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There was a time when the only loud voice that resulted from playing a difficult video game was your own. However, thanks to the journalist cycle, that’s all changed. The ‘journalist cycle’ refers to the act of a video game journalist critically panning a game for being too difficult. From this, we have the anger of the journalist themselves, the anger of gamers for the unfair review, and the anger of other gamers for being so mean to the journalist. We then have debates such as whether difficult games should be easier and/or have more difficulty options, plus whether we should even consider people who cannot rise to the challenge of a difficult game ‘gamers’.

Basically, we have lots of anger and debate, then the cycle repeats itself.

I thought it would be interesting to be meta-critical and look at the psychology behind the anger and debate of difficult video games. In this article, I will be discussing:

The purpose of difficult video games and why they make people happy. The ‘negatives’ of difficult video games and what kickstarts the journalist cycle. How to improve difficult games and the culture of difficult video games to minimise the journalist cycle.

Points 1 and 2 will be discussed using research evidence. Point 3 will be a discussion based on both the evidence presented and observations made from several iterations of the journalist cycle. Please enjoy!

The Purpose of Difficult Video Games

Humans, for the most part, are goal-oriented beings.

Depending on when and where you went to school, chances are you have been asked to set SMART Goals for yourself in school or perhaps even work. Chances are you have also rolled your eyes at them, thought they were complete garbage and made the dullest, most basic goals for yourself so you could quickly complete the task.

Basically, SMART Goals have been developed by Occupational Psychologists to help get people through the despair and misery that is human life. When you think about it, school is 11-14 years of work before you get your grades, and college is 3-6 years of work before you get your grades. Work is however often you get paid, but even then your wage can quickly dissipate. Despite humans being goal-oriented beings, life is constructed in a way where people are required to go through long periods of work and suffering before receiving any rewards. To combat this, psychologists argue that people need to find ways to work small victories into their lives to keep them happy and motivated (Deci & Ryan, 2000).

This is where difficult video games such as Dark Souls and Cuphead brighten up people’s lives. At their core, these games are a sequence of goals and rewards. In fact, you could say that a video game boss is not only a goal, but a cluster of sub-goals (such as learning the properties of each boss’s moves to dodge/parry). Let’s say that someone has a hard day of customer service work being yelled at by the general public. They come home, parry a boss’s moves with grace after getting repeatedly dunked the night before and get that sweet, sweet victory.

The research team over at Quantic Foundry have developed a Gamer Motivation Profile to identify motivational factors for people playing video games. With motivational factors such as ‘action’ and ‘mastery’ being key in gaming motivation, this is further evidence that games that may be criticised by journalists help deliver happiness and rewards to a subsection of gamers.

The ‘Negatives’ of Difficult Video Games

It’s 1am. Your arms hurt. You’re tired. You’re frustrated. You have a dull ache in your head. It’s time to give Ornstein and Smough your 62nd try.

YOU DIED.

As you can imagine, this 62nd failure is going to lead to a negative emotion and/or a reaction. However, there is going to be variation in not only the negative emotion that is felt, but also how it is expressed. This is typically dictated by two factors.

The first determinant is how negative thoughts are generally processed by the person. These processes are referred to as either ‘internalising behaviour’ or ‘externalising behaviour’. Internalising behaviour refers to processing emotions in a way that punishes you and makes you suffer internally in the form of sadness, anxiety and feelings of inferiority (Bornstein et al., 2010). Externalising behaviour refers to processing emotions in a manner that leads to external expressions such as anger (Bornstein et al.). Basically, going full DarkSydePhil.

The second determinant is your locus of control. Locus of control refers to how responsible people feel for what is happening within their lives (Rotter, 1966). Rotter argues that those with a high locus of control feel a high amount of control in their lives and feel responsible for consequences. In this context, it would be “I died because I messed up, I need to improve”. However, those with a low locus of control seek external factors to blame in order to protect themselves from blame and responsibility. In this context, it would be “I died because the game is bad and/or too hard”.

Does this sound familiar?

While I understand that games may indeed sometimes be bad and/or too hard, the above helps explain why people get angry and blame the game when a later general consensus is made that the game isn’t too hard. However, there is a risky relationship between internalising behaviour and the journalist cycle that I will soon discuss.

Improving Difficult Video Games

This article was born from a question I received asking whether I felt that developers should add an ‘easy’ mode to difficult games. The argument made for adding an easy mode is that difficult games are exclusionary for gamers.

