why should anyone play hard games?

They aren't for everyone, to be clear. "Hard" videogames, whether that be your Dark Souls and whatnot, have spread like wildfire across the industry. But why? Why have they gained so much popularity, despite many players not having a taste for it?

Cover art of "Fear and Hunger."

Maybe the whole world has just gotten that much better at videogames It's possible--especially with how stream-lined the hobby has become. It's much easier now to play a video game than when they first hit the market (I've played Galaga and I suck at it--if we're talking about hard games, Galaga is it). There's always been some level of difficulty in video games of course, and difficulty itself is really a corner stone of what makes a game fun.

But that's where this modern genre comes in. I've discussed soulslike games before, a genre named after FromSoftware's titular series Dark Souls. This is really where it all started; games that are defined by their high technical level of play, punishing combat, puzzles, and strange obscure lore tucked away in item descriptions for some reason. These factors culminate in what many found to be a frustrating experience--and what many others found to be strangely addicting.

Slowly, this style of game gained popularity as more and more people honed their skills as fans of the series. Then those pesky game people started to notice, and decided to make some difficult games of their own. Fast forward to now, and we have some beloved titles like Blasphemous, Fear and Hunger, and Lies of P. Based on these titles alone, it's clear that "soulslike" has begun to transcend the traditional 3D action adventure game, but rather has weaved its way into the very language of how modern games are discussed. Whether or not you're a fan of hard games, they are clearly here to stay.

But that brings me back to my main question--what makes these difficult games so compelling? Why should I play Fear and Hunger if I could lose all of my progress literally on the flip of a coin? It's a question I thought a lot about while playing Blasphemous, and I think I've drawn similar conclusions for each: the popularity of the soulslike genre is a testament to both precise game design and the human capacity to do hard things.

Listen, as an avid "hard game" enjoyer, the only hard games I actually enjoy are the ones that feel fair as well as the ones that outline their difficulty from the get-go. Difficulty spikes in any game are extremely frustrating, and can easily ruin what was a great experience in any game. It's the same case for these "hard" games. From a game design point of view, difficulty is something many people have struggled to pin down literally since the beginning. It isn't as simple as adding more enemies to a level, or adding more health to everything--the result of this lazy design is not only not fun, but also feels unfair. A great example of difficulty done well is in Metal Gear Rising: Revengence. For a spin-off game, the difficulty of it is handled in a fun and creative way--on the hardest difficulty, you can pretty much one-shot any enemy. But the twist is, any enemy can one-shot you, too. It's an equal playing field, and suddenly there's a lot more focus on the balance between offense and defense, parrying and attacking. "Hard" games, like those that fall under the soulslike label, have to toe the difficulty line from the get-go, otherwise everything they're trying to accomplish fall apart. This ranges from the control scheme, the mechanics, the graphics, sound design--these all have a role to play in translating difficulty to the player. When done well, the player can learn based off of the cues given by the game. When it isn't though, it feels like a nasty surprise--like you're being punished just for playing the game.

There's the more human side to it too, though; something I talked about a bit in my first post on Blasphemous. I recently started a playthrough of Fear and Hunger. I offered to my boyfriend that he should paly it--he promptly died, and asked why I would even play a game like that. I guess that's what prompted me to write, I wanted to try and answer that question. Fear and Hunger definitely has it's flaws, don't get me wrong--especially under the soulslike classification. But it also doesn't shy away from reminding you at every opportunity that the game is difficult, unforgiving. It doesn't take a lot for you to get a game over, but it does take a lot of precise planning and strategizing to progress. It's a similar prioritization that happens in survival horror, like Resident Evil--just to the extreme.

But I'm getting distracted. The human draw to difficulty came way before video games. People do hard things all the time for different reasons. For many people, it's the gratification or satisfaction of accomplishing that feat. Soulslike games, or any difficult game for that matter, taps into this reward cycle of giving you all the pieces to the puzzle and simply asking you to execute. It isn't a profound answer, but I think it's realistic. Hard games mirror life in that kind of way. I mean, why do people climb Everest? Why do people do anything at all?

I think the simple fact of it is: fulfillment, accomplishment, and satisfaction. It's these innately human feelings we get when we confront the monsters in our closet head-on and we come out on top. Because if you're out there beating Malenia in Elden Ring, I don't think anything can stop you. And isn't that kind of inspiring?