Getting Over It (Spoilers?)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 พ.ย. 2024
- I managed to make a Getting Over It video on TH-cam without screaming or losing my cool even once! Do I get a cookie?
Also, we talk about boring game design things and the concept of failure in videogames and frustration and pain as express aesthetic goals. You know, NERD STUFF.
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This episode was made possible by generous support through Patreon!
/ errantsignal
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When I completed the game, I messaged Foddy this:
"Bennett, I love what you've made. Please never make anything like it ever again."
You're a better person than me since I said, "Fuck your bucket and fuck your lecturing."
This game is even frustrating to watch.
This game is best played when watched... and best watched when played...
Ignore what I said after the word 'and' because that doesn't make sense but the first thing... that's my bread and butter when it comes to watching my favorite streamers fail beyond belief and hope that they think a god might actually save them and their legless bodies(GO POO)
Arokace Did you try to make your comment difficult to read? That's metta. Well, I read don't to know harder if comment you a could make.
(After "well" read I and skip every other word and at the period read all the words you skipped.)
TheSugarRay is that's how you had to read it in order to understand it then sure... otherwise though, no I didn't purposely make it hard to understand besides the second half of the first sentence not making sense (in my mind at least). And why the first half of the first sentence made sense in my mind was because I was never going to play the game so watching GrandPOOBear's stream of him playing it WAS my way of playing it basically.
Yup. I couldn't watch it in one go, I was just gritting my teeth in anticipation of inevitable failure, so I just alt tabbed and listened.
Seeing them fail and hear the witty quote the creator put into the game was always the best part... And then the creator had the nerve(rather genius idea) to put in more negative quotes even when you do something good(as in getting higher up the "mountain"(is it really a mountain... can we actually call it that lol)).
"The climb toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. We must imagine Sisyphus happy." ~Albert Camus
That's it.
Great video. Well done.
Any plans on making a video about the game?
Alexander Negadov there's a stream of it he did
oh shit didnt know best boy watches second bestboy
Now that Subnautica has released are you planning on doing a video on it sometime in the near or distant future? Love your work.
you where the one who brought me to this channel :D
I really like you taking the time to explore the ideas behind this game, and not just writing it off because it got TH-cam popular. It's really interesting seeing your thoughts on it.
tell that to people like caddicarus and jorad --_-
Just because you're trash doesn't mean you can't do great things. It's garbage can, not garbage cannot.
Inspiring words if ever there were any.
@Manek Iridius ...seriously? It's a pun, dude. You're overthinking it.
@Manek Iridius yeah, naw, you just need to calm down.
Love the frustrated mouse shaking. Perhaps better than a filmed reaction.
Totally
My favourite part of any Getting Over It gif or video is when someone falls super far and the hammer is still just stuck in that "pointing slightly upwards towards the next thing you tried to climb but tripped" position. As if moving it again would cause you to fall even further. Always followed by extreme care as they try to move back up. I've had it happen to myself several times and while I'm frustrated in the moment I know I'm just another human like all the other fucking up in a game where you're sort of meant to fail.
It's kinda interesting how most of these ideas only really apply to your first playthrough. After that you start understanding the movement you are absolutely in control.
I feel theres a much simpler answer for painful failure-prone games: the desire for human competition. Anyone whos seriously pursued athletics, you want to be challenged, to overcome extreme adversity and grab success, even though you know you will fail along the way
...I never got mad at this game. In fact, I never even got annoyed.
And I don't know why, because I have a short fuse. I think though, I played this game differently. Getting up was never the goal. My own winstate had always been to improve.
And then, after falling again and again, all I could see is my progress, the little amount of skill that let me get back to where I had fallen even faster than before. Elegantly, almost effortlessly in some cases. Looking back, this game has taught me that sometimes, a 'failure state' can easily be recontextualized as just another winstate from a different view.
I never lost. I just kept winning, again and again. I won experience and mastery. That is what this game taught me. You never start from zero if you fall, you always begin a strange "New Game+" when you try again.
This essay really crystallizes the vague sense of discomfort I've had for with recent-ish spate of op-eds that have been saying games like Dark Souls (sorry) or Cuphead need easy modes. I've been sympathetic to players who haven't wanted to suffer through the punishment those games offer and still "see" what they have to offer, but something about that has always felt off to me, and you've nailed it here -- friction and frustration are good, short-term failure is something we subconsciously crave. Dark Souls without punishment would be a different game.
I feel like there's something missing from this topic of frustration in games: the Phyrric Victory.
The discussion of challenge in games, especially extreme challenge and punishment, is often based on an assumed fact: the more challenging it is, the more satisfying it necessarily is to complete. But how often is that actually, you know, true?
How many times have you been so "done" with something that you don't even feel good when you've finally completed it? That you just feel regret for not quitting while you were ahead. That your "reward" for finishing it was the realization that you didn't need to do it and that you could have done something else that you liked more?
I think that's a concept that gets overlooked on this topic and to some extent is a foil Foddy's concern over disposable satisfaction. At least in games that spoon-feed you success, you still get SOMETHING out of it, if only a hollow dopamine rush. But a phyrric victory just makes you feel worse after finally succeeding than you did while failing.
Which is sort of why I think it's important and acceptable for players to renegotiate the terms at which they interact with games; at least single player ones. Difficulty selections, Super Guides, cheats, mods, and straight up hacks. I argue someone modding their copy of Getting Over It to have low gravity is ultimately just as valid as them playing the way foddy wanted them to, since it's ultimately a response to his statement.
I rarely feel satisfaction if I got through a poorly designed (in my opinion) part of a game that requires luck and trying again and again to get past it. The frustation often comes from feeling it's wasting my time by making me figure out a very specific set of moves just to get through it - a padding of game time. The lack of satisfaction comes from my time still being wasted after I've gone through it - just to continue with another wise fun game.
Like I really enjoyed watching people play Alien: Isolation, however because of the frustrating and broken saving system I haven't finished it, because I got annoyed with having to play a certain sequence for yet fifth time because it never saved (even if I saved in between) and I couldn't be arsed to play through that same junction again that I wasted roughtly 45 minutes on just to get wasted at the end. That's poor design in my opinion. I feel the fear should come from the alien getting you - not "OMG did this crappy game save properly or is there a save around so I don't have to replay the same shit over and over again?"
