We Need More Pessimistic Games | Hacker News Reader

We Need More Pessimistic Games

waypoint.vice.com

24 pointssmacktoward76 comments

Why the hell would anyone want that? I've already spent most of my life feeling like I'm slowly drowning, I don't need a two-bit piece of unity shovelware to help me explore the feeling of being trapped within a doomed world of banal everyday evil.

How about a perspective of "Well, I guess it could be worse"?

That "it could be worse" doesn't mean a person is not suffering with their own "better" condition.

Sure, I could be on the verge of starving while doing backbreaking work in a 3rd world country, but that doesn't mean that I should be OK with my own job being unfulfilling or without meaning.

Exactly. "Perfect" may be the enemy of "good", but so is "good enough".

That reminds me of the first episode of Futurama. Leela is talking to her boss and on the wall is the poster of the sad hardhat guy with the slogan: Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

3000 years in the future and it's still pretty much the same.

Because games won't be art until they reflect the meaningless yawning abyss that is human existence.

Do you mean that art must be pessimistic? There are plenty of "happy" and "hopeful" works of art.

And I find that definition highly reductive. Art is not only meaning/message. It's also technical prowess. And innovation.

Of course it's reductive, but on this story's thread, almost the only time you see the A-word is when bleak walking simulators with downer endings are brought up.

I'm forced to conclude that "art", like "hacker", has shifted in meaning: roughly, art is anti-kitsch. It's not art unless it rebels against popular standards of aesthetics (which are popular for a reason; humans inherently respond emotionally to certain things), because once an aesthetic becomes popular it is subject to commercial exploitation and therefore it dilutes true, authentic self-expression. And, much like kitsch is a low-effort (therefore easily producible, reproducible, and marketable) affirmation of popular aesthetics, the repudiation of such may be almost arbitrarily low-effort and still be considered high art. The repudiation itself is what matters, and all that matters, because the job of the artist is to struggle against the commercialization of society and of human experience -- not necessarily to achieve technical prowess or to innovate.

I'm an amateur artist myself. I taught myself visual arts so I could make my own assets for games. I know art is, in reality, much more than this. But in order to wear the art badge in today's wider society, and thus be considered Worthy of Serious Consideration, message is both necessary and sufficient -- and it has to be the right message or it doesn't count.

You could make the same argument about books... why the hell would anyone want to read 1984?

I'm glad we don't live in a world where all of the books, movies, and video games have been sterilized and sanitized and pumped full of diazepam.

Everyone is different, but I'd hazard that books and games tickle different needs.

Books are most commonly about transmitting information; particularly in the form "if you encounter this hardship, adopt that mindset". Games are mostly about "verify that your decision making process is robust".

Nobody is forcing writers and gamemakers to conform to my worldviews, but there is a trend in those directions with exceptions.

If somebody made a game that really explored on "how should you think about horrible situation X" that was gloomy all the way through people would probably enjoy it. But if you have a skill-based game that breaks the success->reward feedback loop for executing a skill well, all the players will quit.

1984 is more than just pessimism, it's a warning that Orwell wrote because he hoped that there was time to change. Games like Mirror's Edge have a similar message: dark times are ahead if we don't take action. I read and play them in the spirit of preventing disaster and I can't imagine other people are much different.

Kunzelman writes that "pessimism, crucially, does not see a way out." The world cries out for a way out of global warming, food insecurity, nuclear proliferation: does it do any good for us to paralyze ourselves with imagined impotence?

Pessimism and optimism are different lenses to view the world, I don't think there's a solid case to be made that privileges one over the other. Looking at the world through either lens distorts what we see. Take global warming as an example. If I am optimistic, I could believe that we will curb carbon emissions and convert the world to use clean energy. If I am pessimistic, I could believe that we'll face severe ecological devastation and food shortages.

"Hope for the best, expect the worst" is only possible if you are capable of seeing both the optimistic solution to a problem and the pessimistic consequences for failing to solve a problem. If you limit yourself to only an optimistic or only a pessimistic viewpoint, you are crippling your ability to deal with problems rationally.

