The Importance of Challenge

Fear the Boot has a great episode up today that talks about many things, but one of which is old school video games. The question that Dan references in the podcast about OSR games was written by yours truly on the FTB forums.

An interesting part of the discussion for me was the issue of challenge. Chad talks about how he was playing video games for content only and would easily view the end-cutscene of a game online if he hadn't beaten it. Wayne counters that you need to "earn" it. I find Chad's comment to be odd, considering that he loves RPGs and RPGs are very much not about completion so much as about the process. Who has reached level 20? Really? Through play? I rest my case.

The issue of challenge has come up before on this blog and I have said that one of the reasons why I embrace the OSR is because of challenge. I like the idea of challenging situations requiring thought and resource management to overcome.

Imagine for a moment that you and everyone else on Earth can teleport at will to any location they can see. Ignore the massive ramifications of this except one; mountain climbing. If you can teleport at will, then why would anyone ever climb a mountain? Why bother? There is no reason to exert oneself, after all.

However, even if this were true (and with Helicopters, it kinda is), I think there would still be mountain climbers. You see, it is not the view that makes a mountain climber climb. They are not consumed with a desire to stand on that spot. There is no pot of gold there. Mountain climbers don't bother climbing up little scrub mountains like we have here in central Georgia. Climbing to the top of Stone Mountain is no feat. Nobody is going to be proud of that accomplishment. You walked up a trail, big deal. Why does nobody care that you walked up Stone Mountain, but they would be impressed that you climbed up Mount Everest?

Because climbing up Mount Everest is a challenge.

I think old school video games have a value in them precisely because of that challenge. Because it is goddamn hard to beat those games. This is not just true of games like Contra or Mario 1 where you can't save during the entire game. This is true of the old RPGs. If you beat Final Fantasy 1, you are pretty damn good. That is no easy feat. That game is damn hard.

I can hear people saying now, like Ryan Dancey did in his comment last week on this blog, that having games that hard is "bad design". That people fail too often. That it is disappointing to die. That it might hurt someone's feelings.

My reply: it should be disappointing to die. It is also very rewarding to have gotten to 5th level and survived that kind of challenge.

If you remove the risk of failure, you remove the pride of victory.

You cannot be proud that you walked down the street to get a bagel. Unless you are in a war zone or something. Pride comes from overcoming a challenge. And quite frankly, spending an hour rolling dice to mechanically defeat an enemy that poses no real threat to you... that is not a challenge.

So let these dumbasses play these easy games and think themselves kings. We will know the truth.