{"id":178,"date":"2013-02-06T16:29:29","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T00:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/?p=178"},"modified":"2013-02-06T16:29:29","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T00:29:29","slug":"masocore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sprixelsoft.com\/?p=178","title":{"rendered":"Masocore"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just learned of the term “masocore”<\/a>\u00a0today, after reading an article comparing difficult games to S&M on Kotaku<\/a>. It’s a good read, and resonates as I’ve been going insane the past week playing\u00a0Super Hexagon<\/a>; a ridiculously\u00a0difficult game that I’ve been diligently trying to master whenever I get some spare time (Read: on the toilet).<\/p>\n

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There’s something both savagely frustrating, and addicting about playing super difficult games. And I don’t mean the broken ones like Superman 64<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Dragon’s Lair<\/a>… well… maybe if it’s Castlevania II, it’s still good… but generally speaking, if the game play is fundamentally broken and your failures feel like the fault of the game, it’s just\u00a0not fun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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And that’s where I think that some of the harder games I’ve played recently excel. When you fail in Super Hexagon, you feel like you’ve failed. You get a quick game over, touch the screen and restart. You’ll die really fast, but the punishment isn’t that bad because you instantly get to try again. Each time you succeed in being able to get further, you get a nice little dopamine reward, before dying. Want more dompamine? Experience just a little bit more pain… work through it, and …. that’s right you’ve lasted 20 seconds this time instead of 18.<\/p>\n

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