Ludo-Masochism
Why is everybody so obsessed with games being hard?
Ever since writing a review of Squidlit about a week ago I’ve been preoccupied with the idea of difficulty in video games. Squidlit is an adorable little throw-back to the Gameboy era- a game that according to the developers never features “more than 10 8-pixel wide sprites in a line” but does feature a striking HD resolution of 160 x 144 pixels. The entire game is awash in the monochrome light grey-green familiar to anyone who spent a childhood playing Super Mario Land, and it has a corresponding length of about 40 minutes. Mark my words: Squidlit is old-school. So old-school that the one notable difference between Squidlit and an actual game from 1990 jumps out and screams at you.
Squidlit is incredibly easy.
Difficulty was imperative in older games. I’ve spent the last few weeks getting repeatedly murdered in “Gradius” within minutes of booting up by all manner of pixelated robots. For those who are unaware, 1985’s Gradius is an arcade classic-turned-NES title that spawned five direct sequels and numerous spin offs like the classic Parodius series. It is also annoyingly, infuriatingly, excruciatingly difficult, as are many games from that era. There is a good reason for this level of difficulty. A full run-through of Gradius takes about 17 minutes, and an NES cartridge of an arcade smash hit cost something like forty or fifty dollars. Those are 1986’s dollars*, mind you, which would be more than a whopping ninety 2020 dollars.
Outside of certain massage parlours and tiger-petting zoos, would you throw down a Benjamin for a fifteen minute experience? I certainly would not. And so games like Gradius or Super Mario Bros or The Legend of Zelda needed to be extremely difficult to pad out the playing time. The fifteen minute experience becomes a months-long trudge through the depths of hellish addiction punctuated by moments of ecstasy whenever you finally make it past the first five minutes.
Gamers today have a completely different experience with difficulty. People like me who grew up with games like Gradius** feel a bit of nostalgia when they die repeatedly in games like Hollow Knight, and critics and developers alike talk of “old school difficulty” with a kind of cool-kids condescension. But maybe this feeling is Stockholm syndrome, and we identify with the difficulty because it’s all we have. Is difficulty for difficulty’s sake really such a good thing? Does a game need to be challenging to be a good game? Should we hate ourselves for making use of the cheap and child-proof easy modes that Nintendo taunts us with in so many of their mainline games when we die too often?***
I’ve noticed a kind of masochistic fetishisation of difficulty in gaming in recent years. Outside of the realm of faux-retro indie games that I like to play, the “Souls” series and it’s many spawn come to mind. It often seems as though if you aren’t constantly being challenged you aren’t a real gamer, and it leads to crazy shit like Devolver Digital’s Disc Room (I haven’t played it because- oh my God why would I spend money on this) getting a 9/10 on Steam based on positive reviews that say nothing beyond “I’m already at a Celeste level of deaths 30 minutes in.”
I’m not here for kink-shaming, and if getting buzz-sawed every ten seconds until you luck out in the RNG department is your thing I support your right to do whatever you want in the sanctity of your own bedroom. But why is it that a “hardcore” game or gamer is one that obsesses over making it impossible for many to fully appreciate the experience?
In the interest of fairness there are plenty of indie games that receive clout that are the opposite of something like “Disc Room,” but these games are often walking simulators like the fascinating and beautiful A Short Hike; games that are so breezy you can hardly call them games.
And so we come back to Squidlit. What could be more hardcore than ensuring there are no more than 10 8-pixel wide sprites in a line? This game is like a historical replica made primarily for compulsive nerds, but made in such a way that it can be enjoyed, easily, in the length of time it takes to watch an episode of “The Office.” There’s something beautiful and even revolutionary about that in an era when so many indie games strive for the feeling of “old school challenge” rather than old school aesthetics (although to be fair a number of games strive for both).
I’m sure plenty of people enjoy the games-as-punishment model of difficulty and I even occasionally count myself among them. As Gradius shows, punishingly difficult games are addictive. But it would be nice to see some more silly little trifles like Squidlit get the attention they deserve instead of withering away on Nintendo’s eshop until they are pity-bought on sale for 19 cents. They deserve better than that. But what do I know? I’m just some schmuck writing his first entry in a blog called “On Shovelware”
*Gradius premiered on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986 after premiering in arcades in 1985
**Full disclosure: I didn’t have Gradius as a kid, but I did have Super Mario Bros and the enraging Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
***Of course we should hate ourselves