To this, I say that we must break down what ‘exclusionary’ means. In this example, it can mean two things:

People who are unwilling to complete the goals of the game and cannot progress further. People who are physically incapable of completing goals through disability.

To number one, I say that difficult video games are often constructed in a way that the main feature of the video game is its challenge and its difficulty. This means that it is rare to miss out on something like a groundbreaking story because a game is too difficult. Quite simply, if you do not wish to play a difficult game, there is a high chance that the game offers little else to you. It would be more beneficial for you to complete the Gamer Motivation Profile survey above in order to learn more about what you like to play and what games you would enjoy playing instead.

To number two, I say that this is a good point. However, the way to improve difficult video games is not to add an easy option, but to include disability-friendly game options such as fully customisable controls. Halfcoordinated is a disabled gamer that often speedruns Platinum Games video games at Games Done Quick marathons. He personally asked Platinum Games at a Games Done Quick marathon to add fully customisable controls to help with his disability. They listened, and he was so happy he almost cried.

Instead of making the difficult games debate about adding an easy mode (often against the developers’ wishes), please make it about levelling the playing field for disabled gamers. Please support charities such as AbleGamers and reach out to game developers to include options such as customisable controls to help disabled gamers.

Improving Difficult Video Game Culture

One thing that always frustrates me about journalists writing about toxic gamer culture is that there are never any solutions offered. I am going to go where no journalist has gone before and make suggestions for how people can be less angry and upset and how people can stop making people angry and upset.

For context, I have spent around thirteen years of my life giving advice on ‘difficult’ games such as Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. I have watched communities become less helpful after ‘lol git gud’ became the standard reply to someone asking for help. I say this not to berate people or to jump on a moral high horse, but for a desire to help people and help communities thrive.

Your self-worth is not dictated by your Soul Level 1 run of Dark Souls. You are worth far more than simply what you have accomplished playing video games. While I understand that achievements are good and awesome, it’s important for you to realise that there’s a lot of other cool things about you as well. If people cling too hard to what they have accomplished in video games, this could have consequences for the second point. Accept that there is no ‘True Gamer’. One thing that always unsettles me when the journalist cycle begins anew is people cracking open their Mountain Dew ™ , busting out the Doritos ™ and tweeting about how you’re not a True Gamer ™ unless you’ve passed Arbitrary Test A, Arbitrary Test B and Arbitrary Test C. The unfortunate reality is that this may be hurting the quiet, peaceful people who don’t want to cause any trouble. As I mentioned above, a consequence of internalising behaviour is feelings of inferiority and self-flagellation. While it might feel good to hit back at journalists with low loci of control and externalising behaviour, the flip side of this is that someone is quietly beating themself up about being horrible at games and not being welcome as a gamer because they can’t beat a boss. It’s giving the loud, angry people attention and the timid, self-flagellating people an excuse to self-flagellate. Don’t run ‘git gud’ into the ground. ‘Git gud’ started on 4chan as a response to people who hated the Souls games because they couldn’t beat them. However, as I alluded to above, I’ve subsequently seen it used when people are loving a game but are simply asking for help. ‘Git gud’ just simply isn’t applicable if the scenario isn’t “Hurr durr this is bad because I’m not good at it”, using it otherwise is just a poor reflection on you. Just don’t look. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: places like Kotaku and Polygon love to get you mad. Getting you mad means more clicks, more raising awareness of the site and more ad revenue. In an ideal world, there would be no journalist cycle because these people would be so irrelevant that nobody would care. I do see the appeal of joining in with the memery though, so I can’t be too critical of people having fun.

Thank you for making it down this far. Lots of love and happy gaming! ♥

Note

I am the author of an ongoing series titled ‘The Psychology of Video Games’, a series which aims to bridge the gap between gaming and academia. I do not profit from this series and all work will remain free forever, but if you like the idea of keeping me fed and caffeinated then I would very much appreciate it!

References

Bornstein, M. H., Hahn, C. S., & Haynes, O. M. (2010). Social Competence, Externalizing, and Internalizing Behavioral Adjustment from Early Childhood through Early Adolescence: Developmental Cascades. Development and Psychopathology, 22(4), 717–735. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579410000416

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227-268.

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General & Applied, 80(1), 1–28.