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Over in America, we have a thing called the Center for Disease Control, or CDC. You've probably heard of it, because any time a movie involves a virulent global disease or zombie apocalypse or something, the CDC gets called in to flail ineffectually at the problem before it spirals out of control and ravages the planet. They're the Lieutenant Worf of pandemics, basically. This week, we've seen the CDC totally overwhelmed and helpless in the face of a gruesome epidemic that's already claimed the lives of countless thousands of game fanatics. But little wonder, as the victims have gladly flung themselves into the teeth of this killer. And once they're slain, they get up and do it again. I'm speaking, of course, about Dark Souls 2, the third chapter of the series that has reminded people who play video games that, oh yes, sometimes it's satisfying to fail. Or rather, it's satisfying to triumph after failure.
Games have steadily backed away from the idea of imposing steep challenges for years. For the most part, if you want a game to hold your feet over the fire, you need to look either to indie games (La-Mulana, Super Meat Boy, etc) or to the obscure niches like danmaku shooters - a genre that's catered to so small and so specific an audience that even its largest purveyor (Cave) has given up on it. The wherefores of this change are actually many and various, ranging from the need to appeal to as wide an audience as possible to the dominance of narrative over gameplay. But a big part of the problem is that making challenging games is a hell of a challenge in and of itself.
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