Falling From It

As an aging gamer, I'm amassing an ever-expanding list of new and worrying limitations. The reflexes, the eyesight, and the ability to sit cross-legged in front of a television for three hours while maintaining the use of both feet are just a few things that abandon us in our long, slow march to the grave. You don't think of them when you're eighteen and feel like you entered your own personal Konami code at the start of this life. What are limits to a teenager? Limits are things that old people use to keep us down, man! One day we'll be grown up and we'll be calling the shots, and you know what will happen then?

As it happens, I do. You'll go looking for a comfortable chair and fall asleep playing L.A. Noire.

(Thus we see the brilliance of the system: Young people are full of bad ideas and boundless energy, but lack the power to implement them. Old people are full of bad ideas and have the power to implement them, but lack the energy. It's nature's way of keeping us from destroying ourselves. Hooray for evolution!)

I most recently bumped up against the hard edges of Bloodborne, but I'm not sure that's an entirely new limitation; I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to play Bloodborne in my prime years either. Certainly not at 7, and probably not at 13. I might have stood a chance at 23, but I passed that mile marker over a decade ago.

A key difference between me ten years ago and me now is that I'm more willing to give up now. Another thing aging tends to do is reduce your amount of free time, so filling it with something that's frustrating for no reason gets called out for being the horse hockey that it is.

When I was younger, I didn't like to acknowledge my limits. I was convinced that being bad at any single game made me a bad gamer, and I couldn't let myself be a bad gamer. It was the basket I had put all of my identity-eggs in. If I was bad at the thing I chose to make a significant part of my life, what did that say about my life? Compounding my anxiety was the fact that I had a distorted understanding of what being "bad at a game" meant. One of my nemesis-genres is the racing game, and really it's only my nemesis because somewhere in my life I internalized the notion that second place is just a fancy word for "losing."

So when I hit my limits, I'd focus more energy on them, bending my abilities and limitations through force of will and simple wearing down over time. Sometimes the journey from being bad at a game to being good at it can be a worthwhile one. All that sweat, all those tears, all that aggravation finally culminating in a glorious victory over what seemed to be insurmountable just a little while ago.

Of course, this being the real world and not some hero's journey story, sometimes you find yourself embarking on a quest to avenge your dead father and brother only to realize that you have a younger brother, and he's the one that the story is actually about. The trick is to remember you have a younger brother and send him first. Or, better yet, realize that you are one person up against an army, and that million-to-one odds are, on a practical level, indistinguishable from impossible odds – and maybe the best thing to do is to pack your younger brother up and move to some far-off land to open a delicatessen.

In retrospect I can see I was being ludicrous, and not just because my bar for success was set by Bender from Futurama. Sure, I was possessed of some natural talent with some kinds of games, but it was simply ridiculous to assume that I would be equally proficient at platformers, racing games, strategy games and fighting games all at the same time and without practice. Michael Jordan was a terrible baseball player, and even in my best genres I'm light-years from being as proficient at anything as Jordan was at baseball, let alone basketball.

The simple fact is that there are some genres that I am terrible at, and that I will never improve. Not because of some defect, but because I just don't care enough to get better at them.

And that's ok! I can be bad at games. I can even try to have fun being bad at games.

As St. Crispin Day speeches go, this may be right up there with an exhortation to cross with the light and wear clean underwear. As life advice for people like me who occasionally need to be reminded that nobody will care if I stop playing Bloodborne, this wisdom is a lifeline.

Oh, Bloodborne. I wouldn't have you change a hair on your brutal, brutal head. I love and respect what you're trying to do. However, as Jimmy Stewart pointed out in Shenandoah, there's a difference between loving and liking. Loving can be a deep, burning, passionate feeling that will get me through a glowing review of the first hour, but loving alone won't sustain me through the hard times. To keep me coming back even when the game itself seems to be against it, I need to actually like it.

I gave Bloodborne a fair shot. Eight hours I sowed, expecting to reap enough knowledge to progress beyond the first boss. Instead I found myself barely capable of even getting to the first boss, let alone defeating it. It was fun at first, going in with the knowledge that it was supposed to be handing me my own rear end for a while. Alas, my eyes were unable to count the necessary frames in the low-contrast environs of Yahrnam. My reflexes were too dull; my patience too thin.

