Finding the Lack of Fun...and Why It Can Be Rewarding

I'm a Scotch drinker. I don't however, consider it a fun drink. I like it because it's often smoky. I like it because it burns going down, and, if you're not careful with it, it can knock you right on your ass. I like my art like I like my Scotch: challenging, complex...and with maybe just a hint of absurd nihilism. It doesn't have to be fun or pretty. I like it to challenge me, make me rethink the way I understand language and narrative or color, subject, and perspective. It stands to reason, then, that I approach games in the same way I drink a glass of Scotch--to experience something complex. Sometimes I play because the story hooked me more than the mechanics. I play because the game is beating me senseless, and I'm too pissed to quit. I play because a game's thematically challenging, and I just want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. I play because I want to see which glitches I can exploit (Bethesda, folks...Bethesda), to discover where the boundaries of the world end, to figure out how I can read this digital text in a meaningful way. As a literature scholar, I constantly ask myself questions regarding the pleasure of a certain text, and I posit that games can be approached the same way. Sure, approaching a game with a goal other than having "fun" seems like a ridiculous idea, but it can lead to new insights on how games function as forms of art and entertainment.

My general rule, like almost everyone else's, is that once I stop getting some type of satisfaction out of a game, I stop playing. There are games that I've played, however, that I found less amusing than was worth the time I put into them. I never finished Crysis because, try as I might, I just couldn't get into it. I finished Dead Space, but I didn't really enjoy it. I just wanted to get my money's worth and see if I like its brand of genre horror (I do, but not enough that I'd ever return to it). I hated Dead Island. I'm worse at Madden and NCAA football games than I am at actual football. I got bored with Red Steel 2. I cannot find the joy in user-generated content. I only played Assassin's Creed: Revelations so I could get the story before ACIII; for me, the game was close to joyless. These games I usually abandon or sell fairly quickly because there's just not enough there for me to keep them.

But the ones I do keep, I don't always hang on to them because they're "fun" in the traditional sense. One such game that I enjoy without having fun is Dark Souls. I've already written about Dark Souls, so I won't repeat my larger argument there. The game does not entertain me in nearly the same way other games do. The combat system tasks my brain to constantly anticipate my enemies' reactions, making every single encounter a puzzle with a set number of variables. Exploration fills me with dread, as I approach each new area with more trepidation and anxiety than excitement. I cannot play the game for long periods of time, and it, like its predecessor Demon's Souls, requires more time to master than I have to give it. I, nevertheless, have held onto it, returning to the game every now and then when I'm feeling masochistic. I play it because I am fascinated with how it attacks not just my character, but my actual psyche. Yet, in those brief moments after I've killed a massive boss or I've successfully navigated through a trap-filled fortress, the trials seem worth the effort. Dark Souls' play structure functions as a type of Zen master, and the player serves as the game's apprentice, willing to undergo ruthless tutelage in order to achieve "enlightenment" in the form of a successful playthrough. Dark Souls is a digital koan I play to achieve satisfaction through struggle--not a game I enjoy for its "fun factor."

Whereas Dark Souls provides a gameplay experience akin to taxing meditation, the converse type of meditative experience arises in thatgamecompany's Journey and Flower. I love these games because they offer the potential to create meaningful, emotional experiences in digital playgrounds, but I wouldn't classify my experience with them as fun. I did not initially play Flower because it's fun to play; I played the game because I wanted a gameplay experience not built around violence. The first time I moved pedals across the meadow, I was calmed. I immensely enjoyed the responsiveness of the controls as they synced with the waltz-like movement on the screen. I came to Journey with a similar expectation of enjoying an experience driven by emotion and isolation rather than the pursuit of some obvious goal. The haunted vagueness of Journey's world becomes not a series of digital rooms and challenges toward that white light at the end, but rather the game itself, insisting on nothing but its own existence. I cannot (and nor would I want to) deny that my time with Journey was worthwhile and enjoyable (even deeply meaningful), but I still don't see it as a "fun" game.

Beautiful? Yes. Meaningful? Absolutely. Enjoyable? Infinitely. Fun? ...erhm maybe?....

A game does not have to be either brutally punishing or quietly calming to offer something other than fun. Sometimes, a game is worth playing because its content is challenging. Spec Ops: The Line provided the most compelling game experience for me so far this year, and it did so without being fun. The mechanics serve the narrative and themes at play, and that's about it. I did not enjoy my time in Dubai, per se, but I have completed the game twice. The story drags the characters through a hellish pit of surrealist military nihilism with the player in tow. It breaks apart not just the characters but the shooter genre, all by exploring what it really means to play soldier. Every person I killed had weight and significance. I felt every atrocity my digital avatar committed. I've done horrible things because a game directed me to...and I've tread even darker virtual paths because I chose them. I continued to play Spec Ops not because the combat was enjoyable and fun. I wanted to finish the story and continue on this path of self-destruction. And when it was done, I went back and did it all again. It's not a fun trip, but it's one worth taking.

