Yeah this is the carried wisdom of MMO developers until Blizzard came in and did a local optimization by removing the clearest and most obvious pain points and building an enormous amount of single-player content.
So you get a much, much broader audience but the game isn’t specifically designed to generate the intense teamwork that distinguished MMOs. On the other hand, just by virtue of having an order of magnitude more players playing, they had way more people with those intense communicative experiences you describe just from playing high-end raids.
I mean I think the whole culture of ‘git gud’ extends to the nes days as far back as anything. the mentality has always been around and will probably always be around. It’s the same schoolyard mentality that lent itself to the hardest games on any console generation when you were around a lunchtable somewhere - that the only way of getting any values out of the hobby when it came to normies (heh) was by being The Best at the Toughest.
to put it another way - you don’t see Dark Souls advertisements targeting femininity. they are always about Death or Warriors or Swords or Death Sword Warriors which are all things codified typically as male. we all know masculinity is pretty fuckin fragile so when you put a bunch of pasty nerds in a room and tell them that if they don’t get the best at dark souls than the casuals and women will take away their hobby and the jocks will laugh at them
obviously that culture is gonna get more and more dependent on it, look at most youtube playthroughs of dark souls games or PVP videos. they are (with outsiders) mostly about appreciating the game purely for its challenge, just like a Castlevania or NInja Gaiden in days of yore. they’re about proving you get something out of the hobby that whoever our Other is doesn’t and that makes them Not Real Mann Gamers
[quote=“GlamGrimfire, post:43, topic:2402, full:true”] look at most youtube playthroughs of dark souls games or PVP videos. they are (with outsiders) mostly about appreciating the game purely for its challenge, just like a Castlevania or NInja Gaiden in days of yore. they’re about proving you get something out of the hobby that whoever our Other is doesn’t and that makes them Not Real Mann Gamers
[/quote]
Seems like a projection on your part. The most popular kind of Dark Souls Youtube as far as I’ve seen is basically a blooper reel of absurd, unexpected, ironic failures (indifferently inclusive of either the player or opponents). Like, take this one:
It can be read to be about “manliness” yes, but in a much more self-aware way than you’re implying. Dark Souls youtube (and Souls PvP even when not being recorded, with its costumes and gestures and personal combat styles) is mostly about generating little pieces of comedy medieval theater, one’s own little Don Quixote stories.
The next Souls game I get hype about is going to be the one with advertisements that are essentially blooper comedy reels.
There’s a lot in the “world of machismo” that I think we can learn from for games about excellence. E.g. ESPN top 10 vs. ESPN not top 10. That shit is pretty amazing and celebrates all things regarding the pursuit of amazing performance.
Found some local fightman guys since I moved into the city and I’m finding it feels like they focus a bit to much on who’s good or bad instead of just enjoying playing the game. Was playing a guy last night in Xrd and for the thirty games we played and it never felt like he was enjoying it despite winning all of them. I was able to take a few rounds and got close to closing out a fame or two. It just felt like he was disappointed I was the only person there playing the game. At one point he switched to my character which felt a little malicious way to say you’re playing wrong. I don’t get to play against real people that often so I don’t have much live experience so to speak so I’m mostly looking for that special someone that about as good/bad as I am. I guess I just don’t care about the results and enjoy the part that comes before the end match screen.
I found a smash group as well and I tend to find I like their approach to fostering a community. They seem to genuinely enjoy having new players and just want to sit down and play. They’ve thanked me more than once for coming out to their gatherings. Just feel like there’s to much postulating over the quality of players with my SFV/GG peeps while my smash peeps just want to get in the game.
I just want to have a controller in my hand and enjoy the act of playing without feeling I’m being judged or looked down on.