Masochistic gaming, or "If you hate it so much, why are you still playing?"

[Dragonlayer]

As I struggle through World of Tanks, an endeavor that requires equally the patience of a saint and the vocabulary of a sailor, it occurs to me that there's a fair chunk of games out there that seemingly skirt all the requirements of a video-game like "Fun" and "Does not pop your blood vessels through mind-boggling levels of rage" and yet have devoted player-bases. Now would be the obvious point to riff on the Dark Souls series but it was always their aim to challenge players - I'm talking about otherwise "Normal" games that drive you up the wall in frustration, yet keep you crawling back for more.

So my questions for the Escapist are threefold:

What are your masochistic games?

Why do you play them?

Will you forgive me if I lapse into Tourette's syndrome after missing a point-blank shot for the bazillionith time?

Oh fucking goddamnit, HOW DID I MISS THAT!?

 

[Ubiquitous Duck]

I think you put up with it when it's a game where you thought the outcome was fair, but you were just bested by someone. At least in multiplayer.

Often there isn't that acceptance, shouts of HACKER, OP, UNFAIR - always going to be some excuse.

But if in yourself you know that you could've won that encounter and you want to prove that you can, that can often be a motivator. The problem can be if you see the skill ceiling as too high and unattainable, such as Tribes.

A typical game for a singleplayer example would be Super Meat Boy. You can cruise through that game for fair chunks, but then you will just start hitting these brick walls of difficulty and will just die repeatedly for ages, but there is something pushing you to get to the goal and progress.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

My girldfriend can't seem to wrap her head around why I play Dark Souls. I get mad when I die, and she asks me why I would want to play a game that makes me mad. I reply that just because an experience is sometimes frustrating does not mean that it isn't other times fun and rewarding. Most games can raise your blood pressure and certain points, that doesn't make them not worth playing.

 

[Evonisia]

Any multiplayer game ever. Right now it's Black Ops II. So much makes me angry from the headglitchers, campers, quickscopers, target finger LMGers, R870 users, bad spawns, predictable map design and lag compensation, but I still love it oh so much. Still the weapon balance is (generally) brilliant, some of the maps are great, objective game modes are still fun, I genuinely have so much fun with it.

 

[Bad Jim]

It's simple really. The frustration of failure goes hand in hand with the feeling of accomplishment when we prevail. Easy games are not frustrating, but there is no feeling of accomplishment either. So we look for games that challenge us, because they will make us feel awesome when we finally conquer them.

I'll get you eventually, Asylum Demon. Just you wait.

 

[Skydis]

League of Legends, losing is no fun at all, especially if you have rude teammates, but the satisfaction of victory or when you're just doing well almost balances out the frustration.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I got this question from my girlfriend routinely when a fresh torrent of profanity would explode from my room during sessions of Hearthstone or DOTA2. Some games are just bad for your blood pressure.

I always find it amusing when people spout hate for MMOs they've freshly spent hundreds or thousands of hours playing though. They write these dramatic goodbye letters about what a horribad failboat the game is. Could barely stand it for 500 hours!

 

[Ninmecu]

I'd point at the current state of D3 as a game I had to stop playing because I'm a sadist, not a masochist. Every item is completely randomly generated and it's recently come to light(Though as far as I'm aware, unconfirmed.) that the legendary drops, which are the real game changers, are weighted differently. So to put it simply, you have to kill any and all things and hope against hope that a legendary item drops, hope that it's an item in the slot you're after and hope that that one legendary item you want that is game changing for you is the one that is identified, then on TOP OF ALL THAT, you have to hope it rolls with your mainstat and stats that are actually beneficial, otherwise you can only change ONE AND EXACTLY ONE stat on the item, which is further gambling and can cost upwards of 20million in game gold, which is now rare as all hell and account bound, meaning a paywall is redundant and idiotic. The whole thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

I've got two of them.

I just went on another post and ranted about a recent experience with Battlefield 3. I think the reason I keep going back despite aggravation is because I'm a spiteful bastard who cannot take the notion of a game beating me. I cannot recall ever actually enjoying the game, which cannot be healthy.

One that really stands out to me though is SimCity 4. You can't really beat the game as it's ongoing, but my god did they make it way too hard. I think it's more to do with the advisors than anything else. They pop up way too frequently and halt progress and the only way to appease them is to go way over budget which gets the financial advisor on your case. I enjoy that game right to my bone for reasons I just don't understand.

I will admit that one later mission in Drivthreer that I simply cannot beat. You have to chase Calita in a car then on a bike but I've never been able to do it, even though I'm great at power slides and have beaten every other mission with ease. I've even done the "unlock all missions" cheat and did the missions afterwards really fast. It just that one single difficulty spoke that made me give up.

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

I don't really understand why people play games that that hate or make them mad,.. if I find a game that makes me mad then I just quit, and play something else.. I'm might come back to it later, but then again I might never play it again.. like Persona 2. i downloaded it of the PS store, hated it , was frustrated by it, so i quit it, never played it again, and i went back to Persona 3 FES (also downloaded off of the PS store)

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

"Team Fortress 2".

This is how bad I am at this game.

