Do games have to be so hard?

So if you’ve answered yes to the title of this article, then this article is not for you. I wish you well my friend, and I applaud your tenacity and willingness to play games that are punishingly difficult. I understand the joy of overcoming something incredibly challenging, the feeling of accomplishment in defeating something finally after being felled by it countless times.

And yet, that’s not for me anymore.

I emphasize here, “anymore”. I’m not just some noob here. I’ve been in the game for years, I was an early competitive Halo player when we used to have to daisy chain our consoles together. My thumbs have gone sore and blistered from the OG MegaMan games on the NES. Bro, I lived Battletoads. I have known challenge and hardship.

But I ask this now because I am looking longingly at Hollow Knight: Silksong. I played the first game. I know how lauded this new one is. I have read about the beauty of it. And yet. And yet.

I first encountered this when I played Bloodborne. I figured, sure why not. But that’s when, just a little into the game, I had burned through hours and barely gotten anywhere. And to this point, I know someone will say, “That’s the point. The point of the game is to struggle.”

On one level I understand this. You develop skill through repetition. You develop character through tenacity. Playing insanely difficult games give you a way to develop these things.

But on another level, let’s be real, I am old. Whether it is medically true that my eyes have gotten blurry because of playing so many games is up in the air, but what is true is that my eyes are definitely not what they used to be. And the hand-eye coordination is also not where it once was. Those fast twitch muscles and quick reflexes honed on competitive FPSs are diminished. Hell, if esports athletes begin to decline or retire in their mid-20s, then I am well past my sell-by date.

And yet I still love to play games. I still play and finish a lot of them. I especially appreciate when I am offered difficulty options, and appreciate that even more when I can slide those options around when I find a game getting too hard.

I have also ragequit many a game. Where before I had the time and tenacity to tough up challenging games, I find now that if I feel I’ve gotten my ROI on a game (I have appreciated the story enough, or I’ve given hours commensurate to the price tag). Sometimes I’ll even quit games not out of difficulty, but simply loss of interest, or some annoying design quirk that I don’t want to deal with anymore. Much like my DNF book pile, my Steam Debt and Switch libraries offer many other options.

Which I suppose brings us to the impasse. I want to play Silksong but it wasn’t designed for someone like me. The difficulty is part of the point of it. It’s designed for someone looking for that level of challenge, that unforgiving, but eventually, rewarding experience.

On the other side of it is someone like me who struggles to cobble together a few hours every week to play video games amid a busy, responsibility and commitment-filled life.

There’s an entire world of games that were designed to not be for me. And I guess that’s the thing. Sadly, the masterpiece Silksong won’t ever be in my library. I’ll just have to take other people’s word on its genius, in the same way I hear them talk about Elden Ring. Now excuse me while I clean my old-man glasses and fire up a cozy game.