Entering the year of 2020, anyone who’s into gaming is looking forward to the announced titles coming soon. It is not up to debate if they’ll bring awesome experiences and lift the bar for the next generation, for they will certainly do that. It is almost also guaranteed that we’ll have incredible level and character design, insane amounts of customizable content and at least a year of support and updates to our new to- beloved titles. We will cross breathtaking landscapes and face epic level enemies, we’ll make and remake important story-changing choices (saving before all of them, of course), get new interesting loot, shoot, slash, wreck and punch our way to the most predictable and ego-inflating part: victory.
It is as certain, expected and empty as it never was before. Worthless, effortless, tasteless triumph, followed by trophies, achievements and medals no one could care less. Unless you’re playing an old school MMO.
If you ever logged into Ragnarok Online, Arche Age, Tibia just to mention a few, you know what is like to have your ass beat for no apparent reason in so many different situations you start to feel hopeless, look up to sky and asks: “How the hell am I supposed to do this?”. Well, that’s easy, you’re not supposed to.
In most of these titles, there is no main story/quest, you are not the hero who were send to cleanse this land of evil with your unstoppable power. You’re a scared, worthless, shitless adventurer like anyone else and the bosses and dungeons and exp and loot tables will be there to remind you of that anytime you start to fell too cocky about your accomplishments.
“Well, that doesn’t sound fun”, one might say after this brief introduction, “what is the point of playing a game where you always loose?”, you see, that’s exactly the point, you don’t always loose.
Somewhere along that shitstorm that is coming up with a decent build, farming all the items you need to not be ashamed of the character you’re playing, grinding on some rare maps where exp comes at an honest rate, you will succeed. After dying hundreds of times to that field boss who spawns at that low-level map just because, you’ll get him. But not alone, never alone. You’ll gather as much people as possible, with as much different classes as possible and, for the first time ever, the boss’ AoE won’t kill your whole group. His Earthquake/Fireball/Flood/Avalanche/Thunderstorm/Hell’s Judgement/Waterball/whatever the hell this hellish creature does won’t wipe your party from existence. And you’ll be there, after using literally all of your resources, looking in the eyes of the few who survived the punch. With the largest, thirstiest smile on your face, you’ll remember all you went through that led you up to that moment. Everyone will rebuff, ready their weapons and say “We finally got this motherfucker.”
That loot-less, exp-less and resource-consuming victory will mean much more than finishing any other game at whatever difficulty you can think of. Because you were not supposed to have it, and yet you did it.
From my personal experience, I can only say that getting your ass beat is a fundamental part of the best videogames I ever played, from MMOs to fighting and competitive games, failing again and again is what makes you appreciate the little victories and be marked for life by some exceptional moments, who might be common on single players, but means infinitely more on an environment where friendships, guilds, groups and whole communities are forged by that strange feeling of hope after hours and hours of grinding. That felling that maybe, just maybe, we can actually do it.
Now, if you take some time to think how videogames changed alongside our culture, do you find any similarities? Between the bronze trophies and the participation medals? Between getting a free skin because you’ve reached an average level of play and getting a diploma you didn’t studied to get? Between following a main story line and be completely incapable of doing something unless you’re told so? I can go on all day.
We keep asking ourselves how to fight toxicity (on and offline), how to improve mental health, how to be productive and follow our dreams. It seems to me that, somewhere along the line, we got so hooked up on success that we completely forgot the importance of, and the need to, failure.
My League Games 