In Resident Evil, I’ve entered a room, and there are three zombies between me and the exit. I can shoot them, stab them, run by them, or go back the way I came. Shooting them is the safest option, but there’s only so much ammo across the whole game. Stabbing or running by them saves ammo but risks burning health, and healing items are also limited. Will I need to backtrack through the room later? If so, it might be worth spending the resources to clear it out. Otherwise, I may want to risk running through it.
In Fire Emblem, I’m preparing for a mid-game map densely packed with enemies. I’ve already failed the mission a few times, and I’m deciding what to bring with me. I’m painfully aware there are only so many experience points, weapons, and units I have to work with across Eliwood’s campaign. Can I make it through the map with lower-level characters? Should I use my stronger (and lower durability) weapons now, or save them for later?
In DoDonPachi, I’m on the fourth stage miniboss. A very fast bullet pattern is hurtling towards me. I usually bomb it, but I set off two more bombs than I meant to previously in the run. I have to decide whether to attempt to dodge the attack, or risk running out of bombs during stages five and six. I have a dozen or so frames to make the decision.
Survival horror, SRPGs, arcade games. Dungeon crawlers, timer games, roguelikes. Some game design choices help make immediately engaging challenges. But some exist in service of larger arcs, arcs that can even encompass your entire run of the game. This is true across many genres and the whole history of the medium. This kind of big picture design has led to some of the coolest, most magical experiences I’ve had in games.
It’s also stressful, so players inevitably chafe against it. Designers respond, and you get SRPGs without permadeath, roguelikes with persistent progress, Ateliers without timers, arcade games without game overs. This is fine, as long as the developers understand that they’re losing something in the exchange.
By making you commit to your choices and live with your mistakes, by letting the specter of a whole game restart loom overhead, games create a different kind of drama than they can with individual, atomically-separated challenges. I can’t explain it unless you’ve experienced it. Playing a game like Resident Evil, a part of me is holding my breath across the whole 10-15 hour game. I only release it at the very end, when it’s finally clear that I’d saved enough resources to make it through. I think that tension is wonderful. It’s one of my favorite storytelling textures videogames are capable of.
The inverse can also be lovely, of course. I wouldn’t ask for a version of Celeste or Invictus with limited continues. By focusing on the micro over the macro, those games are free to drill down into their game language and create immensely demanding and engaging levels. They both have wonderful storytelling arcs, and they get there one checkpoint at a time. Both micro and macro structures are valid; both can be fun and interesting.
But there’s a misunderstanding that an arcade game with limited lives is innately harder than a platformer with save points, that a survival horror game is always crueler than a cover shooter. This just isn’t true. I’ve played arcade-y games I’ve cruised through effortlessly and games with infinite lives that have taken me weeks. I’ve played crusty old NES RPGs that lasted a few breezy sittings and modern RPGs with free respeccing and plentiful QOL affordances where I’ve been stuck on one boss for days.
The most meaningful currency a game can burn is your time. Many game textures I find interesting are frequently dismissed as a waste of time. But it’s fine when a 50-hour open world game drowns you in empty collectible sidequests. It’s fine when a roguelite asks you to play the same run over and over, not to learn the contours of the world and the systems, but to level up your persistent avatar until you have the raw numbers to succeed.
There’s a contradiction here, and it’s because it was never about “wasting time.” It’s about needing the game to pat you on the back and explicitly tell you how far along you are, that you’re getting closer to the end. It’s about explicit vs. implicit progress, the persistent vs. the ephemeral, playing to check games off your “backlog” vs. playing because videogames are fun.
In many well-crafted games, your “progress” is internal. You traverse the same chunk of game many times, learning its patterns, mapping out its spaces. There’s no XX% marker on your save file or list of steam achievements telling you how much you’ve accomplished. But you’re still learning the game. The progress you’re making isn’t any less real. There’s a wealth of beautiful experiences out there if you open yourself up to that.
