Dialogue 4.

Dialogue 4.

S&M metaphors & game design.

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.

Aria: Hello, hello. It's Aria.
Today, I'm joined by my friend Casey.

Casey: Good day to you.
In case you don't know me, I'm a character from one of Aria's visual novels, Dead Girl's Notebook. Play it today.

Aria: Casey, have you ever heard someone say that people who play hard games are masochists?

Casey: No.

Aria: Oh. Really?
Well, have you heard people say that game designers who make hard games are sadists?

Casey: No.

Aria: Oh. Really?
Well, today's topic is about S&M metaphors in the context of game design.
To what extent is the relationship between players and designers like an S&M relationship?
What kind of games do sadists and masochists like to design? What kind of games do they like to play?
That's what we'd like to explore.

Casey: I think it's what you said earlier. Sadists make hard games that bust everyone's balls.

Aria: Why's that?

Casey: Because they like making people suffer.

Aria: That's the popular conception of sadists, right?
But the sadism in consensual S&M play is a little different.
The sadist has their own desires, but needs to operate within the boundaries of the masochist.
They can't just cause suffering indiscriminately, and they probably don't want to in the first place.
They want to find a middle ground. Mutually pleasurable suffering.

Casey: That's kind of like a game, isn't it?

Aria: Huh?

Casey: The masochist sets boundaries, restricting what the sadist can do, and the sadist plays within those boundaries.
It's like following the rules of a game.
A game with no rules is kind of aimless and boring. It's the restrictions that make it exciting.

Aria: I see.... So game designers are the masochistic ones, since they set the boundaries.
But you said it's sadists who design hard games.

Casey: Oh, did I?

Aria: Yeah. To bust everyone's balls.

Casey: If making players struggle and feel frustrated is a design goal, that does seem a little sadistic.
But I think game designers usually try to make games that suit their own tastes, right?
At least if they have full creative control, and aren't just being paid to make something they don't believe in.
So if you twist it around like that, you can think of them as masochists.
They're intentionally crafting the kind of friction they enjoy.

Aria: So, we've concluded all game designers are masochistic.

Casey: That's correct.

Aria: Indeed.
But let's try a little thought experiment for a moment.
If a purely sadistic person who doesn't have any masochistic tendencies designed a game, what would it be like?

Casey: Hmm.
What about that old Flash game where there's like a little buddy made of spheres?

Aria: And you could torture it by throwing baseballs and grenades at it.

Casey: That one, yeah.

Aria: That's too obvious.
Besides, what if it was a high-level masochist who programmed all those exciting torture methods?

Casey: I think we're kinda stuck on something here.
If it's a game where you perform cruel acts, you could say it was created by a sadist who wants to do those things, or a masochist who wants those things done to them.
If it's a game where you struggle and suffer, you could say it was made by a sadist who likes seeing people suffer, or a masochist who likes suffering themselves.

Aria: Right. So I've been thinking about this kind of thing a lot lately....
I think sadists and masochists aren't really opposites, exactly. They have a lot in common.
Both sadism and masochism involve expressions of vulnerability, and revealing a hidden side of yourself to someone else.
You might naively think that sadists are self-centered, and masochists are people-pleasing.
But sadism, at least consensual sadism, has a significant aspect of people-pleasing.
And masochists can be very self-centered and focused on their own pleasure.
I think both have this strange feeling of being unsure how much to care about yourself and how much to care about others.
I thought hard about what the fundamental difference between a sadist and a masochist is.

Casey: One likes to hurt others, and one likes to be hurt....
....Only, it's not as simple as that.
"Likes to be hurt" really oversimplifies the experience of masochism, I think.

Aria: Yeah. It's not really the "being hurt" I like. Maybe only kinda.
The emotional connection with the person who is hurting me is what really matters.

Casey: It's not like the sensations aren't fun, but devoid of that emotional context, it's just pain.
I'm not a sadist, but I assume it's much the same. "Likes to hurt others" doesn't capture it.

Aria: Here's what I think. For both sadists and masochists, the emotional process is one of taking negative feelings and recontextualizing them into positive ones.
The difference is just that the negative feelings are located in the masochist.
So for the sadist, they observe the negative feelings externally and process them into positive feelings.
For the masochist, the negative feelings and resulting positive feelings are both internal.

Casey: This is getting too complicated for me....

Aria: Basically, masochistic and sadistic game designers both enjoy strange things.
So if they're creating a work based on what they like, it's going to be strange, even if it's not literally about masochism or sadism.
But a sadistic game designer will approach it from the perspective that they're inflicting these strange things on others.
A masochistic game designer will imagine these strange things happening to themselves.
And that subtly changes how you view your audience, I think.

