What does my love for impossibly difficult video games say about me?

"Most people who really love video games have the capacity to be obsessive. Losing weeks of your life to Civilization, World of Warcraft or Football Manager is something so many of us have experienced. Sometimes, it's the numbers-go-up dopamine hit that hooks people: playing something such as Diablo or Destiny and gradually improving your character while picking up shiny loot at perfectly timed intervals can send some people into an obsessional trance."

"Grinding repetition bores me, but challenges hijack my brain. The first games I got obsessed with like this were music games, when I was a teenager. I played Amplitude, where you are a space DJ blasting notes from your sonic spaceship; Gitaroo Man, a comic-book-style story about a guitar-wielding superhero; and, of course, Guitar Hero with its plastic axe I was compelled to master every song on expert difficulty."

"A few years later, I discovered FromSoftware's Demon's Souls when I was living in Japan, a game so impenetrable it seemed designed to make you walk away. You'd take three paces into any of its levels and get immediately murdered by a skeleton swordsman or poison-swamp creature. But I sensed something interesting behind all the punishment, and there very much was. Demon's Souls ended up birthing a genre of massively popular and famously challenging games with its sequel, Dark Souls."

Many players become obsessive about video games, losing weeks to Civilization, World of Warcraft, or Football Manager. Some players are drawn by incremental rewards and timed loot drops that provide dopamine hits. Other players reach obsession through peaceful repetitive tasks in games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. Personal obsession is triggered by challenge: prohibitions or difficulty create determination. Music games like Amplitude, Gitaroo Man, and Guitar Hero fostered mastery through repeated practice and expert difficulty. Demon's Souls presented punishing design that rewarded persistence, leading to a genre of famously challenging games exemplified by Dark Souls.

Read at www.theguardian.com