Can a video game without “stress” be entertaining? Users discuss tendency towards eliminating stress from games
Japanese game developer and critic Nikaido Renji’s recent musings on the topic of what he calls “stress” in video games has triggered discourse in the gaming community. In a thread on X (formerly Twitter) posted March 10, Nikaido suggests that the recent tendency for game developers to try to “eliminate stress” from their games is resulting in titles losing their entertainment value.
In a subsequent post, they explain what they mean by stress in simple terms: “If you have a story, you’re going to have “the bad guys” in most cases. The bad guys are there to inflict stress on you and make you feel good after you’ve defeated them. If you were to remove Colonel Muska from Castle in the Sky, it would become quite a boring story, no?”
Nikaido argues that even the most casual/idle games such as farming sims benefit from players experiencing moderate stress, such as wanting a certain item but not having enough currency for it.
Many users shared this sentiment, commenting on how developers may be going too far to respond to player’s complaints of things being too stressful in games – for example, by making an item that was deemed “too hard to find” common, thus extinguishing the fun in searching for the item.
Others pointed out that there may be a problem of “two different types of stress” being confused. There can be stress that leads to excitement and catharsis (born from challenges in gameplay and narrative elements) and stress that leads to frustration and boredom (born from UI inconsistencies or flawed game design). While players want the latter eliminated from their experience, (for example, by having a signal that tells them which NPC has a side quest for them so that they don’t have to talk to every NPC each time) there could be instances where the former source of stress is mistakenly removed instead, causing the game in question to simply become less fun.
This can be linked with another well discussed topic in the gaming community – the issue of developers taking user complaints at face value. Players without knowledge of game design can offer valid but incomplete feedback, often only describing the symptoms rather than the core issues behind the problem. Therefore, developers’ earnest attempts to resolve reported problems can end up being detrimental to their projects.
Unfortunately, Nikaido does not name any titles that they consider to have gone too far in eliminating stress factors, but users have raised mobile games as one example. With the gacha model of monetization becoming widespread, some mobile games eliminate stress factors that stem from gameplay and story, making the anxiety of spending real money and wondering, “what am I going to pull?” the only sources of stress.
On the other hand, one counter argument raised in response to Nikaido’s thread is that of the subjectivity of experiencing stress. As video games grow as a medium and become more widespread, target audiences are also expanding to include not only seasoned gamers but newcomers too. What may feel like a complete lack of stress/thrilling factors to some players may be a moderate amount of challenge to others. Nikaido likewise acknowledges this point in their last post.