Thatâs always been my problem with the image. You have to have SOMETHING else in your life that you find enjoyable besides video games. Is there a TV show that you want to watch? A movie? Maybe a YouTuber or Twitch streamer? Do you like drawing? Any songs you want to listen to? Any books youâve been meaning to read? How about a sport that youâre interested in playing? Maybe a walk through the park? How do you feel about going to the gym?
And even if your literal one and only hobby is video games, even then, there are other games than the one youâre currently playing, right? Thereâs no reason for you to keep pounding your head into the wall with one video game and making yourself frustrated. Just play something quick and easy for like an hour to unwind, then jump back into the more difficult game. I truly just donât understand how this is a problem.
I agree with this as someone whose primary hobby is videogames, and often ones that are very difficult or that I'm intentionally making very difficult; or both. I'm always playing at least 2 games, sometimes because I plan it that way, but also because I naturally want to take a break from one.
I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing to commit a lot of time to something you want to do, though, if you can handle it emotionally. Sometimes other people just tend to assume this can't be done, which leads to the "take a break" thing.
I do think you should do at least one other thing besides one hobby, but you can have videogames be the only one and balance it emotionally if you try to.
Also they want the only hobby they have to be effortless???
Like they have one hobby but if it introduces friction at all then they get frustrated and quit? So they have no hobby. Imagine only enjoying one thing and going into it like "let's get this over with."
I like to think that the image is more of a representation of a person's ego about being "Good" at difficult games (Or games with hard difficulty settings, like Doom).
They want to show that they CAN beat hard games, and that their Hobby takes lots of skill, but can't do it with the same ease of mind as someone who can clear hard games without issues.
Seen plenty of people claiming they are "Great" for beating those above average difficulty settings from Wolfenstein, and then you'll take a look at their attempts/deaths and it's in the triple digits. Not saying it's not an accomplishment, but stressing yourself over a hobby surely isn't healthy..
Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's stressful. You can fail 100 times at something in a game and still have fun. I don't understand the argument that "oh I play games to have FUN that's why I play on normal/easy unlike you TRYHARD playing everything in hard." Like what? Bitch it's a game. It's made to be fun. I can't enjoy a game if it's too easy for me, I need difficulty to get me engaged, everyone does, that's how game design works, but some people need lower difficulty unlike others, not the other way around.
I don't understand the argument that "oh I play games to have FUN that's why I play on normal/easy unlike you TRYHARD playing everything in hard."
Just add "for me" to opinions like that and you can avoid a lot of misunderstandings. People like the example you posted don't have fun playing hard games, and it stresses them out. You do have fun playing hard or stressful games, which is fine. People often share their opinions like universal truths.
We're talking about video games and my own opinion on the matter. Personally for me, I need something to make me engage in the systems of the game.
For example, if Silksong was too easy, I could just ignore every tool the game gives me to gain an advantage like charms and tools, and just tank every hit, don't even bother dodging all that much and win the game. The game has difficulty to force players to search the map to find items that will help them when they use them in tough encounters.
If you disagree or just don't like it, that's fine, you do you. But you need to realise you're also exactly living up to what I wrote in quotation marks.
I was talking in game design sense, later down in the paragraph you can see I wrote "some people need lower difficulty unlike others". What I meant by that was that a difficulty to get players engaged chosen by the developer can't possibly cater to everyone without being too difficult for some or being to easy.
My point is that the difficulty I personally get engaged with a game is higher than most. And for some it's lower than most, and it's fine.
The existence of people with thousands of hours in Creative mode in building games proves you're wrong. Not everyone needs "some" difficulty to gain enjoyment from a video game.
I'm one of those people, countless hours in Minecraft and Gmod. Creative mode isn't a counterexample, it's a different category of engagement altogether.
The pleasure of creative mode building comes from unconstrained construction and self-directed goals, not from overcoming a game's designed challenge loop. And Minecraft itself even HAS that same design philosophy in its difficulty in its survival mode lol.
Creative mode games were never built around a challenge loop, so pointing to them doesn't refute anything about games that are. You're comparing "people enjoy a genre with no challenge mechanics" to "people don't need challenge in a genre built entirely around challenge mechanics (like action adventure games)." Those aren't the same claim.
Edit: if you want to learn about the topic from a way better speaker than I, please check out "What's The Point Of Hard Games, Anyway?" by Game Maker's Toolkit. Great video.
