Out of all the modern styled Fallout games, Fallout: New Vegas is the most challenging. It doesn’t rely on artificial level scaling like Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, but rather have specific areas with highly leveled foes. Exploration is encouraged, but wander into the wrong place and you may get sliced to bits. Questlines have numerous choices, but the game doesn’t make it obvious to the player what is right or wrong. Speech isn’t a dice roll anymore and the easiest way out of a long questline may be locked behind a stat barrier. This makes Fallout: New Vegas the most difficult modern Fallout game, but it’s in a good way. The wasteland, much like the desert and oasis statement from earlier, is an extremely deadly place and when you finally make it to a town or safehaven you feel exhilarated. You don’t have to worry about being poisoned by a Radscorpion or ambushed by a gang of raiders. You can rest, restock on goods, and try to take on any favors you find. You’ll want to take as many favors as possible, because out in the wasteland you’ll need whatever you can get your hands on to survive. The difficulty also helps out with the design of Fallout: New Vegas. Having a high leveled area can convince the player that they are not ready yet, and they may want to come back when they are stronger. It creates a point of interest or a reminder that they have a job to do. Looking them out for the easiest solution in a quest will make them take the route that not only offers them a better reward, but more knowledge to the faction you are working with and the current situation. It’s design choices like these that help elevate the world of New Vegas from the other Fallout games. Without the difficulty, without the clever design tactics and planning Obsidian Entertainment would have just made another average Fallout game similar to Bethesda. One where your choices really don’t matter, nothing is ever too hard or too easy, and you don’t need to comprehend the story as the game will make it obvious for you. Let’s move away from world building and let’s talk about motivation.

Part 2: Motivation to Play Better (Encouragement)

You don’t have to force difficulty onto the player to make them continue playing your game, but if it’s one design method I love it’s encouraging the player to play better. Having those factors clash against them and motivate them to do better than before. They don’t have to be a complete god at the video game, but if they aren’t improving or thinking across their journey then they’ll begin to lose interest. What you’ll end up with is a stagnant challenge. A player who is not thinking or attempting at all is a player who is not having any fun in the slightest. Sometimes you just have to challenge the player to eventually force them into the fun zone. A place where they will finally understand what you were trying to tach them and continue having fun.

Bloodborne, again, doe a great job at motivating the player to play in an engaging manner and does a better job than Dark Souls in my opinion. Unlike Dark Souls you don’t have a shield to block enemy attacks. Your dodges and attack animations are faster, but to match up to your speed the enemies are more reactive and speedier than before. Healing items are now finite resources which must be looted off of foes or bought instead of replenishing at checkpoints, and there aren’t that many spells as before so you can’t just spam magic attacks onto the enemy. This makes Bloodborne a more aggressive game than Dark Souls, but here’s the twist. The enemies are reactive, so this encourages the player to play reactive as well. The fights become more intense as you dash around the arena and try to find openings within enemy attacks. The shields have been replaced with guns which may not block attacks, but can cancel certain attack animations and when fired at the right time can open up a foe for a visceral attack. Weapons have two forms meaning you don’t have to switch between weapons so much during combat. Usually it’s between a light form with fast attacks, and a heavier form which is slower but staggers enemies easily. Healing items may be finite, but to make up for it you have to rally. When you take damage you can attack back to recover some of the health you just lost. Meaning you won’t have to waste supplies. Plus some enemies are always guaranteed to drop blood vials upon death. Another factor which makes the combat of Bloodborne more reactive are your dodges. You are offered invincibility frames, meaning all you have to do is dodge at the right time and you will not take damage during an enemy attack. A majority of foes will swing towards you and backing up isn’t always the best as they follow up immediately. This may encourage the player to dodge towards the side or even straight through an attack. Leaving a wide open window to strike the enemy. Top it off with how Bloodborne got rid of the equip load rate, meaning you can carry two heavy weapons without having to worry about your dodge rolls slowing down. The combat of Bloodborne is perfect in my opinion and was truly when Soulsborne combat actually started to get good. However, there’s another game I want to bring up that does a tremendous job at encouraging the player to perform better overtime. A game where you must fight through the forces of hell and triumph. That game being Doom Eternal… not, it’s actually Hades.

