'Elden Ring' Isn't A Hit Because Of The Pandemic

The latest New York Times gaming op/ed has struck the wrong kind of nerve in the gaming community and among the gaming press.

All I can say about the latest gaming piece on Elden Ring in The New York Times is that the newspaper must have been emboldened by the flame of ambition. The op/ed’s author, Brian X. Chen, makes a tenuous-at-best connection between the struggles we all faced during the pandemic and the struggles players face in the action-RPG.

This, alone, might have made for a decent piece. I believe that overcoming struggle and dire obstacles in a game like Elden Ring can help people face real-life obstacles. I think that gaming can have a deeply positive impact on peoples’ lives because it can create confidence and teach us that overcoming challenges feels good, and that we are capable of achieving things we didn’t think possible. No series of games does this better than FromSoftware’s Souls series (which includes, loosely anyways, Dark Souls 1, 2 and 3 as well as Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne and even Sekiro).

To suggest that the pandemic “has trained us well for Elden Ring” is most certainly a stretch (Dark Souls has trained us well for Elden Ring!) but it’s not an egregious one.

But Chen takes it one step further by arguing:

“It’s difficult to imagine Elden Ring succeeding in any other era” though this has since been changed—without any notation of the change that I can see—to “It’s difficult to imagine Elden Ring having this sort of cultural cachet in any other era.”

Both arguments are absolutely absurd, but the original one is certainly worse. Both arguments attribute the success or, ahem, ‘cultural cachet’, of Elden Ring to this current moment. Without the pandemic, argues The New York Times, Elden Ring would have been merely a “modest success” like the Dark Souls games—another strange statement included in this opinion piece.

Strange not just because Dark Souls 3 has sold over 10 million copies, but because—as Gene Park argues in The Washington Post—the legacy of Dark Souls is far more profound in the video game industry than sales figures. Writes Park:

But that line of thinking ignores the fact that “Demon’s Souls” and the Dark Souls games left an indelible mark on the games industry. From Software’s titles became monuments to a style of game design that focused on overcoming challenges with intense focus, a grasp of the game’s esoteric underlying rules and systems, and sometimes, by summoning the help of friends through cooperative online play.

“Dark Souls” may have been a modest sales success, but it is unquestionably one of the most influential games of the current century. It crystallized an entire subgenre of games, now dubbed “Souls-like,” and some of the industry’s most popular intellectual properties have followed in its footsteps. Its control schemes were emulated in successful hits like Sony’s “God of War” (2018) and the last three games in the Assassin’s Creed series.

Park makes a very good point about Elden Ring’s success also. He argues that it has nothing to do with circumstance or the pandemic or when the game was released, and everything to do with the developer iterating on a successful formula for over a decade. I would also add that over this time period, the Souls games have gained an enormously loyal following, which is why Elden Ring has consistently been the most-anticipated game year over year.

It doesn’t hurt that George R.R. Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones novels, was attached to the project. The open-world nature and myriad accessibility and quality of life improvements over past FromSoft games also made the game more enticing to newcomers.

Elden Ring is a masterpiece. It would have had the same success and ‘cultural cachet’ with or without the pandemic. I don’t begrudge likening real-world struggles to the struggles players face in the game, but to make this kind of leap simply exposes a deep misunderstanding of video games.

That’s the other problem with this article. It simply doesn’t read like an article written by someone who actually plays video games. Take this line, for instance:

“No matter what you choose to do, you’ll probably die again and again trying to do it, sometimes for hours. That’s because the slightest mistiming of a button press will make you fall to your death or open you to attack. Even the most experienced gamers will die dozens of times in a dungeon before reaching the boss — the main villain at the end of a game level.”

I mean, I’m pretty sure most people know that a ‘boss’ is the ‘main villain’ of a level, and I’m also pretty sure you don’t have to say ‘game level’ when you’re already talking about a game. I mean, maybe you should define ‘level’ if you’re going to define ‘boss’ yeah?

It’s just an odd piece start to finish. Chen says he beat the game in about five weeks, but reading this piece feels a bit like reading this truly godawful Elden Ring piece in Vice, that describes the game as ‘boring’ after only spending 10 hours barely scratching its surface. That piece is worse, by far, and all I can say to its author is git gud scrub.

I mean, okay, I’m a totally OCD completionist type so it’s no wonder that in six or so weeks I have yet to beat Elden Ring. I have three different builds going. I am trying to mop up as many side-quests as humanly possible, as well as side dungeons and cave and field bosses, most of which are optional but not if you’re me.

I’m also spending hours going back to Bloodborne and Sekiro and the Souls games to take notes and make comparisons.

When I eventually review Elden Ring, after beating its final boss and clicking on the NG+ option, I will have spent hundreds of hours playing it and testing out its systems and different possible builds.

But I would hope that after a single playthrough, even one that skips a great deal of content, that an author would not write something like “At some point in the game, you face a dragon.”

Dude, at many different points throughout the game you face many different dragons.

“You have a choice to fight or flee,” the article continues. “At first, you’ll probably retreat, and eventually, after acquiring enough strength and the proper weapon or magic spell, you’ll return to slay the dastardly fire-breather and relish your victory. Moments later, though, you’ll be ambushed and killed by something nasty, like a hawk that’s gripping razor blades in its talons.”

Unless, of course, it’s a Glintstone dragon that breathes magic, or one that breathes frost or rains red lightning down on you, etc. etc. And there are no razor-blade-gripping hawks near Agheel, the game’s first fire-breathing dragon. Those pesky winged creatures are first encountered in Stormveil Castle to the north, where Godrick the Grafted lays in wait.

I don’t mean to dunk on the guy, who is getting dunked on right and left, it’s just irksome to read something that feels so utterly out-of-touch with the gaming community. There’s a snob factor that rubs me the wrong way.

Elden Ring is a terrific game. Everyone should at least give it a shot, though many will be turned off by its enormous difficulty despite the many ways that FromSoft made this the most approachable Souls game to-date (until you get to the end-game and the severe difficulty spike). Writing it off as a byproduct of the pandemic is silly. By all means, liken that struggle to the ones we face in the game. There’s a story there. This, however, is not it.

The New York Times should consider hiring or contracting some writers who are deeply involved in the gaming scene. I can think of one in particular who fits that bill nicely. Heh.

Thanks for reading diabolical my droogies! Y’all rock, you know that right?