Difficult, Hostile, and Ambivolent Games

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I was talking with a friend the other day and the idea of hosile games came up. Hard cut to me pondering it in a blog post, I guess!

What is a Hostile game?

A hostile game is a game that doesn’t want its player to be there. My favorite examples of hostility in games would be some of the games contained within The Beginners Guide, which I wholeheartedly recommend playing. (Slight spoilers ahead, nothing major or game-ruining though!)

In the game, many of the shown games gate content behind arduous or impossible tasks, vast time delays, and some simply just hide the vast majority of themselves from the player. These games are hostile because they specifically do not want the player to experience them. They do not care about being worth the player’s time, or being an enjoyable experience. In fact, they work to make it the exact opposite. The player must act in spite of the game in order to experience what it has to offer.

Further, I think I can categorize games that are made for a specific person or group of people, but are hostile to all others as hostile games as well, as they contain the constitent element of hostility. I’d argue this kind of game only falls out of the hostile category when it stops acting hostile towards the majority of its playerbase.

Thematically, this kind of game has so much promise, but entries will never be successful or maybe even ever played once, intentionally. I think that’s both sad and beautiful.

What a hostile game is not, however, is a difficult game.

Difficult games

Difficult games may appear similar to hostile games on the surface, but contain one key difference: Deep down, they care about the player. They put thought and effort into crafting an engaging gameplay loop. They make sure bosses are difficult, but still beatable with sufficient mastery of the systems. Like a good TTRPG GM, they provide the player with challeneges but with the ultimate intention of giving them a good experience.

Difficult games lie on a completely different scale to Hostile and Ambivolent games, that I’d like to label “Caring” Games. This is where most games lie. Difficulty is simply an aspect of caring games. Caring games can vary in difficulty, many may even offer the player difficulty choices so they may customize their experience. However, only the difficult ones are frequently confused with hostile games, due to the end results appearing similar on the surface. The process and intention of creation between the two could not be more diometrically opposite though. Spend an amount of time playing both, and you’ll feel the difference.

Ambivolent games

These games a lot of the time are just crafted for the sake of creation. These are my favorites of the bunch, as they kinda just exist.

Ambivolence and hostility seem similar on the surface, but interestingly, I’d argue that hostility shares more with difficulty than it does with ambivolence. Both Caring and Hostile games, explicitly care about the player experience. Either making it as good as it can be or as bad as it can be. Ambivolent games… don’t care. Ambivolence is pure craftsmanship, Art for art’s sake.

In games, that craft may still have a lot to do with the player experience, but its intention is completely divorced from fun, enjoyment, or lack thereof. My games specifically focus on thematic intention, with little regard for player enjoyment.

I do hope players enjoy my games, but in their creation, I don’t really concern myself with the reception. I want the piece to speak for itself.

Conclusion

More people should make ambivolent and hostile games.

Caring games may be the only ones that really sell, but there’s so much more room in the space to experiment and create! If all we create is what is deemed profitable, either in fiat currency or social currency, we’ve unknowingly shackled ourselves and our creative output to the system. We all have to make a living under the system somehow, so don’t kneecap your capacity to put food on the table, but if you have the money and time to create without constraint, I’d urge you to give ambivolence or even hostility a shot.

Especially if you’re looking for social currency and approval in your art, I’d urge you to think about why. As far as I can tell, almost everyone craves some form of social approval, me included. However, tying your perception of your art to the external response that it gets from others is fragile. As a rule, people are unreliable creatures, and I don’t want to tie my art, and by extention my perception of my own skills, to that which I cannot control. I love sharing my creations and I love both giving and getting feedback, but I don’t count these things as a given, nor do I base any intrinsic value upon their existence. They’re pleasant experiences, and ones that I can leverage and use to improve my craft in the future, but that’s all they should be.

As a sidenote, that’s how I’m able to put out these blog posts without pretty much any response whatsoever. I write to write. I get value out of these by simple virtue of the time I set aside to write them and think about them. The process is what becomes valueable, and I stop caring about the result.

Anyway, thanks for pondering with me. Have a good one and vaya con queso.