As medic, I rarely get "uber". And when I do, my uber targets are as follows:

1) Sniper. Just in case those enemy snipers are waiting to headshot him.
2) Engineer. Gotta keep those buildings up!
3) Enemy spy (generally disguised as friendly sniper / engineer).

When I see an enemy demoman, stickybomb launcher out, standing invitingly on the other side of a suspiciously narrow doorway or arch, I will immediately run through it to confront him.

As a scout, I am great at finding enemy sentry guns. (Usually it takes me about five seconds longer for me to find where the gun is than it takes the gun to actually kill me.) As soldier, my rocket jumps always seem to end in one of two ways: either I blow myself up when jumping, or I die from the fall damage afterwards. And as a sniper, my talent for aiming several inches to the side of a player's head is unequalled among TF2ers.

I do have one class that I can play well, however, and that's the pyro. I'm very cautious with my ammo and take great pains to conserve it. I regard this as a huge plus. My team does not always agree with me on that one. I've had a medic, heavy, sniper, demoman and engineer all scream at me over voice comms, to which my response is: "Well you guys are the ones who are dead with knife wounds in your backs. What are you shouting at ME for?"

So... that's how incompetent I am at this game. And yet I still keep coming back to it. I haven't got a clue why. Some kind of insane compulsion? That's all I can think.

 

[Augustine]

I don't know...

I wouldn't exactly say "I hate it" but I had a lengthy easing-in period in Hearts of Iron III which was difficult process, and felt a lot like work. I sort of forced myself to "learn" the game for about a week. After that, I could actually begin playing the game, and it's one my favorites of all time now.

But for an uninitiated observer, gameplay would look like I'm balancing budgets on spreadsheet, I think.

 

[ninjaRiv]

Call of Duty: Ghosts. It's so fucking terrible. It's terrible. Fucking fucking terri-fucking-ble. Make it stop. Better yet, make me stop playing it.

More than one shitty target finder scopes? Ugh. The dog that kills you from miles away? Ugh. The snipers being as terrible as ever? Ugh. Emptying a full clip into someone only to be taken out in a couple of shots? ugh. The people? UGH.

And yet I play nearly every day for about 30 minutes after work. Like I need that stress in my life.

 

[FPLOON]

I remember when DDR was my one true masochistic game... Good times...

OT: Besides Sonic 06 (when I was trying to get all S ranks on the main story levels), playing through Jak 2 on Hero Mode went from that good "fuck da police" feeling to that bad "FUCK DA POLICE" feeling, but dammit did I not complete that mode more than 4 times already... (I feel like doing it a fifth time on the HD collection, maybe...)

Honorable mention to KH1's Sephiroth, BBS's Mysterious Figure (most definitely), and DDD's Julius (not really, but still) for constantly kicking my ass the same way I could kick their ass... sometimes... (Birth By Sleep would say otherwise... in the form of "cheap" combo deaths... "What do you mean that grab-combo counted as a delayed combo attack on my "Once More/Second Chance" ability combo buff?")

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

I think you put up with it when it's a game where you thought the outcome was fair, but you were just bested by someone. At least in multiplayer.

Often there isn't that acceptance, shouts of HACKER, OP, UNFAIR - always going to be some excuse.

But if in yourself you know that you could've won that encounter and you want to prove that you can, that can often be a motivator. The problem can be if you see the skill ceiling as too high and unattainable, such as Tribes.

A typical game for a singleplayer example would be Super Meat Boy. You can cruise through that game for fair chunks, but then you will just start hitting these brick walls of difficulty and will just die repeatedly for ages, but there is something pushing you to get to the goal and progress.

Good God, Tribes! My buddy is insanely good at that game, to the point where people have assumed he's hacking or using a bot so he just gets his IP banned by many servers (which means he doesn't actually play anymore). That's one of those games where I played and enjoyed it, but knew that there was NO WAY IN HELL I would ever be able to get a reasonable K ratio.

OT: I keep coming back to attempt "Raining Blood" on Expert level guitar and failing even though I know the song is massively over-charted just because it's such an awesome riff....I'm good at Guitar Hero/Rock Band on guitar, bass, and drums, but the guys who can 100% a bunch of songs on highest difficulty are at that "skill ceiling" you referred to.

I also loved Battletoads back when I had an NES, even though it was maddeningly difficult. That was one of those games where it was super challenging, but I always felt like deaths were due to my own imprecision, as opposed to purely crappy controls or mechanics (unless we're talking about Clinger Winger with 2 players, that was legitimately buggy).

 

[Rad Party God]

Resident Evil 6.

I'm a big, BIG fan of the Resident Evil series, heck, I still like Resident Evil 5 (yup, I said it), but when I play RE6 with my cousin... good god, I'm thinking "why the fuck are we playing this POS while we could be playing something better?" and yet... I'm still compelled to keep playing it for some reason, I can't put a finger on where or what is driving me to keep me coming back to it, but it just does.

I'd also say that LoL and Dota 2 would be great examples of this, but I haven't played either of them in months, so I'd say that Hearthstone would come up next, sometimes it's incredibly frustrating when I get a struck of bad luck when I start with 5+ MP cards, but if the match is even, I don't even get mad for losing, because it was a great match ^.^

 

[Casual Shinji]

Don't Starve

I love everything about this game, except that the entire thing is a race against the clock. The further I progress the more the game ends up feeling like a full-time job.