hey dom answer this please: is it masochistic to ride a rollercoaster?
what about reading a book?
I mean why do all books have like all these PAGES OF INFORMATION when it's really about the conclusion of the story. is reading through those pages masochistic? why don't people just look up IT WAS HIS SLED on wikipedia instead of watching Citizen Kane?
No this isn't anything like what I'm saying. First, riding rollercoasters, reading books etc, do not involve any pain, you are not willfully exposing yourself to any pain. The entire experience of these things is enjoyable. This is massively different to masochistic games that force you to fail repeatedly during the course of the game.
your entire point is that playing games is somehow a PAINFUL AND AWFUL EXPERIENCE and you're not even arguing that it's THIS which the players enjoy (which WOULD make it masochistic) but that because they play to avoid that pain it is therefore instrumental to the game itself and therefore the reason for playing. this is a leap of logic so gigantic it makes the analogy I posted before look benign.
Again, not my point at all. The failure events are so ingrained in the concept of the game and the process of playing the game, that the gratification is only possible because of the pain. The gratification is a consequence of the pain because that is the only way it can exist. In order to achieve gratification, the player is subjecting himself to pain.
the whole premise that anything other than THE GOAL or COMPLETION OF THE GAME is this awful chore that you have to go through is completely crazy. the reason why people enjoy playing difficult games is because it forces them to think and compete and test their ability to react to what they see on the screen. it's effectively about doing something which you know is within your reach, but requires your full attention to accomplish. it's intrinsically rewarding. the fact that you can LOSE at games and that you can endure hardship during the process is true but you basically conclude, for some reason, that this is THE BASIS FOR EVERYTHING. the reason why you can lose is because there would otherwise be no challenge, and thus the game simply wouldn't be fun. but yeah somehow to you this means that PEOPLE ENJOY LOSING.
In Super Meat Boy, do you really think players achieve flow? Ever? These games are designed to be constantly out of reach of your skill level. You're never on the right hand side of the mental state graph. You're constantly on the left. Even when you finally beat a screen, you're immediately put on to the next screen, with more challenges that throw you right back.
and because losing is, for some reason, equal to pain, people who play games are therefore masochists.
Losing evokes feelings of shame, humiliation, and worthlessness. To play games dedicated to making you feel these emotions is masochism!
hey dom answer this: if I go to the dentist and have him fix up that painful tooth, am I a masochist for feeling elated when I leave? does that mean I like the pain? if there was no pain, I wouldn't feel relieved because there would have been no reason for me to go there in the first place. does that mean the pain was the reason for why I'm feeling relieved?
You never willingly subjected yourself to that pain, the pain was entirely out of your control. This isn't the same thing at all. Please stop making bad analogies.