Dark Souls and the Joy of Dying

…it is not always serious to die, the first time it happens.

-R. A. LAFFERTY

Something happened to me while playing Dark Souls, From Software’s most recent medieval-themed combat simulator cum castle crawler. I died. And then I died again and again. And eventually I learned.

At first I thought that what I had learned was how to pummel a Capra Demon or the proper way to dodge a flying Bell Gargoyle, hack off its dangerously flailing tail and then proceed to beat it to death with same. Talk about a double indignity! I have to admit to some pretty animated celebration after performing that memorable feat.

In fact, a lot has been made of the sense of jubilation in triumph that Dark Souls alone seems able to deliver. Almost every review I’ve read, and I’ve read at least twenty, ensures its readers that the struggle is worth it. Or in gamer-talk, that the sense of accomplishment scales with the insane difficulty. Which translates, I suppose, into insane happiness.

Dark Souls, like its predecessor Demon’s Souls, is perpetually difficult, often frustrating, but always fair. That seemed about right. But somewhere along the way in my 60 plus hours spent in Dark Souls’ eerie, beautiful, punishing game world I started to suspect that we had all missed the point.

As I expertly parried and repost an offending skeleton, backstabbed my way ever closer to the next Big Boss, I was not reminded of a long lost Golden Age of gaming, “when games were hard,” but instead of a mathematics final somewhere around fifth grade.

Math, for me, was hard. Harder than Zork. My father had implored me that if I studied seriously, I could ace it. I had my doubts, but I tried anyway. And when it didn’t come easily and I wanted to give up, he convinced me to keep on trying. And somewhere during that unprecedented and painful effort something magical happened: I finally got it.

When I did ace that test, I wasn’t euphoric over the score, I was in awe of my own ability to learn. I remember that event so vividly because that was the day I had learned to learn. Whole new worlds opened up to me, and that summer I put my new theory to work, practicing so diligently with a baseball and old tire that come spring I found myself staring down batters from that other “hallowed” ground, the pitching mound.

The Dark Souls universe is built from these mysterious, magical moments. You never seem to know exactly when it happened, when you got so good, but it’s thrilling. No game takes you from despair at an impossible task to elation over your own expertise so convincingly or so often. And the game reminds you that you CAN still learn, even if you’re not a kid anymore.

Malcolm Gladwell’s, Outliers: The Story of Success, made famous the notion of the 10,000 hours necessary to truly master something. For most of us that seemed excessive, even prohibitive. But most of us aren’t trying to become world-class concert pianists, we’re just trying to get through that difficult class with a passing grade or learn to play tennis well enough to hit a ball around with friends. Maybe then, for most of us, 60 hours will do.

Valve’s Portal 2 came out earlier this year and was rightly heralded, along with the original, as a new kind of game; one that taught basic physics, multi-dimensional thinking and problem solving. I personally felt like I was playing a game not set in the future, but from the future. The cooperation necessary to traverse its co-op areas is an experience everyone should try. But months later, I’m not really sure I learned anything particularly lasting or valuable. I just haven’t seen any portals on my block to jump through.

The connection between gaming and learning is by now a pretty well trod subject. And the mechanics of gaming are being infused into fields as disparate as education, medicine and marketing, to name a few. How many achievement points, I mean rewards points, do you have on your credit card?

You can hit the app store today and find apps that will teach astronomy, or differential equations, or your ABC’s. I’m not certain any of them will teach you how to learn, and make you believe it.

First propositions are important. Pythagoras understood that the first business of mathematics was to demonstrate that numbers could accurately represent reality. Early geometric proofs helped prove that. Without a foundation firmly underfoot, who would venture out to explore life’s yet unknown and frightening corridors?

Dark Souls is a first proposition kind of game, and its literal corridors are calling out to be explored and mastered. In a year I won’t remember the mechanics necessary to defeat a giant blob that goes by the name Ceaseless Discharge, but I will remember that with a little effort, I can do almost anything, even things I once thought impossible.

This is a game you should want your kids to play, because learning first requires a personal belief in your own ability to learn. So if they break a controller by hurling it across the room in frustration, buy them a new one. It just means they’re learning.

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