Welcome to the first run of our first column!

When did gamers become such pussies?

It’s not our fault – the industry has been force feeding us artificial victory for years, and we’ve gotten so used to it that any sort of actual challenge leaves a sour taste in our mouths. Most gamers have an inherent need to win, to relish every victory, both great and small. It’s not always the driving force behind our behavior, but we all know (and crave) the little rush you get when you take down a boss, achieve a rare item, or survive against all odds.

But really, is it that hard to do anymore?

Back when Doom was the end-all, catch-all shooter, it actually punished players for attempting to do better. Anybody who played the classic remembers this familiar scenario: you’re wounded, you’re low on shotgun shells, but the end of the level is in sight. At the same time, immediately to your left is a big open room, and right in the middle of that room? Health packs and ammo.

So, throwing caution to the wind, you rush forward and immediately regret your decision as 20 monsters pop out from secret doors which just opened up when you entered the room. Live or die, you’ve learned an important lesson – Doom is not your friend. It doesn’t want you to do well. Doom wants you scared. Doom wants you anxious. And Doom wants you to agonize over every decision – because the next time this choice comes up, you will remember your last screw-up.

And the best part of this? We wanted it harder. We wanted more of a challenge. So, once we learned how to blast our way through a level as fast as possible, we kept upping the difficulty – more and more monsters spawning every which way, ammo and health packs become harder and harder to come by, until we eventually tried Nightmare mode – where the monsters we killed wouldn’t stay dead.

Difficulty settings and game play mechanics like those not only made games harder, they made games better – trying them made us feel like bad asses, and beating them made us feel like gods.

Years passed, and the genre continued to define itself based on the early parameters that Doom provided. Games like Duke Nukem 3D cause a slight shift, with developers focusing more on the development of style rather than substance, while Quake precipitated a major shift in style as one of the first true 3-D shooters.

In 2001, things started to take a downward spiral. Halo (whose tagline was ironically “Combat Evolved”) came on the scene, re-introducing the shooter genre as a bland, uninteresting time-sink. Yeah, it was okay to play with friends, but it isn’t the end-all, catch-all ultimate shooter that the fanboys will try to make you think it is. It really wasn’t too different from other shooters, with a few exceptions.

One, you can throw grenades without holstering your weapon – I realize how trivial, minor and stupid that sounds, but it was a genuine point of pride for Bungie Software, which goes to show you exactly how far up their ass their heads are.

The other major "innovation" we got from Halo was the first step in turning gamers from hardcore players into whiney crybabies. Specifically, shield regeneration. Avoid getting hit for a little while, and your shield will recharge to full.

Think about it for just a moment: You’re being rewarded for not getting hit – all right, I might not agree with it, but it makes a perverse kind of sense. I would assume not getting hit would be a reward in and of itself, but hey, I guess it could be worse.

Then it started getting worse.

Nowadays, the Halo shield regeneration game mechanic has evolved into something ghastly and aberrant. Over the years, developers have looked at the game mechanic and no longer say "players want to stay alive." They say to themselves "players don’t want to lose" and design their games around making it easy for players to win.

The Call of Duty series is infamous for this, and if any genre of game deserves to remain a meat grinder – where you really do have to be that good to avoid getting killed – it’s a wartime shooter. You might not realize this, but the developers have no intention of allowing you to lose. Ever. Think about it: You get shot three times in the chest. You’re not dead, but you’re about to die. You know this because, despite not having an active health meter (ostensibly for realism’s sake – the only thing about the series that mirror’s realism) the screen is flashing red around the borders.

So, you hide. You avoid playing the game to hide for a few seconds behind a wall, or in a bunker, or in the shadows, while your wounds magically heal themselves. You are being rewarded for actively avoiding combat.

It isn’t just limited to wartime shooters, either. Mass Effect 2, despite being a nearly perfect game, fell prey to this pitfall – which is unfortunate, as this was a conscious decision on the part of the development team (in the original Mass Effect, you had to apply medi-gel in order to regain health).

The problem with this line of thinking is that, if I sit down to play the guitar, and I mess up a chord or a note, I’m not going to get better at playing the guitar by setting it aside and not looking at it for an hour.

Probably the worst moment in gaming, as far as presenting a challenge goes, was Bioshock. Bioshock had one of the best stories I’ve ever played in a shooter, and it was completely ruined by the fact that you could never lose. Dying became a minor inconvenience, given that you respawned in a vita-chamber something like 20 feet away. I remember spending a solid 30 minutes wasting EVE on a Big Daddy because I didn’t want to waste ammo, and every time I died, I respawned with a little EVE for free.

Thankfully, Bioshock 2 gave you the ability to turn vita-chambers off, but the story was so weak and the game play so tired compared to the original Bioshock that it didn’t really help fix what was broken.

So what’s the point of this mini-tirade? What exactly am I trying to say?

Dying – truly dying, not Bioshock dying – isn’t a bad thing. Losing a life isn’t the end of the world, and maybe, just maybe, we should stop allowing game developers to wipe our chins. If we’re actively worrying about our health counter, our sanity meter, or our mana bar, then we’re going to plan ahead, react faster and learn how to be better gamers.

Despite my over-reaching and broad statements, there really are a lot of different companies out there still taking the time to challenge their players. And a real gamer should always be looking for a new challenge. Most of these are indie developers – companies like From Software, the developers of Demon’s Souls (critically lauded, but criticized by players as being "too hard"), and Team Meat, the developers of Super Meat Boy (which is brilliantly brutal and unforgiving).

Many will probably avoid these titles because they don’t want to spend the money on something that isn’t going to provide them with the instant gratification that Call of Duty or Halo could. They want the McDonalds of the gaming – a quick, easy win that satisfies, but doesn’t necessarily nourish. But if something isn’t going to force you to either think with your brain or hone your skills, is it really worth doing?

I, for one, don’t think so. After all, the easy win isn’t satisfying, and the satisfying win isn’t easy.