I am not adverse to challenge. I recently finished ME2 on Hardcore and once I beat ME3 and start all over I will go to the next hardest one (even though I really despise not being able to save all the time as well - but at least you can often just get away from the fights and save then.) The difficulty there is entirely of your choosing, you can play on easy and enjoy the story for what it is - not have things blocked from you because you aren't ready to face insanity.
Which reminds me of White Day, a game that needs you to play it on the highest difficulty to unlock all of the stories and is already super frustrating on normal with the janitor constantly harrassing you.
I understand what you're saying about Phyrric victories, but I think it's less related to challenge, and more related to our need to feel like what we did, mattered. Rewarding experiences often come from our feelings of accomplishment and growth. You started out really bad at a game, and slowly got better until you mastered it. That means something.
Flipping coins isn't satisfying, even when you win. Finishing a marathon can be satisfying, even if it takes you twice as long as everyone else. It's not just about the difficulty, it's also about our ability to control our destiny. If a game is too easy, we often feel as though we were NOT in control - the outcome was decided before we sat down to play. The same goes with games that are so hard that they're beyond our comprehension, as well as the experiences that seem random or arbitrary - we don't feel like our actions really mattered.
According to steam achievements, only 4.2% of people have climbed the mountain at least once. I'd argue that people that keep climbing are chasing *something*. And generally, they get that something when they reach the top. I really can only speak for myself and can't use streamers as a case study for everyone but it only makes sense. This is a game that does not care if you play it or not. Maybe some beat it out of spite for that. How dare the game show indifference to the player. But for others, that should be all the more reason to quit. In the commitment to keep climbing, that is a challenge to oneself. You are challenging your skill and most importantly your patience.
Here is one video that proves the opposite of my point. But I think it is interesting nonetheless. I believe this is the current world record. It isn't that long of a video so I would watch it all for the full effect but the important bit is his reaction at the end.
th-cam.com/video/jGa9822kdrw/w-d-xo.html
I suppose this might be an example of the Phyrric Victory to the extreme. But I think the extremes of it (playing over 200 hours and calling it a shit game) really show how paradoxical this kind of feeling is.
I think part of it may be due to the fact that, "it's just games". It's ultimately a pointless activity, as in there is no tangible reward or benefit to others. Even if we got better at the game, if the game itself is considered pointless, what's the point of getting better? It is up to the player to give the challenge some meaning.
I think we can sometimes be caught in the need to overcome the challenge. It could be from pride, it could be from social anxiety from being judged. If this is the case, we are really just avoiding punishment, and the sense of victory would be too little to balance the hardship and frustration.
However I do believe that honoring the challenge is a must for the sense of victory. It's like yin-yang, one cannot exist without the other.
That being said, one should not feel obliged to overcome a challenge. Games are "just games", and you can't beat every game on the planet. Plus, games can be enjoyed in many ways, overcoming the challenge is but one of them. At no point should it be regarded as the only way to enjoy a game.
If you reach that point, you ultimately should just stop playing the game. Why do something that is ultimately unenjoyable for you? The entire point of the frustration is that it contextualizes your success as an actually meaningful victory; if that is absent for you, and it only makes you feel like you wasted time or energy or both, then there is literally no point in doing it. Modifying the game's experience to better suit you just seems like you're going against the artist's wishes, to be completely honest.
Now, that's if the game is fair in its difficulty. Games like Dark Souls are designed to be hard, and should be as such. If they are too difficult for you to enjoy, you shouldn't play them. However, if a game is difficult in a way that is unfair to the player and is not challenging, but is instead simply punishing, then sure, you can do whatever you want.
Modifying a game that has an intent to be extremely difficult, but ultimately capable of being completed, is basically telling the artist that his intent is stupid and he should go fuck himself. It'd be like if I played NieR:Automata with the music off, or completely disabled the dialogue in the Witcher.
Why we play even though games include failure, which we generally avoid? Because overcoming challenges is something humans seek out.
Getting Over It is one of the truly great games of the last years. Not because it looks impressive, the gameplay, the uniqueness or design, but by the aspects often overlooked: The why.
As someone who completed the whole game before, I can say that my real life is already very challenging as is.
Sometimes, players don't want a challenge, since they get lots of that already. Other times, they live challenge IRL and want it in games, too. Both of these are valid.
And then there's me, who was always eager to listen to the man talk.
I mean, I get where Foddy is coming from being a fan of said Kaizo and Mario Maker lolhard levels and such myself, but I don't think games being easy or made to be easily experienced really makes them worth any less or makes them "less pure". If anything I just think this shows how we need to have a bigger focus on meaningful difficulty levels in AAA mechanic driven games, so difficulty freaks can get the frustration they crave and others can just enjoy it for the story and such, but done in a way where both encapsulate the core game's feel. Different strokes for different folks and all that.
I always find myself coming back to this video whenever my work (be it a job or a personal pursuit) seems fruitless or frustrating. As absolutely Aggravating and unfair Getting Over It is I could never find it in myself to describe it as uncaring. To me it cares a great deal about my frustration, it just don’t move a finger to alleviate it. It feels like it’s telling me it’s ok to feel that way, that given the circumstances it’s down right expected, and I think your analysis of the game helps me articulate this feeling into words that I otherwise forget.
I love your analysis on it. Bennett Foddy is the example of an artist who enjoys exploring and studying the same recurring theme with interesting and thoughtful results. It's really cool.
sometimes, you play for the challenge and its rewards and punisments, and sometimes you play to have some goddamn peace of mind goddamn it
On the topic of fairness, I always find a feeling of frustration to be directly connected to its lack of perceived fairness. In my case, this often comes down to a failure on the part of the game's controls or camera, or the general failure of high difficulty levels in modern games (let's just increase enemy damage and health to ludicrous levels, forget about balance!) In most games, this really should be avoided whenever possible. If a player is thrown into a seemingly unwinnable game situation, it can feel like they need to cheese or cheat to progress and that's definitely not a positive thing.