You just phosphorus bombed a group of civilians. Are we having fun yet?

Though Spec Ops proves to be an excellent exercise in gameplay nihilism, it is not alone in this respect. Playdead's Limbo and Jonathan Blow's Braid offer ambiguously dark game experience, albeit through different means. Both are platformer/puzzle hybrids taking place in strange lands, but while Limbo's black and white aesthetic makes loneliness and despair apparent from the outset of the child protagonist's journey, Braid masks its darker, solemn tone with lush, impressionistic art direction. I did not play these two games because I found them fun--the puzzle/platformer does not really appeal to me. I played them because I found their core concepts fascinating. The time-based puzzles in Braid required intricate solutions that, while rewarding once conquered, provided me little in the way of fun in experimentation. I kept playing because the game's mysterious story and surreal puzzles came together in meaningful ways that challenge narrative and generic conventions. Limbo, on the other hand, is built on a "trial-and-death" mechanic that forces the player to kill the protagonist time and time again. While I enjoy the game immensely, I don't focus on the fun of the platforming and puzzle solving but rather the dismal beauty of its art direction and the hauntingly minimalism of the core system. It disturbs instead of enchants me--and that keeps me coming back.

It's terrifying and disturbing, but is it fun?

I recognize how completely subjective my position on the issue of fun is. "Fun" is a loaded term, and positing some objective definition would be an exercise in futility. A gamer's relationship with a game is personal, and while I may find the sadistic gameplay of Dark Souls rewarding for its difficulty but not for its fun, I see no reason why someone could not have a blast with the combat. I get why someone would have a lot of fun playing Braid or Limbo, too. My point is simply this: sometimes, approaching a game for a reason other than fun, yields worthwhile results. With the games listed above, I rarely sit back and appreciate what a joy it is to play the game. I play them because they're maddening. I play them because their emotional. I play them because I want to see just how far the game can punish me without me biting back. I test them as much as they test me, and in the end, I turn the machine off, still thinking about how meaning or insight can be delivered through groups of pixels floating across a screen. Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time for a Scotch.

Cheers,

--David

Existential Horror and Gameplay Compulsion in Dark Souls

Horror in video games is a fairly well-trod region. Some developers approach the genre through grotesque enemy design, pitting the player against hordes of disgusting monsters, often with a fair degree of gore (e.g. Splatterhouse). Others focus on place and time, building games in Gothic settings (e.g. Castlevania). The best, though, strive for an atmospheric approach to horror that combines narrative, setting, action, and gameplay mechanics to provide a totalizing horror experience. When used to its full potential, the video game medium provides an authentic horror experience that film and literature simply cannot achieve.

Like so many others, I had my first taste of horror in the medium when I played Capcom's Resident Evil in 1996. After watching a ridiculous cut scene in which unintentionally hilarious B-movie style actors delivered some semblance of story my young could not care less about, my friend handed me his controller, gave me a brief rundown of the controls, and set me loose in a mansion infested with walking corpses. Unused to the Playstation controller, I took a while to learn how to move Jill Valentine across the screen, but, after some practice, I began navigating the halls like a pro--until my first encounter with a monster whereupon I forgot what any of those damn buttons did. In that moment, everything came together--the shambling corpse, the lack of ammunition, the limited visibility of awkward camera angles, the knowledge that my character's death would lead to a restart that would undo what felt like significant progress--and created not just a great moment in my subjective gaming history, but also a sincere state of panic. This, I thought, is what horror feels like: hopelessness in the face of a foe that I knew meant certain death. Jill Valentine did not survive the encounter, and it was purely my fault. That instance would never be duplicated for me in a survival horror game. Sure, I had my fair share of scares in Dead Speace, and I felt the bizarre atmosphere of Bioshock. But nothing came close to replicating that moment of genuine terror...until I started playing Dark Souls.

I had played it's predecessor, Demon's Souls, but I never got into it. I gave it two serious tries, but I found that the game required more time to put into it than I actually had to give. But something about Dark Souls' open world and disturbing beauty drew me to it. In Dark Souls, the player's character is a nameless undead who wanders around landscape ripped straight from someone's darkest, depraved nightmare. Beginning at a place called the "Undead Asylum," the player journeys beyond the walls of his/her prison to fulfill some prophecy about something because some demons did bad stuff and it needs fixing, maybe. And that's about all you get, if you don't go to great lengths to find out the story, and it, like so many of the game's oddments, is, by design, withholding. I have no idea why my character must do what he does, and the game gives little to no direction (so much so that an internet community has grown up around trying to help newcomers and experts alike). The player must find his/her way through a demonic hellscape, and damn near everything out there is hunting for blood. It is this initial feeling of despair and unknowing that sets the tone for the game.

