‘Bloodborne,’ ‘Dark Souls,’ & The Unbearable Smugness of Games Culture
I tried to like Dark Souls and Bloodborne. I really did. If you actively enjoy these games, that is awesome. It’s just not for me. By all accounts, I should’ve liked it. I enjoy fantasy games, especially those that have—dare I say it—a darker twist. I like being challenged, and I like solving puzzles within games. That’s the fun of it for me.
That was the problem, though—these games (Dark Souls and Bloodborne, specifically) were not fun for me. In order to enjoy these games, in my experience, there are certain privileges that are necessary: time, money, and the dedication to the self-image as a gamer. The entirety of gaming as hobby, lifestyle, or whatever, requires these privileges. But in all my experiences as a gamer, these have not manifested so strongly as in the aforementioned games.
First, I’ll talk about the privilege of time.
You are thrown into the middle of the action of the story without any concrete idea about what is going on in the larger picture. It is easy to pick up the controls and hack away at enemies, but it was unclear to me as the player why any of what I was doing mattered in the larger narrative. Part of this apathy stemmed from the rate at which my character died. I know that this is a huge part of the game, and I know that “You Will Die” is the very edgy tagline of the Dark Souls series. It was more how the character dies rather than the frequency. The absolute loss of all the progress I made over the course of one or two hours would be completely undone by one lucky scythe to the face of my character.
wah wah
good lord
the privilege to…..git gud
Dark Souls Gameplay: Oh hey there are quite a few ambushes and nasty tricks I oughta keep up my shield and not rush into things
Bloodborne Gameplay: Oh hey so the shield thing isn’t really much of a possibility now but I regain HP when hurt if I hit bad guys fast so I guess I gotta be more aggressive
Every Fucking Loser Who Can’t Figure This Shit Out: BAWWWWW3HARD5MEGAMERPRIVLEGEthisi s th eDARKSOULS of vidEo games HheHah waauw nerds n there VID-PRIV Haeheahaohhoha
>complaining that you need time and money to be able to buy and play a videogame, a non-essential recreational product
Might as well fucking complain that novels are bad because they take a while to read from start to finish and require basic literacy.
The bit about “dedication to the self-image as a gamer“ is particularly hilarious:
But I think the most problematic part of this type of game is the part that feeds into the ego of the gaming community. I personally did not like Dark Souls, but I did not admit it to myself until two years after I stopped playing it, specifically when I gave up on playing Bloodborne. I think a large part of this was due to my ego as a gamer. I am, as you may have guessed, quite dedicated to the world of video games. I am pretty good at them, and thus my continuous failures in Dark Souls really aggravated my ego. I made up excuses, and while they were valid, they were not entirely fair. Although I told myself I did not have the time to dedicate to Dark Souls, I apparently always had space in my busy schedule as a liberal arts student to replay BioShock for the umpteenth time.
“I don’t like Dark Souls because I’m bad at it and it challenges my self image as being good at videogames so I’m gonna complain and blame privilege instead of taking the time to learn the game’s nuances or admitting that this type of game is not for me bawwwwwwwwwwwwwwww”
Shit, I’m terrible at highly technical fighting games (mostly King of Fighters) and competitive first person shooters, but I’m not gonna call them bad just because it takes practice to gain the needed reflexes and mechanics proficiency, nor am I gonna complain about non-issues like fightstick privilege or high-DPI privilege.
Not to mention you put the lie to your bit about the privilege of time by admitting that you found plenty of time to keep replaying Bioshock instead of playing Dark Souls or Bloodborne. You’re not gonna get good at a game if you spend all your time replaying a game in an entirely different genre that you’ve already beaten. This is a simple personal problem that you’re trying to blow up into some kind of goddamned social issue.
tl;dr:
You know, normally I’m not for saying “git gud” to people who have trouble with difficult games, but in this case
git fucking gud
The fuckin title kills me
“liberal art student”
I despise the GIT GUD mentality, but… like… seriously. If you don’t enjoy it, you don’t enjoy it. It’s not the failing of “games culture” or what have you… It’s just that it’s not your kind of game, plain and simple. It’s not privilege, it’s not entitlement, it’s just… you don’t like it. As said above, one may as well rail against books or art for taking up time and requiring fine-tuned skill.
YOU SUCK, YA JACKASS