Why watch movies that aren’t sugary Disney films?

One of the games that affected me most in my life was Passage, a dead-simple, pixellated indie experiment that was about eight minutes long. It was not a happy game. I still think about it from time to time.

That’s the power of art.

Sorry to hear that, hope you find a way to make yourself feel better.

I personally enjoy music and films that embraces the darker side of humanity but video games have a pretty big gap in comparison. I guess i like creators that embrace this rather than push it away or pretend it doesn't exist. There is strength in this.

I've recently played Dark Souls 3 and it's depressing, as is Bloodborne; both games (spoilers etc) feel kinda meaningless in the end. The premise of Dark Souls 3 is that there's a cycle of light (fire) and dark, and the objective - not just for the individual instalments, but for the world as a whole - is to link the fire, so that the age of fire lasts for a little longer - but the other side, the age of dark, is inevitable (and optionally you can cause it). The world is old, every civilization has fallen and/or decayed, and there doesn't seem to be any way for it to get back to normal given how everyone's either undead or dying.

Bloodborne is a bit less hopeless, in that it feels like there's a pretty normal world outside of the game area. However, it's depressing in all three endings; spoilers again, the first ending is probably the least depressing one, where after defeating the final boss, you just kneel down in front of your guide / master (so to speak), accept your fate, and choose to forget all of the events. You just wake up in the morning as if nothing happened. In the second one, you fight and defeat your master, buuut an eldritch monstrosity that masterminded the repeating cycle comes in and eats you, turning you into the replacement of the guide. The final ending is where you defeat the eldritch monstrosity and are reborn yourself as an eldritch monstrosity, again (probably?) repeating the cycle.

No real happy endings there. It's all just bleak and meaningless.

One interesting thing about Dark Souls is that there is quite a bit of ambiguity around what the "age of dark" actually implies, and there's a lot of hints that it might actually be a beneficial state for humanity.

Personally I found Bloodborne to be even more hopeless. It's all based on a Lovecraftian view of the universe, where we're completely insignificant next to these higher order beings and concepts. There are also almost no happy endings for any of the NPCs, which contrasts with Dark Souls a bit. But again, that's a really good translation of Lovecraft into video game form!

Ah Bloodborne is amazing. Every interaction with non violent NPCs is seeping with tragedy even when you do the "right"thing. Send everyone to the chapel? You let a murder in also that will wipe them out. Ok so send him elsewhere; they all go insane and one of them gives birth to an old god. Your character is just a force of nature watching everything decay around them further.

I like how From Software is able to present kingdoms / societies that have fallen from grace but each with their own spin making you wonder if they were ever great or just nostalgia.

While I agree that pessimistic games are essentially non-existent, there's good reason for that. Why would a video game developer make a completely depressing, humdrum, everyday office worker game? Game designers and gamers want something more flashy, fun, intriguing, competitive. They want to escape daily routine, not return to a virtual version of it.

Video games always have the additional move that the developer can't remove: "Turn The Game Off". If your game can't compete with that, you're going to have very "selective appeal".

Not that I need every game to be a maximally-empowering dopamine releaser to compete, but if you're going to present me with something that's actually bleaker and more draining than my own real life, you're not going to last long.

Other forms of art have their own additional ways of compensating for that sort of thing that I don't see being options in video games, although, even then I'd suggest the appeal is fairly selective. French movies in black and white about existential crises and the fundamental meaninglessness of life don't compete very well with $MARVEL_MOVIE at the summer box office.

Does art in general try to compete for your attention like modern media does?

It does, whether it likes it or not. This isn't anything new; there have been 24 hours in a day and limited number of years in a life for a long time now.

Selective appeal is fine. Black and white existential French films don't need to compete with the latest MCU flick because they weren't filmed on a $200Mil budget.