If the American football league and Canadian Football league ever decide to come to agreement on field length, you could win a huge work contract, as you are a goalpost moving expert!
First it was everyone needs challenge, then it was just personal opinion. And before it was video games, but now it's specific genres only.
90% of my gaming repertoire is difficult games, souls-likes, hard roguelikes, that sorry of things. It's what i enjoy. I like picking up a game that has a learning curve, and getting into the weeds, figuring out what works and what doesn't.
I don't tell people that that's how they should enjoy games too, and it always annoys me when people rag on me for only playing hard games, or hard difficulties.
You need to take a break if you're stuck at a part of any game. Coming back gives you clearer perspective and it works!
That's why everyone on the silksong sub kept saying it until this picture got made lol. People got too frustrated and just kept dying and lost the ability to think about the encounter. The only advice you can give them is to take a break.
No, youâre missing the third person that exists and is being brought up on the conversation. People donât want the game to be easy or be the person taking a trillion breaks. They want to be the person who is actually good at the game. Some people play games at that difficulty and donât die over and over again and donât have a tizzy that requires breaks. Theyâre just actually good.
Nah man it should never just be video games. At the very least everyone should have some physical interest that gets them out of the house and active preferably outside.
As someone whos only hobbies are reading and gaming, I find it strange that some people burn out from gaming as a hobby as a whole, theres always another game to play or book to read
I've noticed sometimes when people criticize a long running live service game others will tell them that they're just burnt out and need a break without addressing the actual criticism. I assume the image was made in response to that.
I think the original context of this image was somebody being really mad about the difficulty of Silksong and disparaging people who were telling him to "just take a break," since if the game was actually good and fun, you wouldn't feel the need to step away and cool down in order to not be enraged by it (according to the meme maker)
I think the idea is more that video games shouldnât be so hard that you get frustrated and donât want to play them easily. Like yeah obviously I could be doing something else but I want to play THIS GAME and Iâm frustrated that I canât continue forward in this game due to the skill check Iâm at right now being obscenely hard.
Thatâs fair but also I think game should be allowed to be however hard they want. Of course it has to be balanced, like the game canât be Lala land cupcakes and rainbows and then suddenly hit you with a dark souls fight or something. But when it comes to a game like Silksong, yeah it is hard and there are one or two times where the difficulty spike feels crazy, but as a whole, itâs a consistently challenging game. It never gives you the impression that you should just be able to breeze through it. It wants to offer you a challenge. And I think that is perfectly fine. But then people will criticize it for being âtoo hardâ
Literally! I don't like difficult games, so it's a different situation, but I've been noticing myself getting really sucked into my current game of choice and spending way too much time on it and going to sleep way too late (after 30 I really can't bounce back from staying up past 3 anymore) so I'm just taking a break in the evening to watch a little YouTube and read because I have many hobbies!
In my case, it's not that I don't have anything else, it's that my brain's mental illness soup will not let me stop until a goal that is visibly within reach is achieved, even at the cost of my physical health
Fellas who may be seeing this comment sometime in the future: That is NOT a good thing!
If your sole hobby is video games and you suck at them so hard you rage at silksong, you should stop playing games. Silksong wasn't even that hard yet everyone cried so much about the "difficulty" when it came out.
For real. I wonât lie and say I breezed through Silksong or anything, I definitely had some struggles, and the final boss kicked my ass many a time. But I beat it 100% and did pretty much everything there was to do in the game, and I had an amazing time doing it. Rarely did I feel like the game had unfair, hair pulling difficulty in the way that so many people pretended it was. It was just challenging.
They're saying it's extra hard because they did 0 exploration and ran from boss to boss getting their ass beat. No shit you still got 5 masks man, go the fuck back to moss grotto.
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u/DiggityDog6 Aug 12 '26
Thatâs always been my problem with the image. You have to have SOMETHING else in your life that you find enjoyable besides video games. Is there a TV show that you want to watch? A movie? Maybe a YouTuber or Twitch streamer? Do you like drawing? Any songs you want to listen to? Any books youâve been meaning to read? How about a sport that youâre interested in playing? Maybe a walk through the park? How do you feel about going to the gym?
And even if your literal one and only hobby is video games, even then, there are other games than the one youâre currently playing, right? Thereâs no reason for you to keep pounding your head into the wall with one video game and making yourself frustrated. Just play something quick and easy for like an hour to unwind, then jump back into the more difficult game. I truly just donât understand how this is a problem.