Casey: Oh, oh, so you're saying a sadistic approach to design is actually going to be more concerned and careful.

Aria: Well, maybe. Of course, every designer worries about what players will think of their game.
It's not that masochistic designers don't care about the audience, or that they never temper their work to suit the audience.
But the worries are less like, "am I going too far or too hard", and more like, "how many other people are going to like this"?
It's subtle, but it's different.

Casey: I think I get it. It's about trust.
Trust is a big part of both S&M and game design.
In S&M, the masochist trusts the sadist to play within their limits, and trusts themselves to endure it.
Meanwhile, the sadist trusts the masochist to not only endure, but signal if something is wrong.
And the sadist trusts their own physical skills and their ability to read the masochist's signals.
In games, the designer and player can only communicate indirectly, over an unknown span of time.
The designer leaves signals for the player and trusts them to pick up on them.
The player tries to read these signals, and builds up their own expectations and sense of trust.
A sadistic designer can't read signals from the player, so they might be more cautious about how they establish trust.
From a masochistic designer's perspective, maybe they don't need to read the player as much. They want to find players who can read them.
They can ask for trust from the player without making as many concessions.

Aria: Yeah, yeah. That's easier to understand than what I was saying.
Although, that leads to another interesting question....
What are sadistic and masochistic players of games like?

Casey: Well, I was actually going to ask if there are game designers who are neither masochistic nor sadistic.

Aria: ....Right. Regular people.
Well, one of the main common threads between sadists and masochists is that their desires are considered strange.
So, I think regular game designers are the ones who don't make strange games at all.
They follow the current market trends and make a deck builder rogue lite. Something like that.

Casey: Or a game with lootboxes and battle passes.

Aria: I have a confession. I still don't know what a battle pass is.

Casey: I don't either, and at this point I'm a little scared to find out.

Aria: Let's move on before it's too late.

Casey: Masochistic gamers are the ones who like really hard games, right?

Aria: You know it's not going to be that simple at this point.

Casey: Right, right. Well, going back to what I was saying about trust, I think a masochist needs to be very trusting.
I mean, I guess a sadist does too though....
It's like this, I think. There's an exchange of trust that takes place when the relationship starts.
And in that exchange, the masochist needs to be more forthcoming with trust, and the sadist needs to intentionally hold back trust.

Aria: Hmm, yeah. Masochism requires an unusual level of physical vulnerability.
Sadism is about taking advantage of that vulnerability, and doing so safely requires caution.
You can't just start beating someone hard without learning their body language and pain tolerance first.

Casey: So maybe that's the distinction between masochistic and sadistic players.
Do they offer their trust to the game, or do they hold it back until the game shows them it can be trusted?
Hmm. I wonder if this interpretation fits with my theory.

Aria: What's your theory?

Casey: Animal Crossing is a game for sadists.

Aria: ....I see, I see.

Casey: Basically, it's a game where you're in control, and you can kind of do whatever you want, so I thought it's the kind of game sadists would like.

Aria: He's talking about a game where you chill out in a cute little village of animals and do mundane tasks like planting trees and fishing.

Casey: So, I'm wondering if there's a connection between trust and control that would make my theory make sense.

Aria: If someone trusts you, does that mean you have more control over them?
It sounds scary when you put it that way, but isn't that kind of how it works?

Casey: Right.... So a game that grants you a lot of control is kind of inviting you to trust it.

Aria: Maybe there's some truth to the idea that hard games are more for masochists, then.
Hard games are about removing control.... well, I should be careful about the terminology here.
When I say "control", I don't mean in the video game sense of controlling a character.
Lots of hard games allow you to control the character very precisely.
The kind of "control" I mean is something like.... the ability to freely make choices, I guess.
Hard games tend to work by limiting which choices are valid, in some sense.
If all of your options worked, it wouldn't be difficult. The difficulty comes from finding or executing the specific options that do work.
For a sadistic player, it's harder to trust that kind of game.

Casey: But just because a masochistic player might be more trusting doesn't mean they prefer games that restrict their control.

Aria: Well, I want to be clear I'm not saying hard games have to be linear experiences, or something like that.
A game might give you a staggering wealth of options, but the number of ways to actually make progress could be few in number.
I think that kind of game would appeal more to a trusting player.
Someone who doesn't trust the game might conclude it's impossible or unfair, while a trusting player would keep trying to figure it out.

Casey: This is reminding me of the yellow paint discourse.

Aria: Oh, that....

Casey: Basically, video games often have stuff like crates and barrels lying around, and sometimes you can break them and find items inside.
But other times, they're just background scenery and they're unbreakable, or maybe they're breakable but empty.
So apparently, modern big-budget games have started slathering the important ones with yellow paint markings so that players don't miss them.