Similarly, making a AAA video game title about ennui is stupid, but small indie studios doing $10-20 releases for a 5-10 hour gameplay art-game is a thing.

You can close the book and turn off movie or tv-series too. Pessimistic pieces and tragedies exists and have audience.

Is anybody complaining there aren't enough of them? I see very occasional complaints they aren't popular enough, but it's rare.

The fundamentally different interactivity of video games may have an impact here. There's no particular shortage of evidence that reading about something pessimistic or depressing may still have some appeal to it; entire subcultures and genres are based on it. Adding interactivity may fundamentally intensify the experience in a way that makes the appeal even more selective, though.

Primary difference is that there are plenty of thst in books and movies and paintings and music. I am saying that as someone who likes that stuff and can find plenty of it whenever I am in mood.

Interactivity has nothing to do with it. As much as I like games, they are not that much different. Nihilumbra the game is great and depressive, it can be done just like comedy games could be done or romance games could be done or any other genre could be done.

The only difference is that western game industry moves like herd, everybody doing pretty much the same thing at dame time. It has much less variety then other art forms and is too much winner takes all for companies to be creative.

If that's the case, why is that true for video games but not books, painting, art or cinema?

I probably like pessimistic games a little too much:

Papers, Please - http://www.papersplea.se/

This War of Mine - http://www.thiswarofmine.com

Beholder - https://beholder-game.com/

The Castle Doctrine - http://thecastledoctrine.net/buy.php

Orwell - http://fellowtraveller.games/games/orwell/

Headliner - http://unboundcreations.com/games/headliner/

We Become What We Behold - https://ncase.itch.io/wbwwb

Some survival games have a dystopian (therefore, pessimistic) premise, but might not be pessimistic enough according to the article:

There Are Billions - http://www.numantiangames.com/theyarebillions/

Frostpunk - http://www.frostpunkgame.com/

Plague Inc. - https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/22-plague-inc

Even 'Dwarf Fortress' in fortress mode almost always ends with your fortress being overrun - http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Those are some pretty sad games!

Just wanted to add two games that straight up left a void in me for a while after I was done

Shadow of the Colossus - Is on PS2,PS3, and PS4 and I really can't recommend it enough. Even if it technically ends with a hopeful ending its pretty pessimistic.

Life is Strange - The first two episodes make is seem like a pretty goofy teen drama but the last two episodes definitely become exponentially more existential.

The premise seems to miss the point that people generally don't want to invest time and money into things that make them sad or frustrated. The appeal of games is exactly that they reward players for their efforts --that the obstacles can be overcome. Art piece games that exist to convey some kind of an experience that isn't fun are fine. The reward is just having the experience, like a book or tv show. I'm just not sure they should be considered games.

Some music makes you feel happy, some is depressing, some of it is just loud pulsing sounds. It's all using the same basic mechanics, it's all music. Seems logical to say that if something functions like a game, but lacks the "you are the god-savior of this universe" appeal of most games, it's still a game.

The specific purpose of the OG version of Monopoly was to infuriate the players and make them resent the microcosmic system of economics the game presented. It was literally just a propaganda piece that set out to enrage it's players. Everyone still considers it a game.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game)

> The appeal of games is exactly that they reward players for their efforts

While I agree with the general comment, this part made me laugh a little. I find that games are incredibly easy nowadays, there is little "effort" to actually reward.

To me it's a worse trend than the lack of "pessimistic games". Building a culture of "what do you mean I didn't succeed after the second try? But I'm entitled to make it to the next level!!!!!"

I might be very cynical, but I think it hurts society a lot. Kind of similar to all these TV shows where the main character transitioning from being a waiter to sales executive or director of marketing in 2 or 3 seasons.

> I find that games are incredibly easy nowadays, there is little "effort" to actually reward.

While I agree with the general comment, this part made me laugh a little. Games (and TV/movies) are designed to cheat your brains reward system and make you feel like you are achieving something. This is why they're fun to play/watch.

