game developer, yuri enthusiast, your beloved problematic girlfriend


email
christine@loveconquersallgames.com
get an email when I make a new game
news.loveconquersallgames.com/

while doing a long series of runbacks to Manus (HE'S HARD, OKAY) twitch chat got me thinking about the myth of Dark Souls as a "maoschistic" game and apparently I spent like ten minutes thinking it through.

while I'm confident that Dark Souls is not it (it's more of a combination of slapstick and straightforward heroic action), it does make me wonder what the design space around a masochistic game would look like. specifically, it makes me think about the different dynamics you get between horror games and more triumphant action games, for instances, where you often have similar mechanics, but the tension is really different. a situation where you're barely hanging on for your life in a heroic action game makes you feel like you're hot shit, a sort of "this guy's almost as tough as I am! what a worthy adversary!" sort of feeling, whereas a situation in a horror game where you're barely hanging on for your life is "oh no, am I really gonna make it?" but I wonder what dynamics would lead you to the feeling of "I just gotta endure this for a little bit longer" in that situation. the fantasy would definitely have to be rewarding the player for their suffering, rather than rewarding the player for their self-improvement; which I think is the real reason why a game that gives you challenges to learn to overcome is touching on a different sort of feeling

on a related note, I do think the way that Metroid Dread sets up powerful monsters in the form of EMMI that you have to constantly run circles around and just barely escape the powerful grasp of through clever reflexes makes it a strong contender for an answer to what a bratty horror game would be


You must log in to comment.

in reply to @love's post:

I think grinding games can be like this— the player suffers through repetitive content in hopes of a future reward, or, alternately, feels great psychologically because they figured out a way around some sort of unpleasant and superficially required-seeming task

i wrote a weird little piece about this exact subject (dark souls and masochism) after i finished it for the first time:

https://aria-of-flowers.itch.io/dialogue-3

i think it's really hard to design a game that actually feels like masochism without the pain element.... games can make you suffer through boredom, but not really pain unless you count pain from button-mashing or something like that (which doesn't feel very S&M-like because it's self-controlled....) even when games require "endurance" in some way, it's a very different feeling from enduring physical pain.

i ended up arguing that it's sort of a masochist's game anyways from a weird angle of emotional resonance, but i think i agree that playing dark souls doesn't really feel like actual masochism. i also don't think a purely single-player game (one you play totally alone) that felt like masochism would be fulfilling to me anyways – i'd at least want someone watching me :) (not that dark souls is single player only, just that i wonder if this kind of design goal is better suited to multiplayer or at least mutli-person experiences)

i like your thoughts on horror and tension – i feel like real S&M can have an element of horror when you get a respite between the pain and you're anticipating what will happen next. i'm not a big horror person but maybe it taps into those feelings a little better....

i do think there's something to be said for the repetition and learning structure of dark souls, and also games like precision platformers that are often called "masocore". you said it doesn't make sense for the "pain" to get easier over time, but i think there are often moments in these games where you've learned the level, your skill has kind of plateaued, it stops getting easier – and you just have to keep pushing until you break through. i think that has a little more of a masochistic feeling. if anything, the learning phase where you're constantly improving is like the respite between the pain....

sorry for the long comment. hopefully some of it is interesting meow