I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing /
Looking into the heart of light, the silence. --T.S. Eliot

The tone of utter hopelessness is not the only link the game has to the horror genre. Dark Souls offers a vast array of demonic creatures and terrifying bosses that leave the player literally shaking after a narrow victory. They attack with ground-shaking power, and they outmatch the player at every turn, if he/she is not careful. The game is not merely content with providing a borderline insurmountable challenge; the developers designed the character models to be visually revolting and intimidating. One look at the Gaping Dragon guarding the key to Blighttown is enough to turn the stomach of any seasoned player:

"I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies
of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me.
But I do not think my life will be long. " -- H.P. Lovecraft

The Gaping Dragon plays off the player's initial disgust at the creature as it emerges slowly from an abyss, and, while the player's shock at seeing the demon has not subsided, it advances on the player with devastating attacks, leaving the player helpless. It will kill you numerous times before you kill it. Another ungodly creature is the Butcher, a large masculine-looking creature, which the player finds out via an NPC is actually a female. She carries a giant cleaver--a Freudian symbol for castration if ever there were one--which she uses to hack and slash at the player, and a burlap sack obscures her face. This faceless giant is quite reminiscent of Silent Hill 2's Pyramid Head, largely believed to be the most horrific video game monster ever created (likely due to his own status as a metaphor for perverted masculinity). These two examples of the horrors the player elects to face when he/she boots up the game. Everything wants nothing more than to eviscerate the player in the most brutal fashion possible.

Though I have mostly compared Dark Souls to games in the survival-horror genre, Dark Souls is not a survival horror game. Its mechanics stem from a strict RPG tradition, so much so, in fact, that the game can easily alienate the unseasoned gamer--which is, of course one of the game's many goals. Casual gamers need not apply. The game is so alienating, in fact, that its multiplayer component (a complex system of entering others' game worlds for good or ill, cryptic messages, seeing ghostly apparitions of other players, and replaying the last moment's of another player's in-game by touching bloodstains left on the ground) is only hinted at through NPCs and item descriptions. Since player is almost always alone, seeing the specter of another player reminds the player that others share his/her fate--but they remain separated by some force that has sundered the world. The ultimate payoff is that the player must evaluate what it means to play with someone online. The connection online gameplay provides is only fleeting and superficial, but when strangers team up to take down an impressively difficult boss, the feeling of gratification is on par with beating an entire game. Players blink in and out of each others' worlds, and as well, each others' lives, inviting a metatextual pondering of existence and connection in a world of abject despair. Can we really know the people we play with? The game posits that we cannot, that they are just hollowed shells of people projected on a screen--bodies turned into ghosts by ones and zeroes. These interactions, nevertheless, are meaningful in that they help us traverse some virtual wasteland, and maybe that's all we can ever ask for in online interaction. The game offers a grim truth, beautiful in its bleak frankness.

"Those who have crossed / With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom /
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost / Violent souls, but only /
As the hollow men / The stuffed men." --T.S. Eliot

It is here in which the true horror of Dark Souls stirs, opens it jaws, and howls.  Whereas most horror games choose to keep the elements of horror within the game itself, Dark Souls dares to reach out and infect the player's psyche.  In her review of Dark Souls, Keza MacDonald writes, "It appears to be FROM's mission to send you into harrowing spirals of despondency and self-pity at every opportunity," acknowledging that game is designed to infect and twist the player's psyche.  Should one choose to play the game, he/she will inevitably ask the question, "Why the bleeding hell do I keep playing?"  And then it strikes.  The player no longer plays because it's enjoyable; he/she plays because success after repeated failure is an addiction.  Gaming becomes compulsion, not unlike gambling, except the player constantly bets hours instead of chips.  The player willingly undergoes the constant threat of failure in a world where respite is a luxury not afforded when it is often most needed.  Danger lurks not only around every corner but also long after the system is powered down, as the player constantly wonders about better strategies to get past that one boss that seems impossible.  Losing thousands of souls due to a misstep or an unknown ambush is certainly cause for despair and anger, but the persistent player continues to fight, using each failure as a teaching tool.  Death and punishment serves as the game's central pedagogy, turning the player into a student.  The game actively trains you to rethink what it is to die in a virtual space.  Through some perverse game coded witchcraft, the developers turn failure into progress, an uncomfortable inversion of what we assume video games should do.

The horror influences in From Software's Dark Souls are clear in creature design and Gothic architecture, but it is the horrific nature of punishing gameplay that pushes the bounds of what video game horror can be.  A novel or film can linger in the reader/viewer's mind, but only in games can the player actively participate in his/her own waking nightmare.  As I make my way through the dilapidated hellscape of Dark Souls, I can't help but be reminded of the poet T.S. Eliot's poems The Waste Land and The Hollow Men (both from which I have quoted in the picture captions above) which are both known for their beautiful bleakness.  The same could be said of From Software's Dark Souls (as well as its predecessor, Demon's Souls), as the game design is both elegant and horrifying.  It's a journey into a Nietzschean abyss that doesn't just stare back.  It rends the player with claw and fang and leaves him/her with questions as to why he/she continues to play while spurring the player downward into a world of unspeakable horror, only claw back out again.

Cheers,

--David