The difference here is that Getting Over It is designed specifically to be frustrating. It's a large part of the point of the game, rather than being a roadblock to the player's enjoyment like it would normally be. It certainly limits the game's audience, but the game would be pointless without it.
Spoilers? Yes, I feel spoiled a bit since I guess I've lost that moment of surprise when I hear for the first time the game mocking me after failure with quotes and stuff and commenting on nature of failure etc., never knew it was in game, and it's an awesome idea!
Great essay, getting over it was already on my to-play list, I feel all the more inclined to experience it. And now I also have a Jesper Juul's and Gregory Currie's books to read.
I love this game. I've never beaten it, and I don't really intend to give it much more of my time than I already have but I love seeing it, and I love seeing people dissect it. It's incredibly clever, and not enough people give its cleverness credit. I hope people will still be talking about it many years from now.
If I remember correctly, QWOP has a singular win state. The game is about running the 100 meter dash, you win after you've ran 100 meters. The only variable is how fast you can do it.
I just came across your channel yesterday and have been binge watching all day and I have to say this is the most interesting, insightful and thoughtful channel about video games (particularly unique/genre defining video games) I have ever seen. I can't wait to finish watching all of your back catalog.
I prefer difficulty that frustrates under my own power. Like playing Prinny: I wanna be the hero on hard mode the first time through, and spending 3 hours on the final boss until I get the pattern down and beat it. Or playing Hollow Knight and figuring out how to move around a bosses attacks, while getting my own in, and when I can heal without getting destroyed.
I know I'm two years late on this conversation, but there's also something to be said about the game's ending. (take this as your spoiler warning)
After the summit is reached, all gravity is gone, and defeat becomes pratically impossible. You float freely up to the stars, the credits roll, and at the end, your reward? A chat room.
The final reward is a chance to share the experience of what you put yourself through with those who did the same.
I can't think of a better thing to put at the end of this game, I really cannot. Personally, it's what I always do after I finish any piece of media, and it's sometimes my favorite part of it.
The premise the video starts with, the "paradox of failure", is such a silly question with an obvious answer that I have to wonder if I misinterpreted it.
We experience failure in games, and we don't like failure, but we play games. Hmmm, do we have some kinda weird love-hate relationship with failure? Do we, on some level, _actually like_ failure? (Isn't this what you're trying to say with "there's something about an experience that allows for failure that we crave" or whatever?)
No. We do not "like failure". We like seeing that we are moving towards a goal. That is _the way_ the human motivational system works. Games are a way of presenting ourselves with a goal to attain, and we deliberately work toward that goal in the face of its difficulty and the possibility of failure. We can have different temperaments as to how much and what kinds of resistance there must be, in order for the experience overall to be good _compared_ to other games, how frequent and punishing failure is allowed to be, and so on. But to propose that we are secretly motivated by failure is, to me, a distortion.
You will reliably see people ask, about truly open ended games (e.g. Dwarf Fortress), "what's the point?" and you should take this as a signal that people expect games to present them with a goal. (And you'll see that the people who enjoy Dwarf Fortress, enjoy it because they come up with their own goals!)
You will reliably see most people ask, about extremely hard games (e.g. IWBTG fangames), "why bother?" and you should take this as a signal that the typical person assesses the low probability of being able to achieve the goal, and frequent experience of failure and punishment, to indicate that the game is not worth their time. (And you'll see that the people who enjoy fangames have genuinely higher tolerance for punishment and failure!)
It honestly seems like the video is built on the galaxy-brain premise that contrary to these indications, gamers at large are unwittingly deriving something of value from the prospect of being hurt and losing.
If a game doesn't give you reliable signals that you are approaching the goal you think you are striving toward, or does nothing but tell you you've failed, _you will not like it._ If you think you enjoy such a thing, you are actually playing the game for a different reason, like "having unique experiences" or something.
Finally ! I was getting tired of gaming channels not bothering looking into what makes this game unique. Constantly seeing them not paying attention to what Bennett Foddy had to say was really frustrating for me, even when those channels were from my favorites. The only gameplay of this game I enjoyed watching was Teo's, I don't really know why but it was really funny even though he did "the same" as everyone else.
Thanks for making a video that takes a deeper look at it
The feeling you describe here eerily reminds me of the feeling of high-level competition. I've only ever been in the top tiers skill of one game, Hearthstone, and the sort of zen of frustration as a streak of losses plummets you down from the top hundreds in your region to a few thousand down is absolutely part of why I keep coming back to it. The fact that I can get legitimately, seriously upset and have my day ruined because stupid play for a few games on my part undid days of progress keeps that game constantly fresh and is what's kept me playing it for years. I wonder if some of the concepts discussed in the video aren't also a big part of why people seem to consistently find competition engaging - competition at high levels has not only a high capacity of failure, but often high levels of punishment too.
The game makes a really good point about the downsides of polish. A few years back, that's what games lacked and it was a burden for the medium. Now, designers have become so good at it, that they can make players understand a game's intent without having to explicitly state it (see Bloodborne). I've been playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as of late, and it has this weird way of just putting you in completely unfair, unbalanced situations that don't AT ALL seem like what you should be doing--but it is. I don't know why the game does this, but it does feel good to get past a section that was intentionally designed to be essentially unconquerable. I guess it's because I'm the one who's conquering, and not the game doing it for me. I hope more games realize that polish is fixed now, and it's time to move onto more interesting things. Great video!
I had no idea they made Sexy Hiking into a full game
An insightful critic of an insightful critic. How much more meta can we get? Thanks for the video.
I always enjoy the more abstract videos you do, whether that means philosophy, psychology or both by analyzing a story-rich game. Discussing gameplay mechanics or level design is always more interesting when it comes with the theory on why one way is better that another, and in that regard you're one of the best out there.
The idea that the mountains we climb are created by our attempts to climb them rings very true to me, having recently completed Dark Souls 2. The entire Dark Souls series is built on the ethos that going at an obstacle again and again--and feeling pain with each loss--is integral to getting a proper sense of achievement when you finally do succeed. It's not a perfect comparison; Getting Over It is a singular, massive obstacle from which you can plummet right back to the start at any time, whereas Dark Souls has a limit on exactly how far it will put you back, but I think the core philosophies really aren't very different at all.