I would argue that it's more insidious to require more work out of the player because it's prolonging the inevitable realization that you're not actually accomplishing anything. Games that cut right to the chase and reward you from minor accomplishments allow you to get that quick rush you were looking for then get back to your life.

Think about people playing World of Warcraft (especially vanilla days), sinking untold days of play time into grinding out gear/rep/gold. What are they actually getting from this? Versus just about anything else they could be doing with that time? The easier games make it to be rewarded, the more honest they are as a game. You could argue that you want a game to feel like a job because you can't get that satisfying sense of hard work paying off in real life, but I seriously doubt anyone would be happier with a productive, rewarding game life than a productive, rewarding life-life.

This seems way off base for me. Games are meant to empower you and help offset the desperation of everyday life. Not grind you down further.

Counterpoint: Some games are art, and are meant to make you feel something. These games are also important and/or have a place in the world.

I don't think that I would want to dump 200 hours into "that dragon cancer" but knowing that it exists and is as powerful as it is means something. Playing that game makes you feel something important that blasting aliens with laser pistols doesn't.

Being heroic isn't always saving the planet. Sometimes it's just waking up the next day and going to work.

There are art films that make us feel completely devastated for a long time after watching them. Sometimes they make us understand another facet of the human condition. Sometimes they make us feel hopeless.

Until there are games like that, I'm going to hold off calling them art.

Go play "That Dragon Cancer".

I've mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, and it's hard to argue against it not being a brilliant art piece.

http://www.thatdragoncancer.com/

I take back what I said. I wasn't aware of such a game.

> Being heroic isn't always saving the planet. Sometimes it's just waking up the next day and going to work.

Going to the cubicle and banging out TPS Reports day in and day out isn't being heroic, it's being passive, living life on auto pilot. I hate it. And so do most people who are aware of what it's doing to them.

Without getting to deep into the philosophical point I was trying to make as an afterthought in my comment:

"Given the choice between the sweet simple release provided by the revolver, and continuing the Sisyphean task of just living, I consider the human race heroic for simply being"

It's those deeper philosophical questions that we struggle with, and once we have the right 'question' the search for the answer is what drives most people. But those answers are mostly elusive or non-existent. And that makes people very unhappy.

Maybe these games do exist, just not from commercial companies. If art is not sell-able then it may not be funded, but that does not mean a passionate person cannot make the game they want anyway. Just don't expect it to be a AAA game.

"[...] waking up the next day and going to work" is about survival, not heroism. It's about ensuring that you have a house over your head and food in your stomach so you can go back to work the day after next.

Not much heroic about that.

It's very easy to dismiss life as an exercise in masochism. Take the idea up a few notches and question what underwrites your physical existence: murder and theft, involving the demise of countless plants and animals and theft of their carcasses as a personal fuel source (old India Vedic/Buddhist observation added for shock value). Very suckey. Then here by extension it would seem subordinating yourself to the synthetic distractions of psychopathic video games or maudlin RPGs as temporary anxiety outlets ultimately tends in idle moments to reinforce that sense of futility. And then why would you want to essentially 'sublimate' that synthetic psychopathic stimuli by replacing it with a process of being jerked-around by scripted pessimism? Doubt that it has to be that way. As old Milton pointed out in 'Paradise Lost': the mind is a world in itself and in itself it can make a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven. Since it's unlikely anybody is going to make the personal world that YOU would want for you, maybe a practical excursion into gnothi seauton (know yourself) then follow-up with scripting your own suitable world.

> is possible that we do not have pessimistic video games. I do not mean that we don’t have games with a down tone or with a general sense of negativity. I mean that video games, for whatever reason, have a hard time committing to the hell of life. They can be depressive, but they have a hard time letting go of the thought that there might be something good at the end of all this difficult.

I don’t know if I agree with the premise. Spoilers ahead.