Hades does an incredible job at motivating the player to perform better and part of it can be due to the story. You play as the son of Hades, Zagreus, and you are battling your way through the underworld to hopefully reach the surface and find your mother. The further you go the more ferocious foes you meet. Hades is a roguelike, the genre where once you die you are kicked back to the start. Losing any power ups you obtained and forced to work back up from square one. However, death doesn’t always lead to the worst in Hades. Some of the items you picked up during a run are kept and can be used to purchase new weapons and stats to help you out on future runs. You can have conversations with different characters, give them nectar, and they will give you a charm in return. Some of these charms give off useful stats or increase the likeness of getting a power up you want during a run. Each visit to the House of Hades tries to make your future attempts easier, but ultimately the game is still very hard. Enemies will hound you on every side, projectiles will fly all over the place, and later areas will throw swarms at you. Yet, with each run you learn something new and try to avoid making the mistakes from before. You try to learn what combination of boons will work best, and raise the power to each one with pomegranate. Learn what enemies to prioritize during a fight. Make use of how quick your dodges are and the invincibility you offered in between. At some point you’ll end up like me, Darting around, wailing at foes, and nailing combos down. This is the heart of a good roguelike. Not one that carries you forward through sheer randomness. That’s why Risk of Rain 2 didn’t stick around with me so long compared to other roguelikes. Hades is a roguelike where your own personal improvements are shown through how far you get each run, and you want to get better not just to win but to reach the surface and meet your mother for the first time. You are using the perfect mix of gameplay and storytelling to motivate the player to play better upon each failure. A scrumptious recipe that will age beautifully.

Part 3: The Artistic Vision of The Developers (Intention)

By now you should understand that some video games are made to be difficult. That the developers intended them to be challenging. This is where I try to justify some of the actions made during development. The intention of the creators. Now, this section is more tricky to explain as you can’t dictate to a player how they play a game. You can’t force them into a challenge or always be the one who determines the factor of fun for them. However, we shouldn’t judge the developers and say that the way they intended the game to play was entirely wrong. There’s a point we just have to accept what it is, sit down, and enjoy the art they offer. Not everything has to fit our image.

Critics tend to complain that games with one set difficulty setting are unfair. That some sections would be less of a hassle if they could flip on an easier setting and get it done quickly. That some sections or design choices need to be changed entirely for the likings of others. There’s even a point where they begin to ask how challenging it is to integrate difficulty settings into you. video games. Turns out, integrating difficulty settings in video games is harder than it seems and it’s all due to one issue. Balancing. There are very few games out there that have perfectly balanced difficulty settings for me. Ones where the easy mode isn’t overbearingly easy, and the hard mode isn’t hard for the sake of being hard. For example, on the lower settings for Uncharted 4 you have an easier time gunning down foes, swinging through the air, and generally feeling like a swashbuckling adventurer. On the higher difficulties you take more damage, meaning entering a gunfight with multiple baddies is a death wish. This encourages the player to stealthily pick off foes, so that when a gunfight does commence they aren’t faced with overbearing odds. The balancing of Uncharted 4 isn’t perfect as later sections turn into a grind, but it’s an example of how your playstyle changes across difficulty settings.

How will the numerous difficulty settings, otherwise balancing issues, affect the design structure of a game with only one set difficulty. Let’s head back to good old Dark Souls and see how this can affect it. Most obvious is that player mechanics will have to be changed. The stamina bar which dictates the player’s action and performances will either be increased more or refill faster on easier settings. Their attack animations may be sped up and actions can be canceled out instead of having to wait for it to be performed. Meaning no thought will have to be put towards how you fight and you can just spam the attack button. The equip load number will be lowered so you can equip a multitude of weapons without having your dodge rolls be slowed down, and stat requirements for powerful weapons will be lowered or removed entirely so players can run around with overpowered gear early in the game. Enemies will have health reduction, attack reduction, and they probably won’t stagger you as easily. Their behaviors will have to be changed entirely and some attacks will probably have to be removed for how hard they are to avoid and the area they cover. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Enemy placement will have to be reworked as well, with enemy ambushes and group fights probably being more limited. Upgrading materials and resources will be given off more easily, reinforcing the fact you can run around with overpowered weapons early on. Item placement will have to be reworked as well and some bosses will probably be cut out from your journey. Multiplayer in Dark Souls, maybe just multiplayer entirely, will need a big rework to match different difficulty settings. With players playing on easier difficulties being locked out of certain opportunities and moments. Do you see where this is going? Look at all the complications that are faced when designing an easier difficulty setting. Some areas in Dark Souls that were challenging like Anor Londo and Sen’s Fortress would lose their sense of challenge as the aspects that made them enjoyable to overcome would be lost. They would just be forgettable paths you run down. The satisfaction of overcoming a hard area is lost.

