By far the most viral and successful videogame that has come out so far in the year 2022 is Elden Ring from FromSoftware. Fromsoftware are the makers of the ever-popular Dark Souls series and understand down to the very core about the science of making single player video games. In an industry that is continually moving away from one-time payment large scale single player games Fromsoftware is one of the sole holdouts pushing back against this trend. When Elden Ring initially released there was a debate that was sparked among game journalists about whether an easy mode should have been included. The reasons these journalists gave for wanting an easy mode included are valid, as problems with accessibility are present in Elden Ring and the soul’s series. Yet what these game journalists fail to reason is that adding an “easy mode” or difficulty slider would completely take away what makes Elden Ring special in the first place.
Nobody like hard work, it’s a concept that makes sense on paper why exert yourself unnecessarily especially when it comes to times of leisure. Yet at the same time when things are too easy, we come to an entirely different problem. Over the last 20 years there has been a push in the triple A gaming industry to make games as accessible and palatable to as many people as possible. But what gaming companies give up by making games easier is a sense of accomplishment that comes through completing a hard task. To put it one way, if you were to climb the highest mountain in Alabama no one would really be that impressed and the sense of accomplishment you would receive would not be that great. However should you scale Mt.Everest then everyone around and yourself will be greatly impressed by what you accomplished. Elden Ring and the Dark Souls games are the Mt. Everest of gaming. By creating games which such a high difficulty level Fromsoft has completely separated their brand from the pack of triple A developers. By separating themselves from the rest of the pack Fromsoft can garner a cult following of hardcore fans that have been growing in number with every new release. Every new Dark Souls game was more successful than the last, and finally it culminates with them completely taking over this year in the gaming industry with the release of Elden Ring. What is ironic is that many would say the Elden Ring is Fromsoft’s easy game to date. The magic system in the game allows player to significantly defeat enemies and bosses much easier than the melee strength/dex builds ever could. Many in the community state that the game already has an “easy mode” just use magic. Now this does not take away from the herculean accomplishment of defeating the game if one uses magic but there are ways within the game that gamers can take if they are stuck and cannot complete a certain section. The difficulty present within Elden Ring is not a deterrent for gamers, it is the biggest draw and is also something that bands people together.
The shared sense of communal “suffering” is something that always brings human beings together. When times are tough in a community people are often at their closest with their fellow man around them. This type of logic translates to Elden Ring and the gamer community. If every single gamer that purchases Elden Ring experiences the exact same difficulty, and the exact same hardships it creates a sense of community with other games that have also experienced that same hardship. Memes can be created; people can brag to one another and reminisce about how hard this one individual boss or enemy was. By offering everyone the exact same difficult experience, a sense of community is developed with those have have played or completed this tall task. Lots of triple A games currently in the market try to offer everyone a completely individual experience. This can be fun knowing no one has experienced exactly what you did when playing a game, but this also makes the games less sociable. It is a twist of irony that a video game focused entirely on its single player experience has made for a more social experience than games focused on multiplayer and social gaming. This sense of shared hardship and community is at the core of what Fromsoft wishes to be from a marketing perspective. The Fromsoft games can currently offer up an experience that is like no other currently being sold, at least in triple A gaming. They have been so successful in discovering this niche that “Souls like” video games have been spawned has an entirely new genre for video games. Multiple other companies are trying their best to re-create that sense of difficulty and accomplishment that comes with the Souls genre. This separation from the rest of the pack has created a sense of brand equity around the Fromsoftware brand. Video game companies rarely seem to have fan boys in current times with consumer expectations higher than ever in the industry. Yet the Fromsoft brand has created a loyal following of fans that will buy anything that Hidetaka Miyazaki puts his hands on.
The combination of a sense of accomplishment from completing a hard task and the sense of communal suffering that all players experience the exact same way have created a complexly unique experience in Elden Ring and The Souls series. The shared sense of difficulty is as much a reason for the success of the series as any gameplay feature. Most would say the difficulty is the biggest draw of the series in general. Gamers are gluttons for punishment, they do not want an easy task that anyone can complete with no problems or difficulties. They want a real challenge that takes them hours to complete that once they do, they can brag around to all of their friends. In this way Fromsoftware has tapped into human nature itself and gave us gamers something that we did not even know that we wanted.
