Challenges can be addictive. I am writing this now in an effort to pose a challenge to myself on the subject of culture that has taken shape and formed around a single gaming company’s product. #GitGud culture. “Get good” they tweeted into the void, hollered into the mic, pounded into their phones. They would go on to challeng their philosophical opponent with this mentality. From the first time I heard this chant, this call, my first thought was, “What else are they supposed to do?” What was “Get Good” an answer to? If it was on Jeopardy, what would the clue be in the blue box? From what I could tell, it boiled down from a general discourse around difficult aspects to FromSoft’s game design, something I only learned recently reaches far into the past, to some of the first consoles, to gaming’s adolescence. This conversation probably started out something like this: “How am I supposed to beat this boss?” lamented Person A. “If you do X when they do Y, you can successfully beat this boss.” Person B calmly stated. “What? That’s really hard. How do they expect people to reasonably do X?” cried person A, to which Person B stoically replied, hashtag in the back of their throat, “Get good.” 

Person A was startled by the challenge. It was simple but also an impossible feat. What initially looked like a simple hill became a mountain to their eyes. Being told that one would have to get better to succeed suddenly made the challenge more real, as if all their gaming experience to this point amounted to pebbles next to boulders. Person A was challenged to take stock of who they were. Person B made this very personal. When some people see mountains, the take the first step to the top. Some people turn around or look for another way. And others, they curse the mountain for even existing. They can see nothing else now. There is no path forward, no path back. They build a village at the base of the mountain, warning travelers of the challenge ahead. The village grows as travelers agree, the mountain is suddenly the source of all their ire. But there was another village, and it too was growing. The village at the top of the mountain was filled with people who saw the mountain and welcomed the challenge, informed by those who came before them, their hints carved into the ground. These adventurers could see that the mountain was built to be conquered. At the top they were met by those who succeeded before them. They reached out with a hand and said, “You did good.” But this tale started with a challenge, a challenge not from the mountain, but from a friend. Had Person B never spoken those words, “Get Good,” would that hill have ever become the mountain? Is “Get Good” culture negatively divisive? Is it simply pointing out the difference between success and failure? 

This has largely been where my thoughts have drifted over the last few months. #GitGud culture had the very strange effect of taking something I always took for granted and had me actually inspect it. I have been playing video games since I was around 3 years old. And by this I mean most of my early memories revolve around games. How good I actually was back then is lost to the ether, like most experiences pre-internet. But something that was always present was the challenge. In the early console days of gaming many games were, looking back, often given arbitrarily hard difficulties as a way of extending the playtime and thus the value of the game. More time spent playing strangely meant more value for your dollar. And this was true in a sense, early consumers expected an extended experience, either by the length of the game or because the game was challenging to beat. If you bought a puzzle that didn’t tell you how many pieces it was in, and you opened it to find only two, you might feel you were ripped off. On the other hand, if it was in two hundred thousand pieces, you might also feel ripped off. In that way, video games are largely puzzle boxes without the pieces identified. Even video game trailers often hide what’s really inside the game. You can’t really tell how you are going to feel about it until you get it in your hands. Or a trusted source explains it to you. Maybe a villager at the bottom of the mountain. Maybe one who has been to the top and felt it wasn’t worth it. Maybe one who quit halfway. Still, a truly polished game always would shine through. Well thought out challenges won the hearts and minds of the gamers who played them. Super Mario Bros had a very well thought out difficulty curve that kept people coming back again and again. It may have even tricked the player into thinking a mountain was just a hill. 

In this way, it might seem that “Get Good” culture is actually shattering the perception that the challenge is actually surmountable. By being told to “Get Good” at the first, second, or thirtieth sign of trouble, your eyes might no longer be focused on the challenge directly in front of you, but the goal at the top. You are now looking ahead and seeing the game for what it really is, a series of increasingly difficult challenges that ultimately only reward “true” satisfaction when the creator has agreed that you bested all of their challenges, and awards you with the credits screen. The satisfaction at the end of an individual challenge is now soured, because while each step gets you closer, you recognize how much they are really asking of you. Maybe you walked into the game expecting leisure, and leisure isn’t necessarily meant to be challenging. Maybe it makes you rethink what you are even doing here, right now, in the moment. “Get Good” calls on the person to become introspective, in their leisure time, during a challenging moment, and offers only another challenge. With this mirror in your face, you suddenly find yourself face to face with a true challenge, one that you can’t really escape. You will always be you your entire life. The game was a chance to forget that, become someone else. Your “someone” is then given a challenge for you to solve, but you have no answer, so you look to friends and allies, only to find that upon receiving their advice, you in fact are the real challenge. 

