Look at that word up there. Taunting me. #*#% you! Bring it on! (It's so gonna kick my %*@.)
Challenge is, for some of us, what makes games worth playing. Sure, flashy graphics are nice. A great story is interesting. Empowerment and fantasy are fun. But working for the reward is, again for some of us, more important than the reward itself.
But challenge is a complicated subject crossing multiple disciplines that I barely know anything about. So let's start slowly, by attempting a simple definition of the word.
From the Free Online Dictionary:
A challenge is a test of one's abilities or resources in a demanding but stimulating undertaking.
That's a sweet definition for gaming. That reminds me of games that challenged me, of hard fought victories that took hours; days; weeks. That makes me hungry. Perhaps the love of challenge is linked to predatory instinct. The love of the hunt.
Push me to the edge. Push me past it. Break me. Watch me come back. Stronger. And stronger. And stronger. Until luck, or skill, or whatever is required gives me the opening I need to break you.
If you find this viewpoint alien, or even disturbing, I don't blame you. This feeling has little to do with our modern existence. Outside of high level sports or gaming or actual combat, anyone with that kind of mindset is pretty much an %*@hole. Heck, maybe we're %$@holes regardless. But we don't care.
The mountain is there. It must be climbed.
1 comment:
Challenge doesn't need to be adversarial. Learning to play an instrument or fly a helicopter is a challenge, too. But there's that extra satisfaction that completing a difficult level or besting a human opponent gives that just isn't present in other activities.
Of course, if it's not a human opponent, the challenge is often illusory. It was built to be overcome. But in the best games, it was built to make you work for it. Hard. Which can actually be more satisfying since human opponents sometimes have a bad day or just aren't up to your skill level or are way too far above you to learn anything from.
*#&$ there's a lot to be said about challenge.
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