Attribution Case Study - Dark Souls

I said I would talk about Dark Souls, and being such a great example of a game that often causes attribution to person, the part of attribution theory discussed in my last post, this is a great place to introduce it! 

A large part of what turns many people away from this game, thinking that they just aren't capable of surviving Dark Souls, is that where many games are giving you a tutorial, showing you the ropes, Dark Souls is giving you death. How's that 'Asylum Demon' to the left look for a first boss? At about 2-15 minutes into the game, he really doesn't waste any time in conveying that in Dark Souls, death is your only reliable teacher. Still, many people are used to the status quo, and misconstrue this as meaning that they aren't good enough, when they really just need the patience and attention to find figure out what keeps killing them. 

It's really is a sorry thing, that so many are turned away due to their illusory inadequacy, but it is a good learning point nonetheless. Most gamers I talk about Dark Souls with, think that you have to be some kind of stuck-up, masochistic, "hardcore gamer" elitist/hipster to play this game as avidly as I do. It's just that intimidating.

Heck, even Takeshi Miyazoe, a producer for the upcoming Dark Souls 2 admitted that the first game was too intimidating when he said that the sequel would be "[more] accessible... it's not that the game is going to be any easier, but it will be the process of streamlining a lot of the 'fat' that hinders people from enjoying the true Dark Souls experience."

Mr. Miyazoe's differentiation between accessibility and difficulty serves our discussion perfectly:

• Here, accessibility refers to the ability to understand the challenge better, to the end of encouraging attribution to circumstance, rather than attribution to player.

• The level of difficulty will still ensure a good challenge, (Having played the beta of DS2, I can tell you that the difficulty isn't going anywhere!) but the accessibility they speak of should remove some ambiguity from the equation, perhaps by offering a more straight-forward approach to teaching game basics.

• By giving the players more knowledge on their failures, they will be able to more effectively lean from them. This should make the game much less daunting initially, without sacrificing any positive elements of its design. (Although an argument could be made that the depth of despair felt in the first game made triumph that much better.)

Thank you once again for reading! Stay tuned for a short series on combat in action games.

-Kenny White

PSN: Fatalis_Veritas