So what you're saying is that t h i s i s t h e D a r k S o u l s o f c l i m b i n g g a m e s .
I would love to hear you talk about difficulty vs. accessibility efforts. I was just thinking about how much I love Celeste because it's hard but not punishing. Now I don't know what I'm going to say in that review.
So he calls the protagonist Diogenes, after the Greek philosopher who lived in a barrel out of contempt for worldly posessions. It didn't occur to me before I heard it mentioned here. I was rather thinking about the old trope of a white man being caught by native cannibals and put in a big pot to cook.
At 13:45, you cut to a shot of some CoDdlefield combat (don't know which samey, generic "spunk-gargle-weewee" game specifically) but I had the instant realization: Think about how much more visceral that experience would be if the bullets being fired at you could have killed you at the same speed as the 5 guys got mutilated running that gut while you sat comfortably behind some barriers that should have offered no cover. You took 10ish bullets getting hit, ran across to someone else...without issue. Now, imagine if you died 100 times doing that. NOW you understand how 209,000 people died on the beaches of Normandy. Each death representing the wave after wave of slaughtered soldiers running that same gut. How frustrating it must be, how connected to the experience you'd feel. Instead you get this cursory glance as they hand-hold you through the set dressing because they're afraid you'd put the controller down at death 34 and tell their friends not to buy the game because of how "frustratingly impossible" the beach was while totally missing the point.
Bennett Foddy? Is that you?
that's thing though, isn't it.
Someone like me would get the point, and everyone else wouldn't care, and would indeed suggest not buying the game for that.
It's a very frsutrating thing where I'd like the entire gaming market to change in this regard, but accurate depicitions, which work for me, would fail to achieve any effect on most people.
They'd have to be forced to endure it and well....great, now we forcing experiences?
play cod2 then
The game always felt very personal to me. Kind of like The Beginners Guide. It felt like I was having a sit down with the developer and he was guiding me through it. It also made me so anxious that even an hour after playing it I felt sick.
Twice you say it's not really about skill. You did acknowledge that you do get better as you play.
While I agree that perseverance is important, the reason it's important is because without it, you don't have the opportunity to acquire the necessary level of skill. To complete the entire game is an impossible task at the base level of skill, that is, when you open up the game for the first time, or just adjusted to your input settings.
The entire game revolves around honing your skills in an imaginary craft. The Paradox of failure is no paradox. The reason we're drawn to places of many failures is because of the possibility of winning, that is, to NOT fail, where many others have.
Winning in this game gave me some of the greatest sense of pride and joy. Being able to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles with little room for mistakes and harsh punishment; it all adds to this sense.
The presence of failure amplifies your success, simply by contrast. That includes the failure of others. Of course, you wouldn't know that, having never reached the late game (unless you just didn't record it) ;)
I would say: play the game another time, learn some new strategies from good players, and see how much easier the game is. I've beaten the game in less than 5 minutes now, and I can tell you that this game has one of the purest representations of skill I've seen in a videogame. The top speedrunners baffle me.
Of course it's about skill. That much should be obvious in a game that demands you to master its mechanics to win it.
mrBorkD I don’t think he’d disagree with you, I think he just phrased himself badly - I took it as meaning that even the most skilled gamer will need to put in perseverance to get good at this game. There’s no precedent for this game.
This was a really in-depth video essay. I'd never heard of this game before today, but now I'm kinda interested in it.
"I'd never heard of this game before today"
Do you consider yourself a gamer? If yes, stop.
@@milanstevic8424 please shut up
I stoped playing platformers altogether from the jump or die mechanic, and this game makes that look like a drop in the bucket. But I think it is not because I get upset at defeat as much as I do setbacks. I love the fealing of finnaly getting beter and beating a chalange I could not beat before. but I loathe repeating old content I already know how to beat. So I think for me there is little joy in frustration there is joy in challange. There is no internal motivator which could get me to play this game, but if somone were to offer 1 million to cancer research if I get to the end I would play and not stop until I reached the end; probably screaming and cursing the whole time.
Got playing this game this week after initially assuming it was another TH-camr bait game. Quite pleasantly surprised that it had a layer of smartness to it. that it's balance of success, failure and frustration can be eased by some light poetry or the gradual feeling that you're slowly getting better. People how master this game are gonna be mouse wheeling wizards before too long. I won't though. The game drives me nuts. I really like it, but I also want to give Bennett Foddy a slap.
I originally saw Getting Over It as a cute one off flash in the pan game with no real substance, but you’ve given me an appreciation for the more thoughtful nuance present here. Thank you for giving it a voice.
I hadn't thought about the game the way it was presented, but having listened to the argument I can't agree that we seek failure or frustration. We seek flow. That space in between to hard and not hard enough.
I think, at one point value changed from a thing one likes to a thing that needs to be perfect. I don't know if it has been with the internet. But we really like to pull things apart and sadly most of the conversation is binary in how things are good or things are bad, and boy, how people love to focus on the bad.
In regards to this game, it reminded me about a gaming dilemma I've been wondering. How can we define bad controls? Is getting better with a weird control pointless? Does an ideal control is the right way to play? And if something is so unreliable and painful to use as a controller, how bad is it if you can still beat the game?
Ìt's cool to see the development of your skill in your b-footage. You started, I think, a lot worse than me but ended up loads better than even the streamers I saw. You probably don't care, but being able to experience your progress in proxy was just real goddamn satisfying.
This video is a hidden gem among others. No screaming? Man, its like youre an adult or something.
IQ IS THICC lol
I can understand what Foddy is getting at, but... I actually don't think this is why I play games at all. I'm usually much more interested in narrative, or in games that serve as brain teasers. I'm not above turning down the difficulty on a combat-heavy game because dying over and over to the same enemy isn't fun for me. If others find enjoyment that way, that's good, I suppose. As far as conquering something difficult... I think that's more satisfying to me if it's out there in reality--learning a new skill, doing something you've never done before, visiting a new place... those types of things are exciting and fun. Getting Over It doesn't appeal to me, I suppose, because there's nothing for me in return for the frustration. The accomplishment is just a virtual one, and that's not worth hours of aggravating gameplay and condescending monologue to me.
