Dialogue 3.

Dialogue 3.

A masochist plays Dark Souls.

Content warnings: Masochism. And some discussion of self-hating feelings.

This is a "blog post" presented in a visual novel style. Use Spacebar, Enter, Right Arrow, Down Arrow or Left Click to advance the text. Use Backspace, Escape, Left Arrow, Up Arrow or Right Click to rewind the text. Rewinding can be a little glitchy. A transcript of the text is below. 

Links mentioned in this post:
Sylvie's awesomely cool website
Interview where the director of Dark Souls says he's a masochist
Aria's post "Monologue 2" discussing the different "dimensions" of masochism
Forum thread where "masocore" was coined

Aria: Hello, it's Aria.
And I'm here with my friend Sylvie.

Sylvie: Hello, hello.

Aria: If you don't know, Sylvie is my game designer friend. Her cool website is at love-game.net.
Anyways, today we're going to talk about....
Dark Souls!

Sylvie: Daaaaark Sooooouls....

Aria: You see, Dark Souls has a reputation as a game for masochists because of how punishingly difficult it is.
The game's director, Hidetaka Miyazaki, even said in an interview that he's a masochist and designed the game from that perspective.
So as a practicing masochist and designer of games about masochism, I had to play it for research.

Sylvie: I was interested too, because it seems like it was a really influential game.
But I'm a completely normal person, so I just watched Aria play it.

Aria: Well, I think it's possible for normal people to like Dark Souls too.
I wanted to understand what it means for Dark Souls to be a "masochistic game" or a "game for masochists".
First of all, is it even really true that it's a masochistic game?
If so, in what sense? What elements of it are particularly appealing for masochists?
And then there's that interview with the director. When he talks about being a masochist, it's in a jokey tone, so I don't know how seriously to take it.
But let's say it's really true. Then what influence did masochism have on the game's design?
What does it mean to design a game "as a masochist", and what does it mean to design a game "for masochists"?
All these thoughts are swirling around in my head and getting tangled in knots.
And now I've just finished playing through Dark Souls for the first time.
So I'm finally going to try to untangle them.

Sylvie: Let's go.
So, now that you've played Dark Souls, can you say whether it's really a game for masochists?

Aria: Well, first let's talk about why people call it a game for masochists.
I think it's mostly because of an association between difficult games and masochism.
Even though I'm a masochist who enjoys difficult games, I've always been skeptical of drawing a connection between the two.
Difficult games are mostly fun because of the feeling of overcoming a difficult challenge.
I don't think you need to be a masochist to enjoy that feeling.

Sylvie: Yeah, I agree.
Especially if you think of masochism in the context of someone enjoying physical pain.
It doesn't really seem connected to trying to win at a hard video game.

Aria: Now, there's where I want to analyze this a bit more carefully.
In another post I wrote, Monologue 2, I talked about how masochism has different dimensions to it.
There's a physical dimension, which is enjoying the sensations of physical pain, like you just mentioned.
There's a sexual dimension, of being sexually aroused by things like pain, humiliation, or subjugation.
There's an emotional dimension, where those same things give you positive non-sexual emotions, like relieving stress, relaxing you, making you excited, and so on.
Now, that's just my personal point of view. I think there are two popular understandings of masochism, which are a little more surface-level.
The first understanding is that the practice of masochism is something primarily sexual and physical.
This point of view, which I find a little reductive, sees a practicing masochist as essentially someone with a sexual fetish for pain.
The other understanding is a casual use of the term "masochist", to mean "someone who intentionally seeks out unpleasant things".
People will use "masochist" in this way without meaning to imply that the person is a sexual fetishist of some kind.

Sylvie: When people talk about Dark Souls being for masochists, they're really using the second understanding.
They're not seriously suggesting that people who like pain in a sexual context are more prone to enjoying Dark Souls.
The "unpleasant" element of Dark Souls is that death can cause you to lose a lot of progress, and death can happen really easily.
But there's a sense that this "unpleasantness" is also what draws people to the game, so those people are called "masochists".

Aria: Yeah. So, when people say Dark Souls is a game for masochists, they aren't really talking about people like me.
They're just expressing that the game is hard and punishing.
What I want to know is whether the game really IS for people like me.
I mean, I did really enjoy it. I might even be one of my new all-time favourite games.
But is that my masochist's heart speaking, or did I like it for normal-person reasons?

Sylvie: Aside from stuff like the sexy spider boss, I don't think Dark Souls has a lot of aspects that would be sexually appealing to a masochist.