After six hours of killing the same handful of mobs over and over again, I began to get frustrated. After seven, I began to harbor those old doubts about whether I was just bad at video games. (It didn't help that our own illustrious founder proceeded to beat the entire game in two weeks while I couldn't beat the first boss in a month).

After eight hours, I made it to the first boss for the second time, and died because the camera got stuck on some level geometry. At that point I stopped playing. I had fully intended to go back to it, but time passed, and with each passing day I grew less inclined to try again.

Then I realized something: After eight hours, the love was fading and there was no like left over to hold contempt at bay. What was I doing to myself? I get a few hours per week to play anything I want, and I played the same twenty minutes of Bloodborne eighteen times? I could have done something fun with that time, like beating Duke Nukem Forever a third time! Why was I doing this to myself?

Oh, yes, I know. I was trying to rise to the challenge. I even wrote about it, back when I was still in the honeymoon of my relationship with Bloodborne, (i.e., the first three hours). But what happens when a person can't rise to the challenge? There comes a time when throwing yourself at the same wall over again starts to look and feel kind of silly, and for good reason. There's a fine line between tenacity and mule-headed obstinance.

I realize I crossed that line three hours ago, so I did the only thing a man in my position could do. I took my copy of Bloodborne to Gamestop and used the $33 in trade-dollars to buy Farming Simulator 2015 for the PS4. Stepping to one side and murdering demented villagers may be beyond my aging capabilities, but logging, plowing and animal husbandry are right in my wheelhouse these days.

Testing your limits is a fine thing to do, but the reason we test them is to learn where they are. Pushing your limits is an admirable and sometimes useful thing to do, but as the Klingons say, qoH vuvbe' SuS. That is, "The wind does not respect a fool."

Comments

This is an excellent piece, thank you for writing it! It is making me feel better about not getting into EUIV.

Love it, hate it, respect it from a distance, or ignore it as best you can, Bloodborne certainly inspires a ton of great essays. (Hilariously, I took a break from writing about Bloodborne to dip into GWJ and, well, read about Bloodborne.)

I've made my peace with never being good at Bloodborne or its ilk, but that's because I was never good at that type of game. On the other hand, I was once quite proficient at first person shooters. Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament were my go to games online, many years ago. Recently I tried Destiny, and was quickly put in my place as a has-been. Then DriveClub came around, and I had a blast with it, til I tried playing against people. I used to be great at Project Gotham, but I found myself struggling to not be last in DriveClub.

There's always the consolation that others are putting in alot more time into these games, but that's not the whole picture. The reflexes are slowing, and it ain't pretty.

Thank you for sharing that DT. This is an important lesson to learn.

There is a line somewhere between fun and frustration; learning where that is for you is extremely valuable, both in time and personal sanity. I play games for fun; they are a hobby and my main entertainment. I get enough frustration at work and generally trust trying to get through another day. I don't want to be frustrated in what should be a solace from the slings and arrows of normal everyday life. So I have tried to learn where that line is for me.

Running Man wrote:

I've made my peace with never being good at Bloodborne or its ilk, but that's because I was never good at that type of game. On the other hand, I was once quite proficient at first person shooters. Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament were my go to games online, many years ago. Recently I tried Destiny, and was quickly put in my place as a has-been. Then DriveClub came around, and I had a blast with it, til I tried playing against people. I used to be great at Project Gotham, but I found myself struggling to not be last in DriveClub.

There's always the consolation that others are putting in alot more time into these games, but that's not the whole picture. The reflexes are slowing, and it ain't pretty.

I used to be good at Doom and Quake. I took a decade or so off from online shooty-type games until I started playing TF2. I knew my reflexes were really poor, so I went in telling myself that as soon as I started getting frustrated by a match, I would just quit and do something else. I have rage-quit TF2 six times in 2200+ hours. So I think it all goes into how you go into a game. If, as an older gamer, you think you should be at the top of the leaderboard, yeah that is frustrating. If you go in just wanting to have fun, and mentally prepare yourself to bail out when you realize you are not, I think that these kinds of games can still be fun.

