Torturing myself with games

 Why are we still here? Just to suffer?

The role of video games and how they serve us in the entertainment field is obviously (or at least obvious to anyone with the mind to look and pay attention) a lot less linear than 'play game makes me feel good'. Games can exist to tell intriguing stories, convey complex emotional journeys, reconstruct the way we form and recount narrative and, in some instances, inflate our sense of self worth through the bitter crucible of challenge. I've sought out games for most of those reasons in the past, but today (and the last half of this solstice) I've been truly sold into the dance of self flagellation and it is torturous. My punisher? Hollow Knight. That game I already completed and thought; 'Once I get that blog out, I can put the thing down. Maybe once Silk Song gets a release date I'll pick it back up for another playthrough.' If only my plans were strong enough to make it to paper. Instead I've been torturing myself for day after day and I'm getting to the point where I have to ask; how bad for me is this really?

Just to give any of ya'll a headsup, this isn't a topic on how healthy games in general are but rather my relationship to them, as such it's going to be a personal dive but I hope there's something others can ascertain for themselves through this light introspection. So, Hollow Knight. From the start all I wanted to do was finish the game, learn what it was about, and final to satisfy the story. Team Cherry really won me over with their surprisingly straight-laced dark fantasy narrative and I adored how the true ending played itself out. I was happy with that ending. It was fulfilling. But of course in discovering that ending I did learn there was another out there, a sort of 'alternative true ending', which doesn't mechanically change the events of the world, but plays them out in a different fashion. And in fact, it was an ending added by the Godseeker update.

So what exactly is this ending and how does it relate to my torture? It's the reward for completing all the Godseeker Pantheons (boss runs) before unlocking and completing the Pantheon of the Hallownest. That final Pantheon entails fighting every boss in the game, or a specifically designed harder version of one of those bosses, in a 42 boss straight run. It's essentially a middle finger in the face. And were this proposed by literally any other game I'd have ignored it entirely... but Hollow Knight is really fun. The controls are tight, the bosses are creative and cool, and some part of me wants to at least experience all the developers have made for this title. But 42 bosses? Am I really that masochistic? And why is the answer yes? For the past few days whenever I've found myself not actively doing something for more than three minutes (so yeah, pretty much every other second during Christmas) I've hopped onto the Pantheon grind once more to make myself a little better. And I'm reaching the point where I don't even know what I'm getting out of the experience anymore.

So far I've completed each of the first three pantheons and their Binding challenges (If you don't know what that means, just imagine I was punching myself in the face constantly during each run. it's essentially that.) I have the Knight's Pantheon next and then I get the right to even attempt the Pantheon of the Hallownest. And I'm a little worried. Not worried about being able to reach it. (I've been practising Pure Vessel all night and have downed him at least 8 times, I'm getting better.) But rather I'm afraid of getting into the challenge and being unable to put the thing down for the amount of devotion it's going to demand of me. Is this even about the ending anymore? I can look that up on Youtube. No, at this point I'm driven by the frustration, anger and loathing of each failed attempt. It's as though I'm dragging myself through this in the vain hope that once I've topped everything (if I get that far) then I'll finally be beyond the self deprivation that swells in the quietest moments, at least for today.

As strange as that sounds, that really is the underlying neurosis that drives my obsession with all ludicrously hard games and why, when the game is solidly made and boasts control fidelity to the point where every single failure is the fault of no one but the player, I physically cannot bring myself to back down from the challenge. (If it isn't that finely tuned then I can walk away easily. It's as though my hope out of the experience is to be in situations wherein I can blame myself for not being good enough.) It's a feeling I get from seeking out games like Pathfinder Kingseeker (A near miserable experience on even moderate difficulties) when I have just as many casual games waiting untouched on my harddrive, like Stardew Valley or Terraria. (Terraria is super causal the way I play it. I essentially just make it my box-cave generator game.)

Stubbornness is a centripetal force at the heart of this equation which pulls me into it's orbit incessantly, because part of the only value I've ever managed to unerringly assign myself is my willingness to be stubborn in all life. Even when I accept something is never going to work and I'm trying in total vain, I'll push against it anyway because of some misguided ideal that rewards the blunt force of 'stubbornness' in my head by transforming it into a phantom called 'perseverance'. Call it the P word and suddenly is sounds like some heroic feat of man, to strive in the face of adversity, but strip it away to what it is and the truth lays itself bare: it's just nasty and cannibalistic and distressing. That relief which most who enjoy these types of games seek is horrendously shortlived for me, because Stubbornness isn't about succeeding, it's about struggling, and when there's nothing left to struggle against it just leaves me feeling empty.

At the end of the day this all funnels back to something I've touched on briefly in this blog, my personal depression bug. (Oh that wily little worm!) Total diminishment of self worth is a common symptom and I have other ways of seeing myself through bad patches than video games. In fact, for the really bad patches I can't even bring myself to play videogames. But sometimes I get into these cycles where a few of the games I play are feeding me into these cold, bitter cycles of finding dredging up ever more inferiorities and hammering them deeper and deeper into my skull. Through no fault of the games in question, I hasten to add, but my own self-poisoning mentality. But then I get struck with the sense that the very partition between the real world and the game world is allowing my demons to exorcise themselves in that fantasy space thus giving me the chance to be my normal muted self in the real world. God knows how terrible I'd feel if I became the sort of person who lashed out at others because of their depression. We like to think that's never the sort of person we'd be, but I just don't know sometimes.

So that's the sort of thing which bumbles about my skull in this crappy, cold, dark time of year we call Christmas, if you need any concrete evidence for why I bitterly hate this time of year. Also, I've had a cold all last week, so that doesn't help matter none either. But I don't wish to sound like a totally hopeless bitter old shrew or anything, and in fact merely going over this in my head (or spelling it on on digital paper) works wonders in shifting perspective in my head on seeking a healthier dopamine distribution in this silly little noggin. Whatsomore, the positive attitude helps me perform a tiny bit better somewhat. Heck, I just served up the Pure Vessel twice in a row. (Is that enough to take the Pantheon plunge? Maybe I need a bit more practice runs first...)