Do you remember that amazing feeling of absolutely NAILING something REALLY hard?
Overcoming some TREMENDOUS odds?
Scientifically speaking, that’s dopamine, the “feel good chemical”.
And this video is about a rather unusual way of getting HEAPS of it.
And it’s 100% legal.
参る SEKIRO
Don’t worry, today I won’t be sending you to jump into an ice cold bath.
No, we'll be warm and cozy, and at the end of it you’ll have the perfect excuse for playing video games as a fully grown human.
More specifically, one particular game called: Sekiro.
But you can’t spell SEKIRO without DARK SOULS.
So the whole story starts last year when my wife and I went to Japan for the first time.
When we got back with more plushies than I’m ready to admit, some serious nostalgia kicked in.
The next thing I know, I’m playing all my favourite childhood games on Switch.
Life was good.
But then this weird thing happened.
I googled good games for Switch, and that one obscure title just kept coming up: Dark Souls.
It’s hard to describe what playing Dark Souls is like.
One one hand, the game clearly hates you. It doesn’t care if you die, and you will die a lot. There is no map, there are no reliable hints because the ones you find might be trolling you, and there is no “easy” difficulty setting for newcomers.
Every inch of progress you make is through blood, sweat, trial and error. You’re literally always one false step away from death.
Like seriously, one press of a button and YOU DIE
On the other hand, it also clearly wants you to keep trying, and it wants you to eventually overcome the difficulty and succeed.
And when you do, you know you achieved something meaningful.
The dopamine feels AMAZING. And you don’t need a medal, the achievement in itself is rewarding.
That feeling is now synonymous with a small Japanese company called FROM SOFTWARE.
FROM SOFTWARE
Dark Souls, and more broadly the Souls-like genre was created by a Japanese studio called From Software, under the lead of Hidetaka Miyazaki.
The story starts in 2009 with the release of Demon’s Souls, a dark fantasy game trying to recreate a challenging gameplay that Miyazaki felt was dying out. Ironically, Miyazaki was only able to take this - let’s be honest - rather risk of trying something new, because the project he took over was already failing, and his career wouldn’t take a hit.
When they released the demo, well… let’s just say it didn’t go so well. Some Japanese press called it “an unbelievably bad game”, mostly because of its unexpectedly challenging gameplay. Really, everyone expected it to flop, including Miyazaki himself.
And that’s because the game wasn’t like the others.
It wasn’t there to please you, or give you a nice time.
It EXPECTED you to fail. Over and over again.
And then it expected you to dust yourself off, learn a lesson, and try again, harder.
When the actual game launched, the feedback was different.
It turned out that gamers were a bunch of masochists and they FREAKING LOVED IT.
It even got the 2009 Overall Game of the Year award, and its Metacritic score sits at 89/100 today.
After Demon’s Souls, From Software released the Dark Souls trilogy (Dark Souls, BEEP & Dark Souls 3), Bloodborne, Sekiro and Elden Ring, all different takes on the same base recipe.
As for myself, I love SEKIRO.
SEKIRO
My favourite of the genre, and probably my favourite game of all times is Sekiro.
The game is set in the late Sengoku period of Japan, and you play as a shinobi (a japanese word for ninja).
I don’t really want to spoil the plot, so I’m not gonna tell you anything about prosthetics, giant apes, even more giant snakes, lightning dragons, and a whole lot of katana fights.
What I will tell you is why this game is a masterpiece: it’s perfectly balanced.
Yes. It’s punishing. Gruelling sometimes. A split second delay usually costs you your life.
You will throw the controller into the pillow pretty hard at times.
And no, it doesn’t exactly give you a helping hand.
But each time you die, you immediately learn what you did wrong. The game gives you just enough to have another thing to try at your next attempt.
It demands that you learn its way, and unlike other games in the genre, there is no walkaround.
If you want to finish the game, you have to become excellent at it.
And you become excellent by practicing.
You learn every opponent’s moves to anticipate and parry them just in time, within a few dozen milliseconds margin.
Many fans describe that feeling when you finally start getting it right as “clicking”.
The first few attempts, you are getting your ass handed to you.
But then you finally “click”, and it’s the opponent who suddenly becomes prey.
And the game wants you to play aggressively.
There is this mechanic to break the enemies’ posture for an instant kill.
Every time they attack, and you deliver a perfect parry, their posture bar takes a hit.
And when it gets to zero, you can kill them regardless of how much health they have left.
However, as soon as you stop attacking or parrying, their posture bar starts to recover.
So perfect defence is also an offensive mechanism in Sekiro.
And there is no time to waste.
That’s why…
HESITATION IS DEFEAT
Getting excellent at Sekiro takes anywhere between 20 and 100 hours of work for most people.
The same as that last series you binge-watched 5 seasons of, except that your heart rate monitor will think you’re working out with this one.
It’s a complete, miniature version of the mental training you need to achieve anything of value in life.
Going to the gym. Building a business. Getting good at any sport. Losing weight.
You can only really lose if you stop trying.
But it goes deeper.
If you want the game to respect you, you have to best it.
You have to be able to handle everything it throws at you.
You have to become the final boss.
And when you do, your only reward will be satisfaction.
SEKIRO IS ART
Sekiro reminded me why games can be a form of art.
Every CEO, CTO, startup founder, business owner, athlete, high level professional.
Everyone should try Sekiro.
It’s that perfect little sandbox for what struggling through a difficulty and eventually succeeding feels like.
And it’s balanced perfectly.
Everyone with a free weekend can start feeling the IMMENSE satisfaction from getting good at it.
But it’s hard enough to make you sweat for it.
Does it feel as good as learning a ridiculously hard musical piece on a violin?
A violin made from a rare wood you had to cut down yourself in the heart of Siberai?
A violin that you built yourself under the only remaining grand master of that obscure school no one knows about?
Well, actually, I have no idea. Leave a comment if you know.
Does it feel like microdosing dopamine to help you get better at other hard things in life?
Hell yeah. And that’s why it’s a masterpiece.
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