Aria: Well, it's kinda hot when you get killed and the enemies casually turn around and slowly walk away from your corpse....
But I think it's true that this game isn't really trying to sexually excite players.
I did pick up horny vibes from some of the aesthetic choices, but it felt more like maybe it's an expression of the staff's tastes, rather than an actual attempt to turn people on.
So, I was initially dismissive of the way this game engages with the sexual dimension of masochism.
But a friend pointed out there's a lot of sexually charged stuff in the lore, particularly with female characters experiencing forms of suffering and bondage.
I also think some of the animations feel sexually charged, particularly when enemies "capture" your character and you're helpless to do anything until they finish hurting you.... waoo.
Overall though, I don't think it's an incredibly sexy game in the sense of actually being arousing. It's maybe a medium-low sexiness level.
But the thematic engagement with the sexualization of suffering is really interesting, especially with the context of Dark Souls being seen as a game for masochists in popular culture.
You know, a important part of the sexual dimension of masochism is that it usually doesn't happen alone. It's more fun to suffer at the hands of another person.
So maybe that's why there's that feature where people from online can invade your area and humiliate you.
I don't know if that part is sexy though. I mostly played in offline mode and I never fought anyone.

Sylvie: The messages from other players when you switched to online mode were fun.
But sometimes they spoil the game a little by revealing traps and secrets.

Aria: That's why I ended up playing offline, because I wanted to be surprised. But I wonder if I missed out on some fun things.
Moving on to the physical dimension of masochism, most video games don't really touch on that.
If you're receiving pain while playing a video game, you're probably playing some kind of game with a special peripheral that requires physical activity.
Or maybe your friend is just standing behind you, delivering painful electric shocks to your body every time you die in Touhou....
Yeah....
(Aria seems lost in thought for a moment),

Sylvie: So, it sounds like most video games can't really access the physical dimension of masochism.

Aria: What? Oh, yeah.

Sylvie: And outside of actual "sex games" or "porn games", video games usually don't approach the sexual dimension of masochism at all.
Even games like Dark Souls that engage with it in some sense, do so in kind of an indirect way, rather than aiming to arouse players.
That means for most video games, it's really the emotional dimension that determines whether it's a masochistic game.

Aria: Yeah! That's what I've been building up to.
So let's talk about what the emotions associated with masochism actually are, though keep in mind I can only speak for myself here.
I mentioned that it can relieve stress and make you feel relaxed. I think that's something people who aren't masochists probably don't expect.
Well, I guess I might be blending masochism with submission here. Taking on a submissive role and giving up control to someone else is really relaxing and nice.
And, uhh.... there are certain "services" involving gentle, repetitive motions that are kind of relaxing to perform....
Even pain can be relaxing too if it's not too heavy. It can feel like a massage.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, masochism can be intense, exciting, and fun.
I get these feelings when I'm really struggling with pain that I can't handle, and trying my best to endure it.

Sylvie: Oh, that actually sounds a little like getting stuck in a hard video game. Like when you spent 3 hours trying to beat Artorias.

Aria: Hehe. Yeah, I guess it does.
It's hard to tell whether being beaten up really activates the same feelings as playing a hard game, because one is accompanied by intense physical sensations, and the other is purely mental.
I think the "struggling in a hard video game" feeling is something that non-masochists can enjoy, because it doesn't require a tolerance for physical pain.
But what about the other way around? Maybe masochists really are more inclined to enjoy struggling in a hard video game.
I mean, it can't be universal, just because the experiences have too many differences. Enduring pain in an S&M scene doesn't require finger dexterity or game literacy....
But if you look at the intersection of masochists and video game players.... I wonder what kind of preferences you'd find.

Sylvie: Something that really interests me is the development of this sort of loose genre called "masocore".
I think it mainly refers to precision platformers, but I've seen Dark Souls referred to as masocore before.
Also, people call a lot of my games masocore, even though I'm so normal.

Aria: Yes! If I remember right, you looked into the origins of "masocore" recently.

Sylvie: It was coined in a thread someone made on the old "Insert Credit" video game forums.
A person listed six games they considered to be in the same genre, and asked for a good genre name to describe them. Then another person said "masocore". The term eventually took off.
The games were: Jinsei Owata no Daibouken, Super Mario Forever, The Impossible Quiz, Kaizo Mario World, I Wanna Be The Guy, and Syobon Action.
Some of these are more obscure than others, so you might not know them all. But I'd say the common theme among them is something like "unexpected surprise traps".
A famous example is the invisble blocks containing coins that appear in Kaizo Mario World, a romhack of Super Mario World.
In the original Super Mario World, these are usually pleasant surprises that lead to secrets.
But in Kaizo Mario World, they're strategically placed in certain locations so that if you don't know the block is there, you're likely to bump your head on it and fall into a pit.
These invisible blocks were so placed in such notoriously cruel and comedic ways that the use of them as traps became known as "Kaizo blocks".
I should also say that comedy is an important element in each of these games, from what I remember. The surprise traps are meant to be funny, in addition to making the game more difficult.