We all play different games for different reasons. The games I'm into are all games that test skill, I don't really get a lot of entertainment from most sim games or purely narrative games(unless that narrative really speaks to me on a personal level). But I'm not _good_ at games, so I'll mostly play on one of the easier difficulties, look up stuff in guides or let's plays etc. I think it's up to myself to moderate the difficulty as much as I can to fit the experience I want, even in games where there's no direct difficulty slider.
I have a lot of fun watching twitch streamers that are way better at games and love a good challenge, so they'll play games with self-imposed rules and handicaps just to have a good time. But I will often be frustrated just watching them way before they become frustrated themselves.
This might be my favorite video from this channel so far
I personally interpret a lot of getting over it as a meditation on the creative process. When it comes to making something, no amount of forward progress is guaranteed, sometimes your hand slips while painting and you make a wrong stroke, maybe a character in your story just doesn't work, maybe a mechanic you've been working on is broken and boring. And just in that beating "getting over it" is not necessarily about skill but perseverance so too is the creative process. Everyone can finish what their working on regardless of skill or thought or intent and sometime never complete it either. Once progresses is lost and you have to fix or rework something It can often feel like you have to start from the beginning and sometime you actually do have to start from the beginning. Your story doesn't work, The colors are all wrong, your game just isn't fun. The only way to grow and create and learn from your mistakes is just to get over it and move forward. get over your mistakes, get over your doubts, get over yourself and just go.
I often envy my younger self for just doing, maybe not finishing but doing. Not because I knew more then but because I knew less, I knew less about what I was doing wrong, oblivious to it and didn't see the faults, just saw the forward progress. That is until I dared to do more, to get better and then things seemed insurmountable. But the only way to move from there is just to persevere. Until you finally get there and maybe even then you don't know why or how you did it but you did. But inevitably you will fail and have to start again and be forced to ask yourself how did you get past that point, how you made that nose look right, how you made that plot twist work, how exactly you made your jumping feel so right. As you persevere you will eventually learn and soon get over that garbage mountain you built for yourself when you dared try climb it.
imo the thing that actually makes this game playable for more than a few minutes is that it's actually fun to play.
I do like your point about asset heavy games having the potential to experiment a lot more, due to the smaller budget. Sort of an expanded indie niche. Unfortunately, it seems that pointless asset flips are a lot more common, so how do you tell the two apart?
Maybe I just don't take games as seriously as Chris (ok I certainly don't), but failure in life is nothing like "failure" in a game, where the only real consequence is a small time loss and whatever emotion you want to attach to that. Isn't a lack of real consequences the whole appeal of a game anyway?
It's incredible you can create a 20 minute video exploring philosophy from a game like Get Over It, tho the basis feels unrealistic and the conclusions overcomplicated.
Yeah, without a lose state a game can end up missing out on a good chunk of entertainment value. Or not, it depends. Sometimes narrative flow is more important to the enjoyment of the game. Foddy certainly sells his argument well, but I have to wonder if it's just post-hoc papering over a chintzy game. Almost like the "lore" of FNaF.
Why modern AAA games are tending towards not losing very often seems like a simpler answer than everything here though - the devs don't want the player to have a continuity break. Forget enjoyment, their goal is engagement. With every break in progress or continuity, they might stop playing. And every time they stop playing there's a chance they might not go back to it. Like the way Chris hasn't gone back to or beaten Get Over It.
I mean, look at something like PUBG. One of the main reasons for its success over its peers was the ease of getting back into a game. It minimized the continuity break. You still had all the enjoyment of the gameplay loop, even with the loss, and the seam in the mobius strip was smoothed over just enough to not trip that "stop playing" threshold as easily as other games of the genre.
So it's not hard to imagine why it's considered a mechanical failing to have players quit out of a game and never go back to it, right? Or am I missing something here?
I think everyone is different. Certainly I don't play most AAA titles anymore for the very reason you describe. When I don;t feel like thre is any real risk, or challenge, or consequence for failure, I am not engaged. No matter how interested I am in the story/music/visuals/aesthetic/charm/polish I just cannot bring myself to finish it. Clearly not everyone feels that way and I do not begrudge AAA games their existence, since games I like are being made faster than I can play them
Just on what you said around the 11:30 minute mark -
I found I never really related to this idea that there aren't incremental victories in Getting Over It. Perhaps the reason why I was able to beat the game in the first place is because I saw the acquisition of skill as the reward, rather than making progress. Every huge setback was another chance for me to further hone my skill at a previous area, and if I did progress forward, I saw it as a way of the game challenging me to develop my skill in a new area.
I suppose this tendency is a double-edged sword. I've never been one much to progress for the sake of progressing, I always feel as though I need to learn and grow. That's part of the reason why I dropped out of college (aside from mental health issues), as I felt my course in studying psychology no longer developed my own internal understanding, I was merely learning to regurgitate and excel in pure academia, which I didn't feel any intrinsic motivation for.
You are the only person on TH-cam I've heard understand character shift from Foddy and the love that is the core of this game. Thank you for finally giving me a video I can show people instead of telling them.
I feel basically the same about Celeste. It might not be one of the considered "hard" games of that specific genre, but I'm really bad at platformers and for me it was. Perseverance was the thing I had to deal with while making it to the summit.
Got a Noah Caldwell vibe from the start of this vid
Lucas Ballard all that is missing is a scenic shot and a handmade sign.
was the intro including some sort of gem from the past, with a production quality that is low but somehow very charming.
I've experienced people watching it and feeling even more frustrated that the person who's playing it. I enjoyed your meditation on difficulty & frustration
This is fascinating, in part because it's the exact opposite of how and why I play video games.
Hey, as neat as this video is, I would really like it that if you quote an online article or other online source in your video, you would link to it in the description so that those of us who want to read those articles and read more deeper on the subject have easy access to those sources and for further research on the subject.