Developers also don’t intend to challenge players just for the gameplay and design. Remember that it is also there for the story and setting of the world. To make the dying world make sense. To show the player that they may just be able to overcome unjustifiable odds and find some form of light in the world. Hidetaki Miyzaki, the director of Bloodborne and Dark Souls, said himself that the point of his games is to not just punch the player in the face for a good laugh. It was during an interview for the upcoming Elden Ring where he said this line which sums his intentions up beautifully, “I feel like our approach to these games, not just Elden Ring, is to design them to encourage the player to overcome adversity.” His team believes that a reward is not one just given instantly but rightfully earned. If the reward was given to the player with no work, no effort, and no attempt to improve at all then it would lack meaning. I really respect Miyazaki and his team, because not only do they respect players' stride and intelligence but they use challenge in a rightful manner. To justify their world, setting, story, and journey. The storytelling of Soulsborne is different from a majority of video games, because the player has to research the world rather than be given a plot to follow. The story of Soulsborne is not given, it’s created. By the artistic intention of the developers and the player. The player who may tell their triumphs to others and how they exactly did it. It’s just. (sniffling) So f*cking beautiful guys.

So the challenge is something intended by the creators. It’s something they spent time to perfect, balance out, and let the player go through with each attempt. Wouldn’t it be disrespectful to say that the challenge is overbearing? That the developers’ intention was too harsh and that they need to add an easy mode or else. That the game must be made easier so that you and you alone can be able to enjoy it? Without even attempting to improve or enjoy it the way the developers intended you to do it? That’s what I want to avoid. Players canceling developers for making art. Dictating to them how they should make the game and what changes apparently “must” be made. I also don’t want it to reach a point where developers start adding mechanics that aren’t needed. That is there to be there and add nothing to the gameplay. And in some cases harm the overall design. People might think it was stupid when I said that a game like Shadow of The Colossus would be ridiculous if they gave you a grappling hook to zip to weak points, or the many gigantic beasts of Horizon Zero Dawn and Monster Hunter wouldn’t be as fun to take down if you could just slapstick away at it. They said it’s doing things that aren’t needed and that’s exactly my answer. You are making design choices which harm your video game! I’m not saying it should be entirely difficult, but some player attempts have to be made. Otherwise no game will be engaging anymore. There will be no attempts to motivate, encourage, or intelligence. They will be part of the instantaneous fulfillment that half the shooter scene is now.

There are even some video game genres where it is impossible to integrate an easy mode or several difficulty settings entirely, because they didn’t need an easy mode in the first place. Let’s take puzzle games for instance, but in this case the greatest detective case of all time. The murder mystery that is Return of The Obra Dinn. You are an insurance adjuster working for the British Each Indie Company and your goal is to figure out what happened to the sixty passengers aboard the Obra Dinn. You are given a sketch of the sixty passengers, a list of names, and a magic pocket watch that allows you to relive the last second of a person’s memory before death. Through these memories you can determine how a person died, but the true challenge of this game is figuring out who they are. That’s where the cycle of analysis begins. You’’ need to make keen deductions, assumptions, or return when you have more info to work with. You’ll have to look at dialogue and tiny details harder than before if you want to figure out who is who. It’s a game that not only makes you think compared to a majority of detective games, but respects the player’s intelligence by allowing them to solve each mystery without having to intervene. Big question now. How do you add a difficulty setting? How do you add a difficulty setting to a game all about player intelligence? The answer is that you can’t, because if you did then you have to change a lot about Return of The Obra Dinn. You would have to change what made it a good detective mystery. You’d have to make each death more obvious, give away the clues more, or even put a reminder to tell the player what actually happened. You would no longer be respecting the player’s intelligence. Return of The Obra Dinn would just devolve into a series of neon signs that told you what to do at what time. That isn’t engagement. That’s like working in a factory line for the rest of your life and becoming a manufacturing robot.

It would be sad to look at because not only will all forms of challenge go extinct, but the art intended by the developers will be lost as well. No one would have the creative freedom to make what they exactly wanted, but have to dumb down their work just to appease a larger crowd. Which is bad, because there are ways to make your work more accessible without having to dumb it down to a point where you remove the core recipes to your game. Which we’ll touch upon very shortly. Okay, so I did what I believe is a decent defense to challenge in video games. Let’s look at the opposite side of the spectrum. Why others may not be able to pick up a controller easily. The arguments they make against challenges in video games and why they are justifiable.

Part 4: What Happens When You Can’t Succeed

One quote you may have heard through gaming culture is “Get Good” which is more associated as a meme. It especially became synonymous amongst the Soulsborne community as it became their easy answer for those who struggled through the games and needed help. Well, a part of that is wrong as first of all a majority of Soulsborne fans I know are not toxic to that state. Secondly, some players have their point when they say the phrase, “Get Good.” They aren’t saying it to flex on you, but give you the most down to earth truth about Dark Souls and any difficult game. You need to “Get Good” otheriwse improve if you want to get anywhere. You must master the mechanics, combat, and design of each level if you want to get further. Failure to do so will lead to more suffering. Failure to understand the world and rules leads to uncareful deaths.