This hits uncomfortably close to home.

As a really old gamer (67 these days) I would be concerned about diminishing abilities if I ever had any. And I am so far behind the curve on this genre I can't speak to Bloodborne (yet). But I am on the edge of the Dark Souls cliff. I just bought a 360 game controller because I never used one in my entire life. And I plan to follow the example of my new guru Jeff Green who basically said he is too old to give a sh*t and is just having fun where he can find it. Of course there is the possibility I will run away and just watch Jeff, but that wouldn't be so bad either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfEk...

This is a fascinating article.

I would contend that Jordan was a pretty damn good baseball player. His minor league manager, Terry Francona, (since a Boston World Series winning manager 2x over, and current Cleveland manager), was quoted as saying he was a year or two from moving up to the major leagues as a hitter. He could play the outfield just fine. Was he the transcendent star he was in basketball? Of course not. But it's disingenuous to say he was terrible.

That said, the evindence supports your theory regarding willingness to spend the time becoming good at something. He had a solid basis for baseball skill, but it still wasn't worth any more time to him to become a marginal major leaguer. He went back to basketball in his early 30's and he continued to excel.

(I don't know why I felt the need to pick this particular bone - maybe it was the italics).

If anybody is interested, "Jordan Rides the Bus" was an interesting documentary on the superstar's time in the White Sox' minor league system.

New PBS Idea Channel: When Does Play Become Work?

Seems related.

Localgod54 wrote:

This is a fascinating article.

I would contend that Jordan was a pretty damn good baseball player. His minor league manager, Terry Francona, (since a Boston World Series winning manager 2x over, and current Cleveland manager), was quoted as saying he was a year or two from moving up to the major leagues as a hitter. He could play the outfield just fine. Was he the transcendent star he was in basketball? Of course not. But it's disingenuous to say he was terrible.

That said, the evindence supports your theory regarding willingness to spend the time becoming good at something. He had a solid basis for baseball skill, but it still wasn't worth any more time to him to become a marginal major leaguer. He went back to basketball in his early 30's and he continued to excel.

(I don't know why I felt the need to pick this particular bone - maybe it was the italics).

If anybody is interested, "Jordan Rides the Bus" was an interesting documentary on the superstar's time in the White Sox' minor league system.

As a lifelong citizen of Chicagoland, I almost inserted some snarky editorial comments at that point in the article.

wordsmythe wrote:

New PBS Idea Channel: When Does Play Become Work?

Seems related.

Localgod54 wrote:

This is a fascinating article.

I would contend that Jordan was a pretty damn good baseball player. His minor league manager, Terry Francona, (since a Boston World Series winning manager 2x over, and current Cleveland manager), was quoted as saying he was a year or two from moving up to the major leagues as a hitter. He could play the outfield just fine. Was he the transcendent star he was in basketball? Of course not. But it's disingenuous to say he was terrible.

That said, the evindence supports your theory regarding willingness to spend the time becoming good at something. He had a solid basis for baseball skill, but it still wasn't worth any more time to him to become a marginal major leaguer. He went back to basketball in his early 30's and he continued to excel.

(I don't know why I felt the need to pick this particular bone - maybe it was the italics).

If anybody is interested, "Jordan Rides the Bus" was an interesting documentary on the superstar's time in the White Sox' minor league system.

As a lifelong citizen of Chicagoland, I almost inserted some snarky editorial comments at that point in the article.

In all honesty, I know nothing about baseball, and I did concede that I'm a worse gamer than Jordan was a baseball player.

When I wrote that I meant it in the same sense that Anna Kournikova is a "terrible" tennis player. Meaning that Jordan, like Kournikova, is only better than 90% of the other players out there, rather than being better than 95% of them.

Probably should have used scare quotes.

I got it. I'm just "teh bias."

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

When I wrote that I meant it in the same sense that Anna Kournikova is a "terrible" tennis player. Meaning that Jordan, like Kournikova, is only better than 90% of the other players out there, rather than being better than 95% of them.

Probably should have used scare quotes.

Eh, I figured as much, but the pedant (read: a-hole) in me couldn't let it go. Good stuff. I look forward to the next piece.