Perhaps one of your best works. Playing this game was sort of eye opening, but the context you provide, with "paradox of faliure" and all, really puts things into perspective.
And I also agree you have to be *in a certain mood to play such games.*
I remember playing osu! (rhythm game) few years back that I had mastered all the 2 Star maps and was getting better at 3 star ones. Few weeks of not playing it (and busy with exams and other conventional games) , I was barely getting a B rank.
Perhaps you could talk about "moods" in future.
It seems to me this game combines two kinds of challenge. One of them I don't consider challenge at all - but rather designed malice. Basically, the fact that the game itself is difficult, that you need to be precise to do certain parts of it is challenge. Here it seems like parts of it are designed, demanding that you do them in a particular way; while other parts are just random and you can cheese your way through them if you bend the physics - which I guess is also a kind of design.
But the fact that you lose your entire progress? That's not difficulty. There's nothing "difficult" or "challenging" about deciding to do the whole thing over again. It's frustrating, annoying, malicious... but if a game's challenge is down to "how much time am I willing to spend with this to complete it" then it's not really a systemically designed difficulty, is it?
There are games that combine the two and come out on top: Hotline Miami, for example. Super Meat Boy perhaps, though for me it veers too much into the "malicious design" camp. This one doesn't seem to care, it has a point, and it grinds that point into you, if you let it. Thankfully, I just don't need to ever play it :)
I can in the abstract see the appeal of Getting Over It, any certain people would like it, but I absolutely cannot empathize with the attraction. I go to games for experiences I am starved for in real life. Frustration and feeling like my obstacles are insurmountable are not exactly rare tastes in that field. I don't shy away from challenging or even frustrating games, but that challenge or frustration without any context except the abstract challenge of getting over that frustration itself sounds awful. Even if I get frustrated by my teammates frequently in Overwatch, I will have made a real concrete victory in overcoming their childish bullshit and getting them to play nice, with a far more valuable reward as a result than Bennett Foddy's approval.
Bennett Foddy had an interview with the roundtable podcast where he talks about some of what he thought of while making it if you want to hear more about it.
1:06 i havnt played the game so the audio is usually toned down for a youtuber to be able to talk... but just the sound design... its interesting because it just seems infuriating on its own... the clanking and clacking of the bot, the hamer swinging violently and seemingly randomly, and his grunting constantly, all that seems like it could get onto a person with that alone.
I love the way you make me look at games
Great video, love it, hit just about all the beats about the game itself, but as you mention in the beginning of the video, most people probably found out about it through twitch streamers et.al., and I find it pertinent to comment on this game's excellent suitedness for streaming; in its nature, it explains its own momentary drama so explicitly that there is no emotional filter between player and audience.
A lot of games can be great drama to watch someone try and fail and then win at, but most require some level of explanation, "what's this do? What does this mean? what just happened?" The most popular streaming games, mobas like LOL and DOTA most definitely do, but Getting Over It is in its design to visually transparent; when you fall, you fall, when you climb, you climb etc., it has to me been one of the most enjoyable games to watch live streamed.
You really have this way of taking something I wasn't interested in, and giving me some insight on what I'm not seeing initially. Stellar work as always, can't wait for the next one!
Ah I have to say I enjoy this channel. Longform content in with a nice clear style of presentation that is equally relaxing and perfect to put on while editing my own videos (like right now) or other tasks I have, and to also become absorbed in and watch all of.
Thanks for continuing this channel.
So, MrBTongue returns from the dead, a new Errant Signal episode, and I got to see Miyazaki on the big screen. That is a good day.
I have a profound respect for this game. I don't want to play it, mind you, but I respect it.
Awesome.
I may try it now that I know it's not just "another hard game"
People don't seek out hard games because they like frustration. They seek it out because they seek mastery. Different types of games appeal to different needs, and it's why different cultures tend to have different types of games. In the US everything has become about convenience and instant gratification. As a result people tend to want stuff without any hassle.
This translates into games that just let you go through by doing the most basic of inputs. The other issue is as you mention, studios create their worlds with the story and cut scenes in them, due in part to this games as movie mind set. So they expect it to be like a movie where everyone should be able to watch the whole thing. And as more casuals get into the market they too wanna go through it without hitting an impassible road block so they can see the game unfold.
This mind set can be fine for heavy narrative driven games like Mass Effect because it's more about the story. But too many games it seems fall into this trap. And when it comes to loss/win states perhaps they should actually make the player's skill effect the story.
Take ME1 for example, you have to pick to help whoever you sent to the AA tower or the one guarding the bomb. This is suppose to be tense and an interesting choice but it just is not because you know whoever you pick the other one dies. But if instead say you got a timer, and if you make the smart call and go for the AA tower there is a chance that if you take down the AA tower fast enough you can make it back to the bomb site to save the companion. Where as if you pick the bomb you simply hold out and the AA tower person dies taking it out since you can't leave the bomb, or maybe there is a way to seal off the enemies approach so you can secure the bomb and then if time permits make a run to the AA tower. This way someone who is really skilled can save both.
This could be extended out in so many missions too with different levels of success effecting how things play out in the story, instead of the standard do this mission where failure is just a game over and redo screen instead of having to face those consequences. So in a way it also rewards failure as they get to see something people who were really good didn't.
But of course his brings us back to devs put all that time into the story and they want you to see it all. It's why more and more dialogue options have the NPCs respond in exactly the same way regardless of what you say. The only difference a lot of times is you either gain or loss favor.
A typical dialogue might go something like your companion comments on how they don't like the outfit they have to wear for the mission. Your options are "A: It looks nice, B: It'll do for the mission, C: Yeah it looks like crap" And the NPC's response regardless is "Well that's just your opinion, let's get this over with." But you favor rating with them changes based on the option you pick so say A is +10, B no change, and C is -10. The bigger the choice is when you go back and try the other options the more you release just how pointless the choice really was.
The result is the more story based the game is the linear and easier it tends to become because they want to appeal to a wider audience. But when games rely more on actual game play with less empathize on story it's free to be about the actual gameplay and the challenge that presents, along with the great feeling of mastery that comes from conquering it. Too many non-story heavy games though fail to realize this so they follow the trend of watering things down for an easy to get through game which ends up ruining them.
