Or How I learned to stop hating and love the torture
by Graham Walker; Professional Psychotherapist and Video Game Lover
Perhaps this is a picture of Peter Sellers playing Dr Strangelove, or perhaps this is a picture of Miyazaki[1] dreaming about torturing players…
Tags: Souls-Like/ psychology/ memory/ emotion
Total spoilers for level 3-1 of Demon’s Souls.
Demon’s Souls was a game first released by FromSoftware in Japan in 2009 and to the rest of the world in 2010. It is a game of complex combat set in a fantasy-medieval realm; a realm of knights, mages and madness. Despite a rocky development it set the direction of travel for the studio for most of their output in the intervening years and basically gave birth to a whole new genre, namely ‘Souls-like’. It is a wonderful game and I have enjoyed dusting off my PS3 to play it in its original splendour. My playthrough got me reflecting on some interesting dynamics between our psychology and its gameplay that I wanted to share.
As I begin level one of world 3- Tower of Latria- my character materialises into a dark cell with thick stone walls around me. The cell door in front of me stands open and I can dimly see a prison through the gloom. The scene is set. The game is afoot, Watson. I feel a sense of excitement mixed with trepidation tingle up my spine.
As I make my way through the prison, entering each cell as I go, I find living inmates (rotten corpses still somehow animate but holding their heads in despair) and others chained up and unmoving. I find various devious devices of torture scattered throughout: chains, racks, iron maidens. It is horror and dread with every turn.
I then meet my first real enemy; a gowned figure with a green-lit lantern and a face of tentacles. They see me and I approach with caution, my shield in front of me for protection. All at once, I get electrocuted and frozen in place by bolts of green lightning that emanate form the lantern; the octopus-faced demon scampers towards me, lifts me into the air by my shoulders and stabs me through the face with a spike that protrudes from where their nose would be if there wasn’t an octopus there. My player body goes limp and vanishes into ashes. FromSoft’s yet-to-become-iconic large red text “YOU DIED” is emblazoned on to my screen.
YOU DIED… again
That was creepy. That was cool. I love this place.
I continue my way through the level. I learn how to defeat the octopod enemies. I see the ‘YOU DIED’ text again, and again and again. As I inch my way round the world, octopi kill me, falls kill me (in this level it is particularly easy to accidentally fall to your death), a 30 foot-tall metal box firing barrages of arrows kills me. Every death sends me back to the start and respawns all the enemies in the level.
Here we go again.
Supposedly called ‘Mind Flayers’ in the game, I think ‘Octopus face’ is far more descriptive.
It starts to get annoying. The fact that I don’t know which way to go gets annoying. The numerous locked doors for which I don’t know where the keys are gets annoying. The flailing camera that can’t cope with how narrow they made some of the corridors gets annoying. The fact that the level is so dark that you can easily miss the fact that the floor isn’t there and fall to your death again gets really annoying. The 'black phantom' enemy, in front of the boss room, who kills me because he starts shooting cross bow bolts before his character model loads into the level is really, really annoying.
And then I get to the boss in a church hall and by golly is she annoying.
Fool’s Idol, PS5 version of Demon’s Souls.
This is torture! I hate this place.
The boss of this area is the “Fool’s Idol” and consider me a fool she does. She casts spells with hefty damage, but that’s par for the course for this challenging game. That’s the appetiser. The main meal consists of the invisible (yes, literally impossible to see) traps scattered on the floor which damage you but also freeze you in place leaving you open to attacks. Walk on to one of them and you're likely already dead. As you start to damage the boss she then begins to create more copies of herself in the arena, all of which also fire spells at you. If you hit them they die but don’t cause damage to Fool’s Idol herself. I think I counted 5 or 6 copies at one point, though I lost track on account of, you know, being shot at repeatedly.
And, let’s not even talk about the hidden enemy placed outside of the main boss arena who will resurrect the boss. Literally. You finish the fight, then Nope! She’s back up and going for you again. Quick! Take cover! And watch out for those invisible floor traps on your way…
This mark appears when you step on the invisible floor trap. By the time you’ve seen it it’s usually too late.
And this is Demon’s Souls. Unlike in later FromSoft titles most bosses in Demon’s Souls appear at the end of an area and there is no checkpoint in front of boss room. So, when you die, it is back to the start for you to run and fight your way for several minutes back to the place you want to be. Let’s not try and count how many times I re-materialised back in that first dark prison cell after having been zapped out of existence again.
