Frustration games, and why we love them

From the first time Markiplier screamed at "Getting Over It", something about frustration games caught our eye. Often we didn't play them ourselves but we watched others suffer and we loved it. So what's a frustration game? It's a game experience tailored to have high risk and over-the-top punishments to exasperate players.

As a game designer and a writer, I was curious to what about these games made them so compelling. Was it just the challenge Was it the antagonistic relationship between the game designer and the player or was there something else I even built one of my own frustration games in Meta Horizon called "Time Climb" to try and answer these questions.

Play "Time Climb" now.

If you do play "Time Climb" do be aware that it plays best on Google Chrome or on VR. You CAN play it on mobile, but it'll just be an "Extra Frustration Game."

1. Frustration is emotion

   We game to feel. We go into a gaming experience looking for an emotional journey. And even if the emotion is "frustration" or for horror games, "fear," we still love feeling an emotion in a safe place.

   What's more, we love watching others go through an emotional journey as well to experience it by proxy. Some of the rage that frustration games can generate is truly legendary (and quite entertaining).
   

   
   

   

   I mean, look at this thumbnail. You are physically compelled to click it.

   
   

2. Variable rewards are still crack

   In many senses a frustration game is playing a gambling game against variable rewards and losses. Just like players can go on a win streak in Vegas and have trouble stopping when they're losing, these games capitalize off the same impulse.

   There's always a chance you won't fall too far in a frustration game, and there's always a lucky swipe that can help you recover more ground than you lost. While there were frustration games before, "Getting Over It" popularized the genre, and since then more "recovery chances" kick in than expected.
   

3. Mastery is still achievable

   For people of a particularly obsessive nature, it's truly possible to master these games. Yes, the controls are often intentionally made to be sluggish, fumble prone, and unresponsive, but focus wins out.
   

   Pro-streamers have logged best times under two minutes for "Getting Over It" and even more games in the genre often find their clunky physics mechanics working against them as speed-runners find ways to get a whole lot of upward momentum out of nowhere.
   

4. Expected suffering is better than a surprise

   Humans REALLY don't like surprises and we like boredom even less. A psychological study found that people would, on average, painfully shock themselves rather than sit with boredom. The familiar pain of falling, and the "zone" of working one's way back up a frustration game's hill can give a sense of "flow" to players, and many, especially those that speed-run, are often drawn to the repetition of backtracking and climbing again for it's consistency.

So how do you win a frustration game if you're not a legendary speed-runner? Sadly, the only known way to consistently win a frustration game is to never play. I'm kidding. It's a good exercise to embark on a journey destined to fail, and experiencing the emotions of frustration and grit in a game's setting can often do us more good than we expect later in life.

Want to get mad? Try out Time Climb!

Can you reach the lamp and turn off the light to sleep?

Also if you just want to try out my normal games, they can be found here:

• Hexa Puzzle Saga - A daily hex puzzle game

• Worldseekers.io - A GPS roleplaying game - Think Pokemon Go meets Hearthstone.

Also for your viewing pleasure, here's a video walkthrough of Time Climb for those that want to spare themselves the rage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dorlXQY10bo