There was a period in the early days of social media where clips of gamers absolutely losing it when they died in-game would often go viral. These videos usually involved expletive-filled rants, some act of destruction, and a grief-stricken player throwing down their controller and quivering with anger. Since then, these videos have remained popular: while they no longer go viral, compilation videos on YouTube of players rage-quitting still pull in millions of views.

There is an element of schadenfreude to these videos: as much as people might deny it, we enjoy watching the misfortune of others. But their appeal also lies in the fact that anyone who has played video games understands how frustrating it can be to lose. You might have been playing for hours, carefully building up the strength of your character so you can finally face off against that big boss. You begin your attack and then, within seconds, you’re dead. Now say you’ve tried to take down this foe three or four times and you’re still not getting anywhere. All of a sudden you can understand why people might fling controllers across the room.

Of course, some modern games are designed to limit the rise of a player’s temper, with autosave and waypoint functions meaning you don’t have to repeat yourself with hairpulling annoyance. Others, however, weave this frustration into the very mechanics of what you’re playing. Take the oeuvre of Japanese developer FromSoftware, whose Dark Souls games and 2022’s blockbuster RPG Elden Ring are achingly difficult.

These games are punishing on purpose – they test the player, encouraging experimentation, repetition and innovation. “I do feel apologetic toward anyone who feels there’s just too much to overcome in my games,” game director Hidetaka Miyazaki told the New Yorker. “I just want as many players as possible to experience the joy that comes from overcoming hardship.”

Still, those who do complain about this brutal difficulty are told by the fandom to simply “git gud” and up their game; according to the hundreds of YouTube guides there is, apparently, a pattern to them and when it clicks for you, they become a breeze.

This has not been my experience. I’ve played some of the FromSoftware games (including Elden Ring, which some say is the “easiest”) and I’ve yet to get to grips with this so-called pattern. Instead, I’ve spent hours repeating the first areas of the game over and over again, my hands sweaty from gripping the controller, until I find my stress levels are so high that I need to lie down.

But Elden Ring and Dark Souls aren’t the only games with tedious difficulties. During the pandemic, when everyone bought a Nintendo Switch and started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I found myself logging in each day to tend to my island with a growing sense of dread. There was just no way to appease the demands of loan shark Tom Nook, while the turnip stock exchange left me anxious and uneasy. It all seemed so overwhelmingly complex to manage. (It’s worth noting I’m not alone in my anxiety about Animal Crossing.)

In gaming circles, the nature of difficulty has been debated over constantly, fuelling a culture war by “serious gamers” against amateurs who need their hands held. Online and competitive games like Call of Duty and Fortnite are known for their toxic fan communities, with some players tossing insults, death threats and bigotry at those they deem lacking.

As Simon Parkin wrote in 2017, this battle has even spilled over to those who review games, too: if someone gives a game a bad review, it’s not because the game sucks but because the reviewer does.

In her examination of toxicity in gaming communities, Dr Rachel Kowert, research director of Take This, a mental health non-profit that aims to destigmatise mental health challenges and provide information and resources to the gaming community and gaming industry, suggested that this cycle of toxic behaviour is a perpetual one. “If you consider yourself part of the “in-group” (eg, a gamer) and engage with someone whom you consider part of the “out-group” (eg, not a gamer) and the in-group norm is toxic behavior toward the out-group (eg, flaming, griefing, and doxxing), you are more likely to engage in that kind of behavior,” she explained.

In fact, according to the Anti-Defamation League, 83 per cent of adult gamers have experienced harassment in online multiplayer games. This culture carries over to single-player games, too. While you can, of course, play Dark Souls or Elden Ring alone, the impenetrability of these titles – from the gameplay loop to the explanations of the story – often leads people to head online and look for answers. But instead of support, players are often met with hostility.

It all feeds into one of gaming’s biggest and most toxic problems: gatekeeping. As what was once considered “geek” culture shifts from the edges into the mainstream, a certain faction of old-guard gaming aficionados, and a small but vocal minority of “hardcore” players, are now grappling with the fact that their hobby no longer solely belongs to them.

Video games are no longer niche, though. With reports that the game industry generates more money than the music and movie industries combined, it’s safe to assume that more people are playing than ever before. Some of those players are not going to be experts with the ability to smote the hardest boss or understand the difference between the endurance and strength stats.

However, this is not some advocation for easier games (although the more accessibility options the better). In fact, there can be a kind of poeticism to a game when its difficulty is designed as part of the player experience and not some arbitrary barrier to entry. As Miyazaki told the New Yorker: “Death and rebirth, trying and overcoming – we want that cycle to be enjoyable. In life, death is a horrible thing. In play, it can be something else.”

Nevertheless, all players should be allowed to take part in this cycle, no matter their ability or skill level. Being crap at playing video games doesn’t preclude a person’s enjoyment of them. For a few weeks, while your lofty ambitions for your island remain intact from Tom Nook’s cash gouging, the monotony of Animal Crossing can be therapeutic. Likewise, if you do manage to defeat the Tree Sentinel in Elden Ring, you’re bound to feel a sense of achievement. So what if you don’t actually make it anywhere near the game’s first proper boss, the multi-limbed Margit, and give up, or if you abandon your Animal Crossing island when the cost of playing becomes too much to bear. If a game has an easy mode – or in some cases an even more accessible story mode where all difficulty is erased – a player should feel more than comfortable choosing it. Just as it’s a player’s prerogative to lean into the sometimes-pleasurable pain of seemingly insurmountable difficulty. Shit gamers are still gamers, after all.

"We don’t try to force difficulty or make things hard for the sake of it,” Miyazaki said in a different interview. “We want players to use their cunning, study the game, memorise what’s happening, and learn from their mistakes.” While this is certainly a noble approach to game design, it’s not always what someone wants. Sometimes you just want to roam around an icy tundra, bonking people with your giant magical axe, or play as a himbo government agent high kicking zombies, or vacuum up ghosts in a haunted hotel, and you want to do all those things without a challenge.

Being crap at video games is something all people who are crap at video games has to learn to accept about themselves. Once you do, playing games becomes a lot more fun. And to anyone crapping on the crap gamers? Don’t hate the player, just love the game.

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