Aria: Humorous surprise traps definitely play a big role in Dark Souls, so I think it makes sense to call it masocore.
But once again, that makes me wonder if there's really a connection between these traps and masochism.

Sylvie: I think it's another case of that "second understanding" of masochism, as a kind of casual term for "seeking out suffering".
But, it's still interesting to think about how this connects to masochism in practice....
Also, I should point out that the definition of masocore seems to have drifted over time.
You see, five of those six games mentioned are 2D platformers, and some of them, particularly I Wanna Be The Guy, have screens that are really densely packed with hazards.
So, I think people have started calling 2D precision platformers with lots of spikes or other hazards "masocore", even if they don't have surprise traps.
I'm more interested in the original coinage though, and I think Dark Souls does fit into the spirit of those six games.

Aria: Playing one of these trap-laden games is kind of about "acceptance of pain", I think.
If you treat it like a normal game that's going to play totally fair, you'll get very frustrated when you get killed by something you didn't predict.
You need to just accept this is how the game works, and approach it with the mindset that you're definitely going to lose progress "unfairly" several times before you make it to the next checkpoint.
That kind of brings to mind a certain view I've stated before, that masochism is a process of "recontextualizing negative experiences".
You take something you dislike, and either consciously or unconsciously, you adjust your mindset to find pleasure in it.
That actually fits really well here, I think....
Enjoying a trap game is about adjusting your mindset so you find pleasure in being trapped, instead of being upset that you lost progress over something you can't control.
And the game tries to encourage you to enjoy it by making the traps funny and devious. It's seducing you into that masochistic mindset....!
Well, once again, I don't think you need to be a masochist to enjoy playing these silly trap games.
And not all masochists are going to enjoy the "unfair" and "trial-and-error" elements of such games.
But maybe this is another case where being a masochist helps you get into the right mindset for it.

Sylvie: So masocore games really are for masochists.... interesting!

Aria: There's another really important part of the emotional dimension of masochism that I haven't talked about yet.
Part of masochism for a lot of people is enjoying not just physical pain, but humiliation and degradation.
Many people find sexual appeal in those things, but what's the emotional appeal?
I think, paradoxically, the emotional appeal is actually a desire for acceptance.
This is just based on myself, so maybe it's not true for all masochists. But I think there's a sort of cycle that can happen.
The cycle begins with self-hatred. You hate yourself and you think you deserve to be treated like garbage.
So, maybe this hatred starts influencing your sexuality, and you start getting turned on by this bad treatment.
And then you feel fucked up and awful because you get turned on by something fucked up, and it makes you hate yourself more.
Masochism is an escape from that cycle. It's the process of recontextualizing those fucked up feelings as positive ones, and accepting those feelings in yourself.
Of course, you have to be careful about accepting things that stem from self-hatred, because it might just feed back into the cycle of self-hatred.
So maybe becoming a masochist is just a subconscious mistake that a lot of us make when we're young, making our self-hatred part of our identity.
But once you've fucked yourself up, you can't really go back on it. So you just have to keep striving to be accepted by yourself and others.
And that's the emotional appeal of masochism, and particularly, of sharing masochism with others.
You make this fucked up part of yourself visible, and another person acknowledges it and accepts it.
When someone "hurts" or "humiliates" you in a consensual S&M context, that person is communicating that they accept and understand the fucked up things inside your dark soul.
It's this paradox where you want the results of your self-hatred to be accepted, but you don't want to hate yourself.
I think when you engage with masochism alone, your attempts at self-acceptance can fuel that self-hatred in an endless cycle.
Sharing my masochism with others is what helped break that cycle for me.
So, that must be why Dark Souls has online features.

Sylvie: That must be why when you finish the game, you get unceremoniously dumped into NewGame+ mode with no explanation.
It's because of the cycle.

Aria: That moment was really funny. You're just suddenly back in the prison cell at the start but you're still level 85 with a huge scythe.
So, let's go back to that interview with the director now.
I don't know how serious he was about being a masochist. Maybe it's all a total joke.
To me, though, it read as "a joke that has a ring of truth to it". So I'm going to take it somewhat seriously.
The emotional core of masochism, to me, is this sense of being a strange person who likes things that other people find unpleasant, and wanting someone to accept your strangeness.
That feeling of "wanting your strangeness accepted" isn't unique to masochism, of course. It's probably a very common feeling among strange people.
Masochism is unique because it's the intersection of this emotional core with the physical and sexual aspects.
But unless you're making a sexual game where the literal subject matter is masochistic sex, or a game that can inflict physical pain on the player somehow....
Designing a "masochistic game" is really about appealing to this emotional core.
Present players with something strange, something that will be unpleasant to a lot of people, but that you hope others will accept.

Sylvie: Then, I think Dark Souls really is a masochistic game.
Even though the physical and sexual aspects aren't the same as the real practice of masochism, I think that emotional core shines brightly.