“OK, that’s it. Enough is enough”, I say to myself, “Time to look at the internet and get my build[2] and strats[3] right”.
One guide and a few YouTube videos later and I see how to get to and kill the enemy who resurrects the boss. I find out that actually I can get out three flame toss spells rather than just the one that I was doing; that will instantly triple my damage output. I choose my ring (i.e. equippable stat modifier) that increases my magic damage but decreases magical defence (against this spell-casting boss no less!)- with choosing this I have to give up my cling ring thus sacrificing 25% of my health (ultimately reducing it to 50% as I am in ‘soul form’). Basically, I totally minmax my flaming glass cannon[4]!
Back I go to the boss room, and I smash her up first time in about two minutes. This glass cannon smoked her!
Demon’s Souls winged creatures coming to collect you and triumphantly lift you to the next section of the level.
As I finally overcome Fool’s Idol that familiar FromSoft sense of accomplishment washes over me. I move forward to the altar at the front of the church hall and a group of winged demons dive down to grab me and hoist me up and out of the top of the church spire. It’s a short, sweet cutscene that re-enforces the sense of accomplishment as you are literally hoisted into the air in some macabre act of celebration. FromSoft love a good ascension cut scene. In their follow-up smash hit game ‘Dark Souls’, after you survive a gruelling trek through a booby-trapped filled fortress you get lifted by demons to the resplendent city of Anor Londo that you have been able to see in the distance throughout your playthrough. It’s probably the best moment of the game and this Demon’s Souls scene is something akin to that, though much darker (visually and storyline-wise). Dark as it may be, it’s brilliant and I feel great.
In Dark Souls you are also triumphantly lifted and get your first proper sight of Anor Londo
This is torture! I love this place.
Hang on… a literal 10 minutes ago I was saying I hated this place. And, I am not just exaggerating for the sake of this article; these are the thoughts and feelings I was having as I was playing. And, as I look back on my playthrough of the game now, I can feel that I still loved my journey through the Prison of Hope despite how torturous it was at times. What is this about?
Well, the wonderfully-whiskered German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered the notion “Serial-Position Effect” which set out three main ideas that are important to understand when making sense of my feelings here: primacy effect, forgetting curve, and recency bias.
Primacy effect is the notion that we remember information that we get early on. For example, if you are asked to remember a string of 10 numbers the first two or three of those are likely to be easily recalled whether you were trying harder or not; it’s just what the brain does. We see this in videogames too; it’s why we often see the first level of games being a lot better than most of the rest of the game. Think Green Hills Zone for Sonic 1 on the Sega Genesis (a.k.a. Mega Drive); it showcases everything about that game and sticks in the memory much more than the rest of it[5]. You remember these early levels well; the great music, the bright visuals, that first time through a loop-the-loop and the feeling of speed as you dash across verdant platforms.
I will always love this level of Sonic 1!
The ‘forgetting curve’ is the notion that after the first information we remember less about what we hear next. With that string of 10 numbers you’re trying to remember; those middle numbers will often be recalled less than the first. This is why when I prompt you to think about Sonic 1 you don’t particularly think about the rubbish Marble Zone, with it’s slow moving platforms you have to sit and ride on for so long even Sonic’s annoyed-looking idol animation[6] can start to play.
In a game all about speed waiting while a platform slowly moves forward feels like weird level design...
Finally, the recency effect which you might have already guessed what it is getting at . Information that you have received recently is more likely to be remembered. Much like with the primacy effect we are not needing to try any harder to remember this, but as it is the last thing left in working memory (i.e. your very short-term memory for just heard information) it tends to be better recalled. It also is not being jostled out of working memory by new information so has a better chance to be processed into long-term memory as well. With the 10 number string we are more likely to remember the first numbers, forget the middle ones, and then also remember the most recent ones we heard.
I may have used this photo without permission... if it's your let me know if you're OK for me to use it.
All this means that the wonderfully atmospheric first part of Demon’s Souls ‘Prison of Hope’ gets encoded well into memory along with my emotions of enjoyment at the time. The despised middle section might get encoded a bit but is often left by the wayside by the brain and forgotten. Finally, that sweet, sweet victory and lift to coming glory also gets encoded well into memory. The events with the most positive feelings are locked into memory and the least liked are lost.
