There are not many cases where saying something made you miserable is high praise.
Yet, whether it’s reading a sad book for a good cry or waiting for the season when horror movies flood the box office, many are drawn to media that leaves them angry, scared or sad.
As far back as Ancient Greece, philosophers have studied the genre of tragedy, with Aristotle using the term catharsis to describe the release of emotion people felt after watching characters face unhappy endings. By watching these stories, he believed people were able to feel and then find relief from difficult emotions.
While plays are still a well-loved form of storytelling, there are types of tragic entertainment that have evolved far past what Aristotle could have imagined. One of them has a unique way of delivering misery to its audiences, or rather, its players.
What are games?
There are many definitions of a “game,” but one way to describe it is when play with a goal has rules that lead to an uncertain outcome.
For example, in a game of catch, the goal is to get the highest number of passes back and forth. The rule is that you stand a certain distance apart, which makes the outcome uncertain because you don’t know how many passes you’ll make.
The challenges created by rules are important in making any game fun to play. According to USC Interactive Media & Games Division Professor Tracy Fullerton, players can’t feel the joy of victory without challenge.
“When you’re designing a game, you want to take a player on a journey of emotions,” Fullerton said. “That journey may include parts where we have to work hard and we have to learn and we have to retry things. In order to do that, we challenge the player.”
I most recently felt the effects of challenge while playing a gaming journey, “The Return of the Obra Dinn,” a mystery adventure where each wrong answer had me wanting to scream at my screen. Hours would pass and I’d feel only slightly closer to my goal.
Yet despite running into failure time and time again, I look back on the finished game as an incredible experience. I’m not the only one; other players online report feeling the same frustrations but still rate the game highly. Even The Guardian’s glowing review of the game calls it “arduous but captivating”.
Players need a challenge, but why would games that create real frustration not make them turn away?
One theory is that failure in games is designed to motivate players. In his book, The Art of Failure, Jesper Juul explores why people who generally try to avoid failure play games that include just that.
According to Juul, one important factor is that games test a mix of general skills, like problem-solving, and ones specific to the game, like knowing how pieces on a chess board move. Having weak game-specific skills doesn’t hurt motivation because you’re not expected to be an expert yet. The pain of failure is still real, but it’s easier to brush off.
Another aspect of game design that keeps players willing to face obstacles is the careful planning that makes it possible to succeed. For the creators of the cosmic horror fishing game Dredge, it was important to keep their game as accessible as possible. They paid close attention to where challenges added to players’ experiences or took away from it.
“Dredge has a very limited inventory, and a lot of players say ‘I wish my boat was bigger…’ but that’s kind of the point of the game, and it’s why it can be compelling,” said game programmer Joel Mason, “but if one person gets stuck on something and it ruins their experience, we’ll probably fix it. It’s all a balancing act.”
While the Dredge developers worked hard to limit frustration, they also wanted to create tension and unease in their players. Just like having the chance to confront failure can be enjoyable in games, facing fear can make a great experience.
“We deliberately pull the camera above you so you lose your peripheral vision and you can’t see what’s under the water, you can’t see what’s coming from the distance. You’re left with the sound of the ocean and your own thoughts,” 3D artist Michael Bastiaens said.
In addition to creating a sense of danger, the developers made sure players had ways to overcome the horrors they faced. From being able to get upgrades to being able to skip some quests, these allowed players to feel capable of surviving the game’s dangerous nights.
“We really drive home the fact that you shouldn’t be out at night… and eventually players start conquering that fear,” Mason said. “I want them to feel like they’ve grown in confidence.”
One way that games make overcoming fear especially satisfying can be seen in The Last of Us franchise. The first game and its TV adaptation both tell the story of zombie apocalypse survivors Joel and Ellie, but from a slightly different perspective.
“When I watch the show I’m always focused on the relationship. I’m watching their faces…I’m hoping for things, but I don’t have any agency to make them happen.” Fullerton explained. “When I’m playing the game, I’m hoping for things but I’m also in a position to try to make them happen”
You can still feel powerful emotions for a character in a show, but in a game your skill and choices determine your character’s fate, making fear (and overcoming it) more personal. As Fullerton explained, neither is necessarily better, but they’re each unique forms of storytelling.
Having this agency also means that when characters face defeat, you can reach out for real help. Maya Dhanani, a freshman Game Art major at USC, experienced this in the game “Sky: Children of the Light’'.
In the game, players interact with others and explore different realms of a magical kingdom. When Dhanani encountered The Golden Wasteland, a more difficult section, she realized that she didn’t know what to do.