Aria: I struggled to get into it at first. I found it stressful to play, and I put it down for a long time before even ringing the first bell.
It's an uncompromising game, a game that's aware you're going to encounter unpleasant things and struggle.
But the more I played, the more I started to appreciate the intricate structure of the areas and the connections between them.
And the way the difficulty pushes you to use all your resources and explore the game's systems.
I finally "accepted" it, including the parts I found strange and unpleasant, and my world changed.
This is a huge game made by a huge team, so I don't know exactly how much influence the masochistic director had on it.
But it gave me a wonderful feeling of accepting someone else's strangeness and uniqueness into my heart.
That's what I've concluded "masochistic design" is about.
Things like "difficulty that makes you struggle" and "comedic surprise traps" might have some overlap with masochistic desires, but that's not what really matters.
Simply by being a masochist, creating a work imbued with your own personal strangeness, and asking others to accept it, you've created a "game for masochists".
Maybe you don't even have to be a masochist. You can be another kind of weird person.
Not every masochist will enjoy it, but that's not the point. The point is that it will reach some people, and they'll understand you, and they'll cherish it.

Sylvie: In the case of Dark Souls, not only did it reach "some people", but it seems like it was massively influential.
I don't play a lot of modern games, so I don't have a good sense of how that influence works in practice.
I just know that "Souls-like" is a whole genre now....

Aria: I don't play a lot of modern games either....
That's why I played Dark Souls around 10 years after release.
Anyways, these were the questions I really wanted to answer.
First, is Dark Souls really a game for masochists?
I think it is, because it has that emotional core of presenting you with something unusual and asking you to accept it into your heart.
This isn't something uniquely enjoyed by masochists, which is why lots of normal people like Dark Souls too.
So maybe that's not a satisfying answer to anyone other than me.
Maybe "wanting your strangeness to be accepted" isn't the core of masochism for other people, and other aspects are more important.
But for me, it's really that desire for acceptance that informs the ways masochism shaped my life, personality, and creative work.
So, if I can feel someone reaching out to me in that way through their art, I can respect that work as a masochist.
And if the things they're showing me resonate emotionally, then I think I'm enjoying that work from a masochist's perspective, even if there's no real connection to the physical or sexual aspects.

Sylvie: Creating those kinds of personal works is something lots of artists do, whether they're masochists or not.
And you can enjoy those works without being a masochist, of course.
But, if you are a masochist, or at least the same kind of masochist as Aria, then these are the most beautiful works to you.

Aria: Yeah. I didn't really connect my love for these kinds of works to my masochistic tendencies before.
But I think that connection exists, and it's more deeply embedded and fundamental for me than the popular conception of "masochistic games" as being based on challenges and traps.
Going back to the questions.... second, I wanted to know how being a masochist influences game design.
In that interview with the Dark Souls director, he says that he created it with a thought process like, "I want to be killed this way!" or "I want this done to me!",
But does that masochistic influence end at the numerous different ways you can die? I don't think so.
The masochist's strange desires manifest throughout the game, in both overt and invisible ways, and form the emotional core.
People often mistake masochistic game design for sadistic game design. If a masochist designs something that seems cruel, they're probably just expressing their own strangeness.

Sylvie: I wonder what sadistic game design actually looks like....

Aria: Well, I'm not a sadist or a top or anything. But I think sadists in real life are actually really nice and considerate when they're playing with masochists.
A good sadist will be constantly thinking about the masochist's feelings and trying not to push the masochist too far.
The sadism in consensual S&M isn't about actually being cruel. It's the other side of the masochist's desire for acceptance.
The sadist has their own desires, but they need to balance it with acknowledging what the masochist wants, and adjusting to their needs, while presenting an illusion of cruelty.

Sylvie: Ah. So, sadistic game designers are why we have things like difficulty options and coyote time.

Aria: That's right. If Dark Souls was truly a sadistic game, then it would have an easy mode.
The third question.... as a masochist, how should I design games for other masochists?
Well, I think I should just be myself.
My feelings will emerge naturally from my heart, and other people will accept them into their hearts.

Sylvie: I'm glad I got to watch you play Dark Souls for 80 hours. It was a really cool game.

Aria: It's so wonderful. I'm one of those Dark Souls girls now.

Sylvie: I'm one of those indie developers who makes Dark Souls inspired games now.

Aria: You just lost your dark souls. Go back to where you died to regain them.

Sylvie: I can't go back, there's a giant dragon there that kills me.

Aria: Stand 10 feet away from it and snipe it with arrows.

Sylvie: Won't it get mad and attack me?

Aria: Of course not.

Sylvie: I'll give it a shot. See you later.

Aria: Farewell, farewell.

The End
The gentle sound of the aria fades from the evening sky.
Maybe you'll still be here next time I feel like singing.