Upon reflecting on yourself, looking to the top of the mountain, you ask yourself is the gold at the top even worth it. You sit and contemplate. The mountain is now very popular and people are passing you by. You stop a fellow adventurer and ask them, “Why are you doing this? Is it really worth it?” They smile a gaped-tooth smile and say, “This is my 3rd time up the mountain. This time I am doing it without legs. The village chief at the top rewards those who succeed, but the people reward those with even more praise if you make it harder on yourself.” They carry on, pulling themself along the ground, naked, as they drag themselves across the rocks and up the mountain. Look around, you are surrounded by loud veterans, all chanting in unison, “To the top!” Their stories of success sound so sweet, but you’re met with only bitter thoughts of the challenges ahead, the ones they pass through so easily. They are your kin, like minders you thought, but how could they be so different. You head back down the hill, defeated and questioning if you belong. There is no way into the village at the top of the mountain without climbing. Back in the village at the bottom of the hill, you feel the ire filling you up inside. You consider becoming a permanent resident. Until someone sidles up to you and says, “You know, there is another way to climb a mountain.” Desperate, you beg to know the answer. They reply, “Pick another mountain.”

At this point, it is really clear what “Get Good” culture is and how it works in the mind of a gamer. But why is it divisive? From my perspective, it is because while other games for a long time were chosen because of their appearance or style, this genre is chosen simply for its difficulty. And that’s what is really happening here, “Get Good” is becoming recognized as a genre. The story or visual design of the game is second to its mechanics and the difficulty of mastering said mechanics. In the case of FromSoft, they casually make the story harder to engage with by comparison to what has become the norm up to this point. In the early days, imagination was used to fill the space between representative graphics and the text in the manual or on the screen. Now, largely games are as narrative as other moving audio/visual media. Gamers for a long time have accepted that if a game was a wild west adventure or a space opera fantasy, that simple difference could turn fellow gamers away, and that was fine. And unlike other media formats like movies or television, you wouldn’t feel anything by turning down them simply on their genre alone. But something special happens when you add input into the process, when you are given control to navigate the media, the challenge of getting to the end becomes a matter of intellect, skill, and prowess at your hobby. And yet, most people would not take up the challenge to read a book on the challenge of its words alone. Games as a media have the perfect mix to stir up the nerve and maybe false belief that anyone or most people could succeed if they simply tried. If they “Get Good”. So when someone tells you to, “Pick another mountain,” they are offering you a new challenge. Challenging you to be humble. 

The introspective rollercoaster of “Get Good” continues to push you to reassess your hobby, your time, your skill, and now your ability to live with moving on. Right behind “Get Good” is often “Cope”. Both of these concepts are often said in jest but heard in objection. Despite being obvious or inevitable, they mock the person going through these feelings. It makes it seem like your only recourse is to succeed at the direct challenge in front of you or walk away in shame. In reality, this all a matter of perspective. Kin at your back mocking you are not really your kin. There is no mountain in this hobby you have to climb. Your life is important, how you spend it is important, and how you feel while you do it is also important. However, it doesn’t make the challenge any less true. To succeed at a challenge you are failing at, you will have to get better. To walk away from a challenge you can’t defeat, you will have to cope. But how you do either of these things is entirely up to you, to a degree. Maybe your whole life, coping isn’t something you were taught to do well. Therein is another challenge. They never stop. And you will also never stop getting better and failing and succeeding. “Get Good” reminds us of all of this in an instant, conscious or subconscious. Something said so casually, in jest, is powerful enough to stop us in our tracks. And when something stops us like that, we might quickly grab at our worst emotions. But you have to go through the whole bag before you learn to find the right one.

Regardless of where you land on this, you will grow. Maybe you’ll be a an angrier person, living to spite those who try or those who build hard challenges. Maybe you’ll find a more humble person, one who can categorize their failure to get to the top of the mountain or even try as a successful attempt at recognizing how you want to spend your time and solidify what you actually want out of life. Maybe you’ll put the climb on hold while you hone your craft in other ways. No matter how you slice it, this is what suffering under “Get Good” brings. This is why it’s a divisive battle cry. It spartan kicks you right down a well when you least expected it. It challenges you without asking permission, because this challenge was always there, and it always will be. Even after you accept everything you see in the mirror, the mirror will always be there staring back at you. You might as well play the game. Well, a game you actually like. You might see someone smiling back at you.