PyroMancer2k definitely
This channel deserves a million subscribers or at least half.
Game difficulty vs accessibility? Now that's a video I'm looking forward to even more than this one!
I saw this game on Steam a few weeks ago and thought it'd be your sort of thing to talk about.
Sports games are also really evident of the idea that players are never in full control. In baseball games, you can make hard contact, have good timing, and guess pitch and location spot on and end up hitting it right at someone, making all your effort wasted and you're out. In basketball games you can miss wide open shots even when your stats are high, because no one makes them all. In football games, your teammates drop balls and miss tackles.
First a new MrBtongue video (!) and now a new Errant Signal video. I feel spoiled.
Wait, what?! I must find this now!
He is still alive? awesome!
Farksisten All this straight after a new Matthewmatosis video. Amazing week for in-depth gaming critique TH-cam!
..."a new MrBtongue video"
WHOAT?!!
very similar philosophy to My Summer Car! so many failure states without actually failing (by dying). you should do a video essay about it when it is finished (it's in early Access)
Informing and truly useful as usual Chris. Thanks!
Laughed at the "Stolen late game footage".
it's like if Samuel Beckett made a video game, absolutely beautiful
Many years ago i started hard games like darksouls, isaac super smash bros. And later compattetive games like league of legends and apex. I played them started having fun in the beginning. But after doing lots of failures when a game gets harder or whem im getting killed early on in a match in apex, i feel frustrated and start being anxious about myself and sometimes about the game and other players. I always want to be the best in something. I stopped appreciating the lessons a game tries to give me. I struggle with myself in that point.
Now i realise i have to change my point of view again and see failures as lectures.
I know you aren't as attuned to mechanical design as other aspects of game design, so I wanted to give you my perspective on the topic of difficulty and consistency.
First, a little bit of context: I believe that the act of progressing is what compels me the most in games. I tend to focus solely on forward motion through the story/world, and I tend to seek full completion when doing so is important in the context of the game's mechanics (for example, every achievement in the Binding of Isaac unlocks items for future runs, that's why I spent the time and effort on getting every single one). I also believe that I am currently suffering the effects of maladaptive perfectionism, combined with my mind being unhealthily devastated when expectations are suddenly pulled out from under me.
You'd think that I'd avoid tough challenges like the plague from what I've said. And to some extent, you'd be right. But that compulsion to make progress and mechanically wring a game of its potential has occasionally led to what feels like unnecessary pain.
When I say pain, I'm not talking about some twinge of frustration that comes and goes. I'm talking about something that I realize must be wrong, something that exists in the game that I'm unable to change or avoid. Let me try to explain an example of this:
Keeper in The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. This character starts out with awful damage per second, the slowest movement speed, and 2 coins as health (with no ability to upgrade your health, unlike almost every other character. In a game focused on avoiding enemy bullets and enemies that chase after you to cause contact damage, this results in runs where you aren't provided with movement speed or damage upgrades. And there are rooms with enemies placed in a way that you require massive dps or flight in order to avoid damage (there's one room I have in mind right now, that throws you into a combat scenario with several charging spiders that surround you in literally less than 2 seconds). Not every run is winnable, even at TAS level.
Moments like this are nothing short of heart-wrenching to me, and I feel helpless to change anything in the future, as from my perspective, every random run has the same probability to be a success or a failure as the last one. After a 10 losing streak, I'm unconsciously convinced that my agency has vanished. I wish I could tell the developers about this, at least that could give me a little hope...
And I know some people can be fine with that. But I want to say that this type of design has no place in a strict mechanically-focused game. Let me try and address possible counter-arguments:
First off, the idea that games where everything can be predicted and controlled by the player are artificial by nature, and that occasional unexpected disaster makes the game feel more real.
Of course it is, that's the fundamental idea behind mechanically focused games. To give you an unnatural yet reliable and enjoyable experience.
With games that attempt to immerse you in a realistic setting, that argument can hold some water. For example, Dark Souls encouraged players to poke around and see which paths were dangerous to find the correct path early on.
But with a game where everything is blatantly digital and artificial to begin with (the majority of roguelites), that argument can only act as a cop-out, unless the entire game is designed around that aforementioned idea (Getting Over It seems to fit here).
Second, some people say that it's interesting and memorable when something disastrous suddenly happens.
I can buy that, but only as opinion. Never as truth.
I'm not talking about scripted unconveyed moments here (like monsters in set positions dropping from the ceiling). I'm talking about when random elements cause the course of a run to immediately plummet toward failure, for example when you get a shield hacking event in Sector 1 of FTL, and the enemy ship's drone destroys you or cripples you immensely.
I don't think moments like these should ever be defended in games with a pure mechanical focus. They need to be addressed directly, and not dismissed by anyone.
(I want to quickly mention that I feel sick to my stomach when someone implies that being able to win at something consistently makes it too easy by default, that's just not true. And even if it can be true, it's still something that messes with me mentally.)
Finally, some people attempt to deflect the issue by claiming that I'm just not meant to do what I'm doing. An example is of the Four Kings in NG+6 in Dark Souls 1. I vented once about how the encounter is an incredibly strict DPS battle requiring minmaxing, despite the fact that Dark Souls 1 encourages slow and safe tactics the entire time (with a couple blatantly unfinished exceptions, such as the Capra Demon and Bed of Chaos). Someone responded by saying that maybe I'm just not supposed to expect that kind of fairness from New Game Plus 6, that maybe it isn't supposed to be a fair encounter at that point. But the developers set the variables for enemy damage and health, and the game doesn't just get harder infinitely, it stops at New Game plus 6. I guess that this isn't much of a complaint, considering that that person was sort of half right, but the fact that the Four Kings forces you to completely change how you fight a boss in a way that takes you out of the experience and focus on numbers over in-the-moment decisions just screams bad design to me.
And none of this even scratches the surface of a more contentious topic, the limits of human reaction. This is where things start changing from purifying the mechanical focus of a game to creating accessibility, which is something that people tend to think negatively of when it comes to games with a heavy mechanical focus.
