It's time for a manlet rage thread.
Oh no, the
garden gnomes are angry.
Observe as the underlying assumption is laid bare, perhaps for the first time. "In most situations, the goal of publishing and developing a game is to make an emotional connection with the player, and tell a good story." This is an assertion made by a paper that, presumably, wants to be taken seriously in the video game sphere. It's trying to pass this off as a thing that's simply recognized as true - that games are, at their core, mostly about telling stories.
I sort of agree with the point the paper presents, but I'm going to be more vague and say that games in general are about providing experiences. When I say "games," I include tabletop and traditional board games as well, and some sports would arguably fit in if you want to navel gaze really hard.
Games are about role playing; when you play a game, you step out of your life and into a simulacrum of another. Before modern computing, we had to content ourselves with more simple rule systems, playing pieces, and good ol' imagination. Now what was previously imagined or abstracted can be simulated in a digital world. When you think of a video game this way—as a world simulation in which you live vicariously through a character or avatar—the importance of all its elements becomes much clearer. The latticework of rules which make up the gameplay give us our means with which to act in the world, and the visuals and/or writing provide the context to give these actions meaning.
It also becomes clear that the story in a video game is so much more than written or spoken words. As you are an agent in the game world, your actions, or the "gameplay," are also part of the story. If the player's choices clash with the words, then the simulation becomes disjointed and chaotic. This is the main challenge of writing for video games, and it's why a lot of indie hacks throw their hands up and straightjacket their players so they don't misbehave and complicate the writer's narrative.
So everything in the game comes together and (ideally) works in harmony to create a simulaton, or an experience. This is where I agree with the author of the article; the difficulty in Souls games is key to providing the kind of experience they seek to emulate, and the game would be far worse off if that difficulty was not there. On the opposite extreme from game journalists are mouthbreathers who insist that gameplay is literally everything, and that is untrue. As I've already said, visuals and sometimes writing are necessary to provide context to what you're doing, and sometimes that context can be really boring or stupid if there's a lack of artistry.
This is all incredibly off topic so I will conclude by saying that ResetERA are far too preoccupied with online clout chasing and politics to think about any of these things, and that's why they're posers who deserve nothing but our scorn.