The Dark Souls series is, in my opinion, essentially about futility. It could be said that many of the gmaes monsters are just other players who eventually gave up. Its implied that the world goes in cycles and no matter waht you choose, ultimately nothing really changes. Bloodborne is about cosmic horrors that are beyond our comprehension and that we cannot do anything about. The Last Of Us ends with the entire quest having been for nothing. The Last Guardian ends with the kid and the creature both getting severely injured, getting separated and never seeing each other again. Shadow of the Collossus ends with you killing solitary (and harmless to the world) creatures, freeing the big bad and getting killed in the process, before you ever get to see the princess revived (which was the entire reason you were on the quest to begin with).

Many games tie up their stories, but don’t particularly end on a high note exactly. Many games are pretty damned bleak. Hell, I’ve been finding that what I really want to see is more games that are more upbeat and are about more mundane things. For example, I loved the mundane (before the main plot kicks in) aspects of Night in the Woods, just because they were so normal and didn’t involve some dark, bleak, depressing story nor did it involve murdering people. I actually wish that the plot didn’t happen in that game.

1v1 multiplayer games kind of mirror the always-someone-better hopelessness of the daily grind, StarCraft being perhaps the ultimate example.

I play Dota 2 against bots because playing against actual humans is cause to weep in despair.

You're as likely to get a major game developer making a pessimistic game as your are to get Disney funding the next Bela Tarr film. You're only going to get someone doing it recreationally to any kind of well developed level if they have absolutely huge personal involvement (e.g. That Dragon Cancer).

The issue isn't even that there needs to be more pessimistic games, they're being made and they're gradually getting to a point where they're not pathetically behind other mediums in terms of emotional depth. What there needs to be is an easier means of developing interactive experiences so people can explore different vibes without feeling a need to attain some kind of fiscal reward from their efforts.

Tetris, Paper's Please, Nidhogg, Skifree, etc.

>and sinking 200 hours into World of Warcraft isn’t going to do anything other than entertain me and make Blizzard Activision’s pockets one one billionth of a percentile deeper.

Is that not pessimistic gaming?

Well said. All these loot box games are astounding upfront pessimistic, many of them even parodying themselves as they try to extract the next nickel using their Skinner box. I occasionally play them, and am always left with this weird mix of dopamine and existential despair.

> Tetris

I work so hard

In arranging the blocks

But each night I come home

To my wife in tears.

What's the point of it all

When you're building a wall

And in front of your eyes

It disappears?

Source: https://youtu.be/hWTFG3J1CP8

I'd love to see a game that takes us through the choices and options available to a homeless person - and especially get the feeling that nobody cares about you and spits on you. I don't think the general population realizes this aspect of life. So start there but make sure there is something to attain. Like a homeless person that could be rewarded 1 million for saving the life of a kidnapped teen. But after the reward is given, even then mistrust happens and people think you kidnapped the kid... Would be fun for me if not depressing at times.

Also in the style of GTA obviously.

I feel like The Stanley Parable falls into this category. The game's ability to account for seemingly every deviation a player may want to take from the as-narrated story means that any attempt on the player's part to exert free will won't actually succeed; at best, you'll end up at a stalemate between you and the narrator. And yeah, there are "happy" endings, but none that make you really feel like you've "won".

The author would probably enjoy Pathologic.[0][1]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathologic

[1]https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/04/10/butchering-patho...

There are plenty of pessimistic games that portray the hell of life. This guy is either desensitized to it or has only played Nintendo his whole life.

The longer this post has been up, the more I'm realizing that there are a ton of games that fit this mold. There's no massive $100Mil+ budget games that really do it, and that's fine. These games aren't meant to be massive money makers, but more expand on the types of stories you're able to tell in the medium.

Max Payne 1 and 2 tell a story of man revenging after his wife and newborn daughter are brutally murdered.

Grand Theft Auto 4’s main protagonist has survived a civil war, and it shows. The story ain’t particularly optimistic either.

“This War of Mine” tells a story of group of civilians trying to survive in the warzone.

“Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice” main protagonist has severe schizophrenia.