“Because I was so scared to go in, I found a veteran player to help me go through it, and we ended up becoming friends,” Dhanani explained. “Then she introduced me to other people and [now] I have all these online friends that I still talk to.”
Strong communities are a key part of any type of game, with many players offering each other support as they face and overcome the challenges games present.
“In The Stanley Parable, that’s entirely a single player game, but there’s still online forums,” Dhanani said. “Community has always been a part of games, even ones that aren’t inherently collaborative.”
Feeling fear and failure can be unpleasant at first, but there’s generally a clear path forward. Once you move past it, you can breathe easier and continue on.
That’s not true for all difficult emotions that games explore.
Take NORCO, a 2022 adventure game where the main character returns to her hometown to face the death of her mother and the effects of pollution on her community. Although there are various endings of NORCO, you can’t solve all the problems of the town and its inhabitants. There’s no full answers or resolutions for the complex feelings it creates.
As Tim Hutchins, a game developer and professor, explained, the difference between “type one” and “type two” fun can help explain the draw of games like NORCO that draw on complex emotions.
Originally used in the outdooring community, the term “Type one” fun describes activities that are enjoyable while you’re doing them, like listening to music. “Type two” fun includes activities that are enjoyable to look back on, like going on a difficult hike.
Games like “Getting Over It” and “Dark Souls” that are designed to be difficult can bring players type two fun as they look back on their hard work. That being said, games typically avoid “type three” fun, which is when something isn’t fun at all, not when playing or looking back.
To keep their games away from type three fun, some game developers use safety tools. One form of game that commonly uses these are role playing games, or RPGs, where players take on characters.
For game developer Rachel Rudy, having safety rules to make sure players know they can take a break were a priority in her game, “Denatured.” In it, players act as clones who are “denaturing” and will all die, except for the original.
Rudy explained that she was inspired to create the game after the process of college applications, where she and her friends felt pressured to pick a single future they wanted to pursue.
“The game was a way that I could work through those fears that I had about choosing an identity and growing up, and it didn’t fix me. That’s not the point. But it’s a safe environment where we [could] let ourselves feel those feelings,” Rudy said, “That’s that cathartic experience that can be really overwhelming, but it’s safe and it’s controlled and it’s understood.”
Exploring hard emotions can be stressful, some players agree to it as part of a game experience. In those cases, safety tools can be used if someone starts feeling hurt or uncomfortable in real life. It’s similar to how in football it’s fine to have hard tackles and hits, but if someone gets actually injured, play stops.
“In roleplaying games, because they can be so nebulous and so personal, it’s very important to establish safety,” Rudy said. “You can feel that what you’re going through is intentional.”
In his game One Hundred Year Old Vampire, Hutchins has players explore themes of loss as they play an aging vampire trying to hold onto their memories. He described how when players let themselves be vulnerable with each other, they can create stories that are uniquely impactful.
“It can be dark and miserable because it’s ours,”Hutchins said. “It’s you and me doing this thing right now, and it can be much more than it is as a story…It’s not a script…it’s natural and it’s yours and it’s special.”
By creating environments where players can be vulnerable safely, games allow players to feel the depths of difficult emotions. Outside of gaining memorable experiences, learning to fully feel these emotions is an important life lesson.
According to Linda Yaron Weston, an expert in mindfulness and well-being at USC, recognizing when your feelings can be the first step in managing them.
“We are human and we’re going to have all of these emotions come up. With them we have a choice: How do I show up around this emotion?” Weston said. “Often we might stuff that emotion down somewhere and ignore it or become overwhelmed by it.”
The ability to deal with hard emotions like failure has been called emotional literacy and emotional responsiveness. According to Weston, it can be strengthened, whether through practices like mindfulness or through playing video games.
“We can learn to become better at resilience. We may have heard of post-traumatic stress, but post-traumatic growth is when we can learn to become human,” Weston said. “We can learn and grow from our challenges.”
Even if feeling something in a game isn’t the same as real life, the emotions players have are still real and powerful. These might not be immediately pleasant, they stick with players and offer a chance to process and work through them.
“Catharsis is not to actually have an experience with grief. It is to practice an experience with grief. It is to rehearse our reactions to grief,” Fullerton said. “The grief is real, but it’s also part of this pretend…That’s what the arts can do for us.”
In roleplaying games, video games, board games, sports or any other form of game, you can work through the failure, fear and hurt that comes with being human in a safe way. From guilt and helplessness to anger and grief, the tragedy in games can help players connect with how they experience the hardest parts of life.