However, video games and emotions are not number strings, so why do I feel differently about it?
Well, there is some excellent psychological research which looked into the memory's relationship with perceived emotion that helps to explain this. I say research… but it does look a bit like lab-controlled torture. The God-tier psychologists Danny Kahneman and Barbara Fredrickson asked participants to dunk an arm into very cold water and hold it there for three rounds of tests. Doing this was an uncomfortable and even somewhat painful experience, but let’s not let something like inducing pain stand in the way of science!
Living legends! Psychologists Danny Kahneman and Barabara Fredrickson
In round one of the tests the arm was held in the water for 60 seconds; this is quite a long time to do this and is not a nice experience. In round 2 it was an even more unpleasant 90 seconds, but! But the sneaky torturers- I mean researchers- pulled a trick. The water remained the same cold, unpleasant temperature as round one for the first 60 seconds, but then they secretly, subtly increased the temperature of the water by one degree. Just one degree; a barely perceptible change. The sensation changed to one that was still unpleasant but not quite so unbearable as it had been.
The third round was to choose between repeating round one or two again. Looking at this we see that round two is the same as one but for longer, and though the longer bit was a slightly less uncomfortable the experience of the round is still an overall more unpleasant experience. And yet! And yet, 80% of participants chose the longer, harder round 2 to repeat. The minor improvement in temperature led to a significant difference in how people remembered and recalled the arm dunking torture. This is truly the Dark Souls of psychological research!
This experiment led to the creation of the ‘peak-end’ rule which states that how something peaks and finishes both greatly impact the emotional recall of the memory, irrespective of how the rest of the situation was experienced. The order something is presented can literally manipulate our memory!
This is a little different form the serial position effect which focuses on start and end information, but it does re-enforce the idea that we can remember early information really well if it is the peak of the experience, as is much the case for Sonic 1 and my experience with Demon’s Souls.
These effects working together can shift our emotional connection to the level. Our experience in the moment can cause certain emotions, but our memory of the exact same experience can cause different emotions; the in-the-moment-feelings can differ and be re-written by the remembered-moment-feelings!
Here is Hidetaka Miyazaki I assume pondering his next round of gaming torture for me to fall in love with…
I would wager that Miyazaki and the FromSoft team don’t know about the inducing pain with ice cold water experiments but seeing how closely they are to just flat out being torture it would not surprise me; much of the developers own catalogue of games are themselves very torture-coded!
How intentional FromSoft’s level design is, in creating such a memorable opening and ending but challenging middle, is difficult to say but the ideas of starting strong and finishing with a flourish are indeed standard dramatic devices across media, so it would not surprise me if at least this idea was in their mind during development.
Either way, exploring these psychological concepts has helped to explain how I learned to love torture. I can hate so much of a playthrough of FromSoft games but through their structure they literally manipulate my memory to make me think I loved it.
It sounds like Stockholm Syndrome[7] when I put it like that... I think I’m OK with that... though obviously that’s what a Stockholm Syndrome victim would say!
That’s how I feel about this. You might feel different and that is OK.
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[1] Hidetaka Miyazaki was the director of Demon’s Souls and is now the President of FromSoftware (called FromSoft for short)
[2] ‘Build’ refers to what statistics you give your character in a role playing game, where levelling up different statistics alters how your character plays, from how much damage different attacks do, how much damage they take and their overall amount of hit points, among other things. It can also include the weapons and armour you use.
[3] ‘Strats’ is short for strategies and refers to how you choose to approach a situation.
[4] 'Glass Cannon’ refers to a character who is killed easily but who can kill easily (i.e. often has low hit points or defence, but high attack damage output).
[5] Re. Green Hills Zone; as the Genesis game originally had no save states it also meant you were likely to play through it a lot more than any other level too which- granted- does also make it stick in memory more. This notion ties into the psychological effect of familiarity put forward by Zajonc, which I will explore in a future blog.
[6] 'Idol animation' is any animation that plays for a character when no player input is detected for a given period of time. Sonic can often be seen tapping his foot and staring annoyed into the camera (thus at the player, in what must be one of the most early instances of fourth wall breaks in gaming!)
[7] 'Stockholm syndrome' is an idea of a person developing positive feelings towards their captors/ abusers over time.
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