These are amazing games, despite overly pessimistic and even depressing.

Detroit become human is an amazing example of storytelling and emotional character involvement.

The game takes no prisoners and the decisions you make can mean a rather bleak end to your characters and more importantly your story arc. There is no going back, what happens happens.

There is however an opportunity for glory (depending on your perspective of glory).

This is what games should capture, the bitter and the sweet.

There are pessimistic and great books, pessimistic and great movies, pessimistic and great music, so there is zero reason to reject the idea of pessimistic game. I think I would like that. I used to like all the above, so I think the game would fly too.

Btw, Nihilumbra is pretty good pessimistic game.

But also, I think that if one looks closely into various niches, pessimistic games will be found.

"Need" aside, someone has to pay for those pessimistic games. In the end, that's the biggest impediment to experimental games. Games simply cost more time and money to make than a book, and sometimes more than a full blown movie.

If you want more pessimistic games, you will need to fund them, somehow.

I love these sort of games, there are a number just now and available on many platforms by indie artists & studios, even on Steam. On the other hand, blockbusters mainly provide fun, escapism or special effects, they are tailored on the masses and rightly so.

How about making life more like games, instead of making games more like life? Can we do this somehow?

I've been pondering this a bit recently. We immerse ourselves in stories because, good or bad, they're more interesting than real life. The protagonists, the antagonists, the NPCs - they all (are written to) feel their role is important, unlike us real-worlders, struggling with ennui and the role of a cog in a machine (or a single cell in a large, multicellular body). We've built a civilization and economy that diminishes the role of an individual, and yet our brains crave the feeling of being a hero of a story.

I remember Eliezer had some smart observations on the topic; I guess it's time to re-read his "Fun Theory" sequence[0].

[0] - https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/K4aGvLnHvYgX9pZHS/the-fun-th...

Far Cry 5? I mean the game ends by you being trapped for the rest of your life with a creepy guy you tried to defeat for the previous 30 hours. Also all the people yoy've been helping in the main/side quests are dead.

There's enough games out there to fill about every genre and emotion. Why do we "need" to decide anything about something as large as games? Let the market decide what people want.

Are there any games out there you play through seemingly as the hero only to find out after x hours of 'saving the world' that you were, in fact, not? Something like the film Memento?

Knights of the Old Republic had a pretty great twist. You still wind up being the hero, but it's still a real pull the rug out moment.

Talking about pessimistic games, are there any good simulations/games about fighting climate change in the next century or so? Seems like it would be a very interesting topic.

Not sure, AFAIK there really isn't one.

SimEarth can be made to simulate global warming, but it is very dated (and the Gaia hypothesis is wrong).

Some versions of Civilization can somewhat simulate AGW, I believe, too.

From the recent ones, Eco and Block'n'hood have ecological themes. Haven't played the first, the second is only local ecosystem.

Some great pessimistic games:

- Papers, Please

- Oregon Trail

But in Oregon trail you can win, so I'd call it a normal game.

I was just joking a bit, on account of how easy it is to die or have family members die for horribly realistic reasons :)

Oh that is true I suppose :)

Some other (relatively pessimistic) that I happen to have in my Steam library:

Don't Starve, Banished, The Long Dark, Frostpunk, This Is the Police, Orwell..

There are also many other from survival/horror genre.

Just play Nethack.

I think the author meant to say meaningful rather than pessimistic.

Something meaningful may necessarily have some pessemism in it.

Games today are not meaningful

What do you mean by meaningful, because I can easily point out games that I consider meaningful. For you to say outright that games today are meaningful implies that they once were, and I cannot see the difference.

> Games today are not meaningful

Where does that come from? Top of my head: some meaningful games below:

- Deck Nine released Life is Strange in 2015, Before the Storm in 2017 ; Life is Strange 2's first episode was released on September, 27th.

- Mass Effect makes you think about your place in a very, very vast Universe, the consequences of choices, even though you're a "hero" (2007, 2010, 2012).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com