I can understand why they say the phrase, “Get Good”, but what if a player can’t get good. What if they struggle to understand how their game works and find it too confusing? What if no matter how hard they try and the amount of time they pour into the game they can’t improve, and they are left with a crowd of people spewing into their face that they failed to understand. That is not being helpful at that point. That is called, “Being insulting to someone.” This is something I had to learn months ago and reconcile with. I had realized that some video games are just not made for others and you can’t force someone into how hard or easy a game is for them. We all are stuck in that phase where we fail to understand. I myself was in that position once as I struggled to get into Dark Souls. We are all human beings born into a free world, so we might as well be offered some choice. Choice to how we deal solve a problem.

Making fun of a player’s skill level and intelligence is not always the way to go. Pummeling them into the ground is demotivating already, but giving them rude comments is even more demotivating as you are basically telling them that they can’t do anything. That they are not worthy and don’t deserve the right like many others. That all their hard work may just be worth nothing. You must also understand that a skill one person may lack at can be made up for with another. I struggle at drawing and improving my artstyle, but I make up for it with writing and creative literature. A person can be terrible at running, but they could be good at lifting weights. Someone can suck at soccer, but be a master of martial arts. They don’t have to be good at something because you told or forced them to. That’s why I said earlier developers have their intentions, but they can’t always determine the amount of fun and enjoyment a player has. They can’t dictate how skillful a player is, because if we could force skill and improvement into a person nonstop then they aren’t human anymore. They’ll just be this lifeless husk who obeys commands without any thought or emotion. They would be a machine with no mind, feelings, and most importantly no free will.

Human beings are flawed, but maybe that’s what makes them so great. We are all imperfect, but we can reason with our mistakes and come to term with the way things are. We grow at different rates and we learn at different rates. A person who acts silly on the outside can be smarter than you think. I myself am a moderately intelligent person. I can admit that I’m not as smart as a majority of the people I attend school with, but that I’m more intelligent than a majority of other students. It takes me a while to understand a concept and occasionally I get frustrated during the learning process. I see other kids comprehending material easier and faster than me, and then there’s me struggling to figure out the first problem. I get angry and begin to ask myself why can’t I do better? Why can’t I live up to expectations? Why can’t I live up to brilliance? I study some more and eventually the idea gets into my head. I begin to understand and eventually I finally nail the concept down. I may not be as intelligent as other students, but the work and effort really shows me reaching that state of understanding.

Finally discussion is the more obvious one. Disabilities. Those who are born with a physical handicap and lack coordination at some point in their body. They may have no arms, no legs, be deaf, be blind, have hunched limbs, one limb being shorter than the other, or lack motorics. I can respect developers trying to put accessibility into games. Not just make them easier to play, but easier to get into for those who lack the reaction, coordination, and memorization to play video games. I know that when it comes to difficulty we shouldn’t always pull out the disability card immediately as using disabled people as an excuse can be an insult to be honest with you, but at least like how attempts are being made. To offer handicap folks the opportunity to enjoy video games like the rest of us. That’s all I have to say for this section. Let’s move away from intelligence, skill, and levels of comprehension and move towards a more relatable section. Why some may want challenge to be less overbearing.

Part 5: The Interventions of Reality on Video Games

What is the main goal of a video game? To be fun of course! Your average Triple A release costs around sixty dollars and now it’s starting to inflate to around seventy dollars with some studios. Sixty dollars is a lot for a video game and working towards the money to afford it takes a lot. Some families, like my own, have stable incomes and jobs that pay them enough to afford the necessities to live. Others are struggling to maintain their income or can’t even provide all that much for their children. When someone buys a video game they expect it to be fun. They expect the video game which costs them long grueling work hours to achieve will be satisfactory the moment they boot it up. They start up the game and soon they are kicked around like a rag doll. Some can overcome the challenge within a video game, but remember that others can’t. There are so many times they can be killed before they become demotivated and choose to give up entirely. Possibly rage quitting all together. It’s a little sad to watch, but it is understandable when you start to consider the problems reality brings.

Mastering a game like Bloodborne takes a lot of time, effort, and continuous play sessions. Most of the difficult games I’ve played, in this case soulslikes, have lasted me from thirty to even fifty hours. Not everyone has the time to sit down and play difficult video games. Some individuals have busy schedules or actual lives to attend to compared to me. They have a career to maintain, mouths to feed, or other hobbies they have more enjoyment with. There’s a reason why websites like HowLongToBeat.com exist. It exists to not only show the average amount of time it takes to beat a game, but determine if a person can find the time to fit a specific game that long into their schedule. An average person will probably get around two to five hours a week to play a video game. Compare that to a journalist or me who plays video games as a hobby.

