In this Gamelab session, we will explore the meaning of difficulty and destruction in games. Barbora Bachanova and Riccardo Freschi will share their research with us. Afterwards, we’ll play and live-analyse some of the titles they analysed.

In his talk “‘Git Gud’:  The Role of Difficulty in the Enjoyment of Video Games”, Freschi demonstrates how high difficulty requires deep player investment, which in turn helps cultivate a uniting sense of struggle that is often shared  online. In this way, difficulty incentivizes communal exchange. This talk will analyse two examples: Soulslike games and glitch-based speedrunning, where player communities determine meta-rules to create an expert level meta-difficulty.

In her talk “Destroy the Monster: Hegemonies of Moral Concern in Video Games”, Bachanova presents her analysis of destructibility in games. Destruction is a core feature of video games and encodes notions of expendability and exposability. By determining what is available to be destroyed, games can articulate hegemonies of moral concern that support neoliberal, anthropocentric, colonial, and extractivist rhetoric. More recent games critically reflect on this core feature of game design while reproducing. The analysis focuses on environmental extraction in Stardew Valley, self-destructive gameplay in Fear and Hunger, and cycles of destruction in The Last of Us 2.