It’s Fun to Be Frustrated
There is an undeniably tangible experience when one becomes frustrated with a video game. Countless compilations are available on YouTube of frustrated gamers destroying controllers, televisions, and screaming into the void. The humor behind this concept is unmissable, and it’s hard not to feel some sense of intentionality behind this. The two frustrating experiential games we will be dissecting are Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy and VR The Diner Duo. These two were chosen because they are some of the most infuriating games I have ever played. However, for some reason, I cannot stop playing them. I’m going to dissect these two in their respective categories, which I am labeling: Frustration by Design and Frustration through Experience.
Getting Over It embodies the concept of frustration by design and it does not shy away from that. The creator, Bennett Foddy, even acknowledges this element of the game through his in-game voiceover. He discusses how this game presents nearly impossible obstacles for the player to overcome. Your character, a man inside a cauldron, uses a sledgehammer to launch himself around the map and climb objects. VR The Diner Duo occupies a much different space in frustration theory because it is the actual experience of progressing through the game which makes it frustrating. In the game, one player works in the restaurant as a server, and another operates as a chef inside a VR headset. The controls are rather simple for the server and intuitive for the player in VR; it is the forced dependence upon each other that makes this game frustrating.
In their own unique way, Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy and VR The Diner Duo depend upon frustration to be entertaining. The mechanics of Getting Over It are designed to be simple, yet infuriating. The slightest swing of your sledgehammer sends the player back to the start. Whereas the in-game mechanics of VR The Diner Duo are rather straightforward. The “learning curve”, or the time it takes for one to become familiar with the mechanics of any given game, is excruciatingly steep in Getting Over It (Sanches et al. 1038). The difficult and unexplained mechanics are part of the reason this game is frustrating. You are dropped into a game with foreign controls and unfamiliar physics. However, in VR The Diner Duo, the mechanics are rather straightforward. The first levels are intentionally easy in order to assist with the learning curve and help the players familiarize themselves with the controls.
To better understand the frustration, I had my two sisters, Mallory and Natalie, play both games back to back. Watch here:
Observing the frustration accomplished by each of these games provided some fascinating insight into what they accomplish. When viewing these games as “a meaningful and purposeful activity”, it is impossible to miss what the frustration accomplishes in terms of teaching the player (Shi et al. 293). Getting Over It is a game about overcoming self-inflicted frustration in a world that is seemingly out of your control. At times, it feels like the more time you spend inside the game the worse you become, but in reality, mastery of the obstacles is possible. In VR The Diner Duo, the frustration of depending upon others for success becomes a metaphor for independence and co-dependence in the workplace. To be successful in each of these games is to overcome that frustration and work toward a goal (or common goal).
However, if games are “not playgrounds for free choice, but training grounds for habits”, then these games become incredibly manipulative (Steyerl 106). Both games are infusing the acceptance of frustration as an inevitability into the player. Frustration from one’s own failure is inevitable in Getting Over It; frustration is baked into the core of this game. Eventually, the player is forced to accept the mechanics and the frustration as a way of in-game life if they want to progress. The slow burn of frustration is evident in VR The Diner Duo; as the game becomes more difficult, the ability to communicate effectively with your partner becomes impossible. The players are indoctrinated with the idea that failure can be entirely out of your control. These games center around frustration and “model destruction as an opportunity”; the games destroy one’s own defiance of frustration and avoidance of conflict through repeated impossible trials (Steyerl 106). The continually forced failure of both games creates an environment of frustration that the player habituates to in order to succeed.
The implications these games have on the lives of their players can quickly escalate to rather dystopian levels. For example, Getting Over It and VR The Diner Duo both share a level of acceptance toward frustration in their respective gameplay mechanics. Since information learned in games can easily be translated into that person’s life, these games normalize frustrating circumstances (Shi et al. 293). Specifically, in VR The Diner Duo, the player is placed into a workplace environment and given increasingly stressful and frustrating scenarios to undergo. Not to mention that the most frustrating in-game role, the endless chef, takes place in VR where you must embody the frustrated employee. There is no removal from the frustration in this case because every move you make and direction look in affects the outcome from a first-person perspective. The VR player is conditioned to expect and accept frustrating workplace environments and difficult co-workers.
Ultimately, these games highlight the frustration that is present in every game I have ever played… so why play them? The “interrelationships between the gamer and his/her surroundings” are controlled by the design of the game to evoke an emotion from the player (Shi et al. 292). A passive game is not an entertaining one because nothing new is being pushed onto the player. Games that push the player to experience something new come with inherent difficulty and intrigue, however, there is always a cost of normalization and habituation in these games. Whatever the player is conditioned to experience in the game, that player will bring to their lives. Overcoming obstacles is at the root of every challenging gaming experience, and if properly constructed, those games can help us overcome obstacles in our own lives.
Works Cited:
Sanches, Jose Luis Gonzales. Vela, Francisco Luis Gutierrez. Simarro, Francisco Montero. Padilla-Zea, Natalia. “Playability: Analyzing User Experience in Video Games”. Behavior & Information Technology. Vol. 31, №10. 2012.
Shi, Jing. Renwick, Rebecca. Turner, Nigel. Kirch, Bonnie. “Understanding The Lives of Problem Gamers: The Meaning, Purpose, and Influences of Video Games”. Computers In Human Behavior. 2019.
Stereyl, Hito. “On Games, Or, Can Art Workers Think?” New Left Review 103. 2017.