By limits of human reaction, I'm referring to reading telegraphs in a split second (e.g. Dark Souls 3 and Devil May Cry), processing perceivable consequences within an incredibly short amount of time (enemies in Crypt of the Necrodancer, for instance, can have seemingly unpredictable effects yet work within very consistent mechanics, therefore all multi-tiered interactions can be perceived and dealt with properly, even in a split second), handling incredibly sensitive movement (like how the hammer in Getting Over It is technically consistent, but the fact that you're limited by your human motion means that consistent will never yield consistent movement, the real world causes too much variance for the average human), and last but not least, perfect steadiness (the ability to make no mistakes for extended periods of time. Out of all the topics listed thus far, this one has been triggering my perfectionism the most because I simultaneously understand what needs to be done, while also feeling like no progress is ever made at improving myself other than sheer luck. "Maybe during the past 75 runs, my brain never got distracted once at key moments that my runs pivoted on. But now I can never replicate that or improve on it until it lines up in the same way." These types of thoughts eat away at me. No joke.). This topic can vary from person to person, for example, not everyone has the same minimum reaction time, therefore there isn't an axiomatic standard for perceivable telegraphs.
I don't have any definitive statements on this topic, but I believe that all developers who wish to push their players to such a high level of mechanical finesse should be required to be aware of such variance in human limits.
This topic has been on my mind for quite a while now, and it's something I've had trouble fully explaining to any single person. Hopefully I was able to compile everything in a way that made sense. Thank you so much for reading this.
SoloMael good comment. I'd respond but I probably wouldn't be as insightful lol.
A very interesting answer. About your point on human reaction, I stopped playing hard games (like Binding of Isaac) and abandoned all hope of ever playing games like Dark Souls and such because I don't have good reflexes, for various reasons (mostly because of recurrent insomnia, being constantly tired does that to you :D).
While I can accept failure in competitive multiplayer (I can't ask for people to be easy on me because I'm not as quick), It's really hard to accept failure in solo experiences where bosses demand you to react super fast (I'm looking at you Hyperlight Drifter and your sudden wall of difficulty at the first boss). I'm just barred from enjoying the whole experience because of a "medical problem". I kind of accept that but not really. :
I really appreciated your insightful take on this. Wonderful video.
It's interesting seeing a nuanced breakdown of gameplay.
great video, commentaries like this are what make this channel great and unique
I think Foddy's sense that success tastes sweeter if it's laced with bitter failure is the experience of someone who's never really gone into a game with the sure knowledge that they will be bad at it. From his writing, he seems curiously uninterested in the experiences of people who are "bad at games" - their experience with his game about failure will be not frustration, but boredom.
Difficulty Versus Accessibility? No way in hell to avoid talking about Celeste, there.
What fascinates me about Celeste is that it seems to contextualize it's difficulty in a completely different way from, say Kaizo games or Getting Over It - the game is hard as hell, but it wants you to succeed. It wants players to eventually beat it, with enough perseverance and time. This is what the game is about, too - Madeline wants to climb the mountain because she want to prove she can do something difficult. Compared to other hard platformers, Celeste is practically cheering for you.
Which brings me to the assist mode. It's a great idea: if you want to, you can break the game and make it easier, to play through the story and art content without as much difficulty. But, in my mind, it also makes that story unarguably worse. So in this case, with the difficulty so integral to the actual "other stuff", how accessible are you making the game by reducing the difficulty?
Interesting, but I do wish you'd talk about the flipside of that issue, the disability perspective on the issue of difficulty in games. Because, I will say that there's certain manifestations of the philosophy Foddy talks about/worships at that not only penalize the disabled in games, but also in real life; the idea that Challenge Is Good For You being brewed into If You Seek Help Or Accomidation You're Just Refusing That Challenge.
Prokopetz has an interesting post on that subject I might as well link here: prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/170235637017/bog-dweller-official-prokopetz
My original script was going to be about difficulty and (at least in part) how it relates to accessibility and game literacy. Unfortunately, I eventually realized this game was more about failure/pain/frustration, and had to do a last minute rewrite of the script (hence my credit tag).
I do totally want to explore the ideas of game literacy, difficulty, and accessibility, and how they intertwine and conflict with one another, but halfway through this game I realized it was a really poor venue for that discussion. Still, I have a bunch of notes on it, and I totally agree it's an unaddressed issue here. I hope to come back to it soon! Like, in the next few months soon, if all goes well!
It is a perversion of the purity in the idea that challenge can be a rewarding and uniquely personal and spiritual experience, and that challenge is a unique thing to each person. I'm glad you brought this up here.
Thomas Johnson Not to sound mean but everyone is different. Just because people can play soccer doesn’t mean we are trying to exclude the disabled.
That's a poor comparison, playing soccer requires the ability to do certain things, e.g. being able to run.
Game difficulty however is not absolute and can be varied to match the abilities of the people who play them.
You're soccer analogy would only be fitting if it pertained to people unable to hold a controller.
Even people unable to hold a controller can play games. There was a video of a paraplegic guy beating platinum difficulty in ME3 multiplayer solo a few years back.
A game about suffering, defeat, and pain with the main character as a naked man in a pot...
Great video as always, Chris. I have a suggestion, and I know it falls a little outside your usual themes, but have you considered making a video about BotW or Mario Odyssey? I've been thinking about both a lot lately, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on both. Anyway, just a thought. Thanks for the great video.
i don't seek to experience failure, but to achieve something that requires skill. acquiring skill necessitates experiencing failure.
I... hate the gameplay that im watching...
I beat it 50 times. You learn to love it.
or to summarise - Zangief: "Zangief, you are Bad Guy, but this does not mean you are /bad guy/."
Celeste is an interesting example of a difficult game that feels like it wants you to succeed. It's kind of the opposite of Getting Over It.
the subject matter of this video is why Rougelikes feel so engaging to play.
QwoP has an actual ending though. If you run the full sprint you go past a finish line.
Something about me being some virtual entity's will/soul stuck with me. Neat!
Oh, I see. Now I understand why that game got so popular recently.
*Watching* the gameplay footage gave me sweaty palms. Geez