Sorry for the late article, Team, had some personal stuff going on plus work, you know how it is. I’ve been playing a lot of The Culling, probably the greatest game to have ever been brought into existence. What once was a three-quarters win rate, though, has now diminished to maybe getting three kills then dying. I blame the optimization, why else are they able to block and push at the same time. Also, note of warning, if you have “twitch.tv/insertyourtwitchchannelnamehere” as your in game name, you bet your ass I will send a report, but that’s for an article for another time.

Turns out, Team, that video games are a lot more realistic than we ever knew, and I’m not talking about virtual reality. Let’s play through a scenario, shall we? Let’s say you boot up a game, say an an MMO, you make your character, you pick your class, your put in the hours, forsaking everything else, and finally get end game gear and loot. Then you start raiding and climbing the PvP ladder, ignoring the physical needs of food and sanitation, and then you finally reach number one. You’re the baddest man in the fictional world of your choosing, or are you? With some exceptions, if you’re grinding level equivalent raid bosses, you still need a party. Let’s look at party based games like The Division: Regardless of your gear, you still need a party to safely take down certain mobs and especially level equivalent bosses. The rare spawns, the bosses, the named mobs, they’re all individually stronger than you. These guys wander around aimlessly just wanting for some naive player to think they’re finally strong enough to 1v1, just to serve them a generous portion of humble pie. So you get some friends together for the same boss and it’s a cake walk. You need other people to take down one character.

“But Jareth,” you say a look of frustration upon your noble brow, “that’s how it’s designed for a challenge”.

Yes, dear reader, I understand this, believe me I do, but we’re not talking about game mechanics we’re talking about character power rankings in the gaming universe. You are never the strongest, and no matter how many wins you have in the PvP area, nothing will change that. Sure, the other characters have you do their leg work, they have you run their errands, and you do get stronger from these virtual Miyagis having you go through tedious wax-on wax-off quests and mission, but unlike Daniel-san you’re not the baddest man on the playground when it’s all over. You can’t raise your broken leg and crane kick the final boss of the game for a one hit knock out, you have to party up or run the risk of dying, which based of the game may or may not be a catastrophic event for you. Off the top of my head I can only think of two series where you are the baddest man on the planet: The Souls games and Elder Scrolls. At the end of these games you reign supreme as a near god-like being, having mastered everything, conquered every obstacle single handedly, and replaced the old guard with the fury of your might. Unless you go online in the Souls games and get wrecked by a more experienced player. At that point you’re no longer the Chosen Undead, you’re just another pile of souls waiting to be harvested by the True Chosen Undead.

But don’t fret, my Team, because this is not exactly a bad thing for various reasons. One, it’s lonely at the top. If you’re the strongest character you wouldn’t be able to relate to certain NPCs and their very human vulnerability. You would look down on them from on high and wonder why they didn’t just Fus-Ro-Dah their problems away, and that mindset would make you a target, which leads me to another reason being the strongest is a bad idea: everyone is gunning for you. All the young upstarts in the game would envy your power and dedicate their lives to become strong enough to defeat you, it may not happen at first, it may never happen in your IRL life time, but it will happen, and it’s that exact same motivation that is necessary to keep people playing. You WANT to be the strongest character in the game, you NEED to be the strongest character in the game, but you never truly will be, so you keep playing, you keep grinding, you keep fighting bosses even when you have all the gear and legendary drops you could ever hope for, you hope against hope that YOU will be the one to end the cycle and finally transcend beyond the glass ceiling.

I want to end this week’s article by saying that throughout the week I would think of things to talk about and write them down in a notebook. Apparently when I write I switch between regular print and cursive. This really bothers, a lot. I don’t even know when this little habit started, but I can only assume it’s been going on for years, and I absolutely can’t stand it.

About the Author

Jareth was born with a single purpose: to talk to himself, and to show the world what being bad at video games really is. Okay, so two purposes.