Aria: They've also started using the yellow paint to indicate things like ledges that you can climb up, I think.
Some players started complaining that these bright yellow signals feel patronizing.

Casey: In other words, they're upset that the game isn't trusting them enough.

Aria: But on the other hand, some players said they like the yellow paint because otherwise they wouldn't know which crates to break.
And some game designers spoke up too, saying that without the yellow paint, players would get stuck and playtesting would go awry.

Casey: Sadists, all of 'em.
Masochists like us know that part of the fun is trying to guess which crates have items inside.

Aria: Or we trust that it won't matter too much if we miss some random crap from a breakable crate.
As a masochistic game designer, I'm personally opposed to yellow paint.
If I'm going to have a rule that indicates which crates are important, I'd rather it be subtle and mysterious.

Casey: If a player doesn't trust you, they'll start thinking they just have to break every crate.

Aria: That's their problem.
Players should trust me and subconsciously try to pick up on my crate vibes.

Casey: So you're a masochist, but you want other masochists to play your games, instead of sadists.

Aria: That's correct, actually.
I generally make games to try to connect with other people like me.

Casey: But sadists and masochists aren't so different, right?

Aria: That's correct too.
If a sadistic person connected to the feelings in one of my games, that would make me really happy.
And if I manage to get a distrustful person to trust my game, that's really wonderful.

Casey: Normally it's "S&M", but in game design, I guess you can have S&S and M&M relationships too.

Aria: Yeah. Sadistic designers actually seem like they'd be a good match for sadistic players.
The designers enjoy painting the crates yellow, and the players enjoy knowing which crates to smash.

Casey: Okay, let me try to summarize all of this.
S&M relationships ideally operate on a deep sense of mutual trust.
But they begin with the sadist withholding trust and the masochist being forthcoming with trust.

Aria: Probably a bit of an oversimplification, but I think I can agree.

Casey: So in the context of game design, a sadistic designer will be cautious about establishing trust with the player.
While a masochistic designer will trust the player implicitly, based on their own trust in themselves.
From the player's side, a sadistic player feels games have to earn their trust before they'll engage deeply.
While a masochistic player will start out trusting the game, and try to conform to what it asks.

Aria: I think that's a good summary.
Now, the problem is that if you use the terms "sadist" and "masochist" for these archetypes of designers and players, nobody will know what you're talking about.

Casey: That's right. Everything we've discussed up to this point is useless.

Aria: I suggest if you want to talk about these concepts with others, you use different terminology, like "trusting" and "distrusting", or something like that.
It's also probably too much of a generalization to associate these things with sadistic and masochistic tendencies.
Like, if someone is into sadism in their sex life, does that mean they're a distrusting gamer? I'd guess there isn't actually a correlation.
What I wanted to figure out was more like "sadistic and masochistic philosophies" for designing and playing games, as opposed to.... the actual human behaviour of sadists and masochists.

Casey: You can't really figure out anything about human behaviour by writing a dialogue with one of your fictional characters.

Aria: Yeah. I'm really talking to myself here, so all I can do is philosophize.
....Casey, way back at the start, you said something interesting.
"The masochist sets boundaries, restricting what the sadist can do, and the sadist plays within those boundaries."

Casey: Yep. It's just like game design.

Aria: Sadism is about expressing your desires within the confines of another person's boundaries.
Masochism is about testing your boundaries within the confines of another person's desires.
I think you can relate both of those to design and play.
Sadistic design and sadistic play are both about expressing your desires.
The designer is limited by the player's boundaries. The more they establish trust with the player, the more freely they can design.
The player is limited by the boundaries of the game's rules. The more they trust the designer, the more freely they can play.
Masochistic design and masochistic play are about testing your boundaries.
As a masochistic designer, I create games that push against my limits, and I trust that I'll find players who like what I create.
As a masochistic player, I seek games that push against my limits, and I trust the designer to create scenarios that excite me.
I guess those are the conclusions I've reached about how to relate S&M to game design....

Casey: The popular idea is that sadists make hard games and masochists play them.
In reality, hard games can be made by both masochists and sadists, and played by both masochists and sadists, but their approaches are different.

Aria: I think you could say the sadistic philosophy is for a hard game to guide the player through the experience, and challenge them fairly after building up their skill.
The masochistic philosophy is for a hard game to throw you into the deep end and trust that you can figure out how to swim.
They're both valid kinds of hard games, but you can probably tell I'm biased towards a certain style.

Casey: You haven't really made any hard games yet though, right?

Aria: That's true for now. But someday you'll see what Aria is cooking....

Casey: Speaking of which, I think I left the oven on.

Aria: And that's how we're ending today's dialogue.
See you later, everyone.

Casey: Farewell, gamers....

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.