Some people just want to have fun without having to overcome difficulty barriers. Which makes sense given all that I just said. They don’t think a game like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Hades, or Hollow Knight are worth investing time into which really sucks to me personally because they are missing out on what I believe are some of my most favorite video games ever made. Everyone has their own opinion, and the thing about certain video games is that they appeal to very specific audiences. I love philosophical games and the moral questions they ask about life and ideologies like Nier: Automata and 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, but some people may drop them due to how overly confusing they are compared to a majority of cinematic experiences. One of my favorite JRPGs and games of all time is Persona 5. Someone recently convinced me that I can love it without having to listen to the criticisms of others, but it’s still really hard to recommend because no one can fit a one hundred hour plus game into their schedule. Then there’s games I don’t personally enjoy like The Witcher 3 or Black Flag, which are good but have to be worked up to the point they start being good to play.

Then there’s that debate of complexity versus simplicity. Another argument which may arise. Some games need complexity to be engaging. They need all the systems and mechanics working together to keep the player’s interest and focus. Games for those wanting to think every problem out. Then there are games which focus on simplicity and offering immediate gratification. Both are good, but flawed. One may take too long to understand, and the other may not make the most strides forward. I think the perfect balance is by combining the two. A simple game that builds up with mechanics overtime. For example, platformers like Shovel Knight and Celeste where the character is simple to control but each level introduces a new idea to the table. Then there is offering complexity through multiple options, but ultimately you just have to choose what will fit you best and carry forward. For me those would be the Soulsborne games and the amount of builds you can form, but you just have to pick what suits your playstyle. The interventions that come from life can determine how we see games.

Conclusion: What Does Challenge Mean To Me?

What convinced me all of a sudden to write up another version of an article from before? It’s not only because I’m displeased with the original version, but it’s because I’m trying to come to terms with myself. One of the many ideologies my parents taught me is to never give up. They have told me over and over about how hard they worked to get to where they are today and they would be extremely sad if they failed to teach me to do what is right. To strive, persevere, eliminate the flaws within me, and aim for the best. I have always had high expectations for myself, to work towards success, and constantly do better. However, this thought process started to overcome me and twist into a more harmful message. One that started to affect my mental health. I started to believe that I should always aim towards success. That success was the true path towards happiness. Any mistakes, screw ups, or signs of failure made along the way show that I wasn’t trying hard enough. That my efforts were completely worthless and that I failed to live up to expectations. My expectations. The expectations that I imagined others around me had and that they would abandon me if I displeased them.

I had to keep trying, because if I don’t I will never prove myself to others and they will leave me to willow alone. So I kept working and working, ever since middle school, and this led to a very isolated lifestyle. A childhood with not that many friends or happy memories to look back upon. High school was a new beginning, but the overwhelming past and thoughts wrapped my head. Occasionally I would break down and think about how worthless I am as a human being, but it would never be in public. I was sad, depressed, and above all lonely. Titles like Bloodborne and Hollow Knight came to me during my all time low. Things that made me happy in the past no longer worked and I seeked comfort elsewhere. That’s when I found these two games. Both contain dying worlds with overwhelming odds and hopelessness. They showed me that with enough effort I could become a conqueror of adversities and stand on my own. Forge my own path without having others bog me down or hold me by the hand to only then treat me like an idiot. These games brought me enjoyment and I would revisit them over and over again to see how I’d have improved. To see if I can do better the next time and improve my skills. I spent hours listening to guides, strategies, and lore videos because I was in love with these games. They hold a special place in my heart and whenever I feel down I always hop back into them for a couple more hours.

However, this thought of “getting good” put another bad thought process into my head. That I was the only one I knew who was working hard and attempting to improve. I started to treat some of my surrounding friends poorly and one of them I may have harmed. She forgave me, but I can’t forgive myself for the actions I took during this time. I became enraged and insulted people for their skill level. For being in a position I once was in. I still have that drive to constantly improve nailed down into my head and it’s not going away anytime sooner. There’s no way I’m ever going to get it out of my head. However, I do want to prove to myself that I can do anything. That I have the confidence to achieve new goals each day. That I can rely on the skills I already have and do something useful with them. That I can move on from the past, and that’s what some of you readers may be thinking too. Whether you're a Soulsborne player like me or have another challenging experience you have to deal woth. Thanks for reading this article. A reasonable explanation as to why challenge matters in video games.