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Description
Do you remember some game you used to play several years ago, that had *that one part* which was just astronomically difficult or confusing to pass through, just this absurd insurmountable obstacle that nothing you did could help you out on it?

Did you ever try it again?

If you play games for long enough, you start developing your own skills. At first maybe you didn't even know what a "game" was, and you couldn't figure out how to move or jump properly. Maybe you even didn't know the game had a double jump, or that the buttons could be pressed in some specific order or rhythm that lets you do some more useful abilities. Maybe, much in my case, you didn't even know how to read at the time, so even textual information was just not an option for you to learn things.

But eventually as the time passes, you get additional knowledge. You learn the mysteries, you figure things out faster, your fingers get snappier and more agile. This knowledge gets transferred and reused in other games you play, even if they aren't even remotely similar. You learn the "language" of gaming. What at first seemed entirely impossible to pull off, maybe now you can figure out enough of it that you can finally make it possible, if not even extremely easy. Imagine, just how much gaming knowledge you must have accumulated since that last time you played "that one random game from several years ago".

I remember when I first played those games. They seemed genuinely impossible to me. No joke. There were many of them I got very frustrated with and gave up on simply because I didn't know what to do, or a part was just too hard for me to take it. But sometimes, a lot of time later I get hit with a wave of nostalgia, and I want to play them again. And when I do, turns out that this incredibly difficult part of the game that really infuriated me back then truly wasn't that big of a deal, I just didn't know or even bother to figure it out at the time. Maybe out of impatience, or because I didn't have enough leverage to discover what to do.

One of the things that makes people the angriest is trying to solve something through brute force alone, without having any way to even begin to research a better approach to it. It's like trying to paint the Mona Lisa without even knowing what geometric shapes are or what painting tools exist to use, and having no means to learn about any of that. Being frustrated in a game is the result of not figuring out what exactly is going on that makes you lose, and what you should be doing that makes you win next time.

But hey... You already know most of a game when you're replaying it, isn't that right? And after so much time, your experience accumulated with the years makes things a lot easier. Who knows, maybe you'll get to see the rest of the game if you try it again. It's like entering uncharted territory. An amazing feeling that it gives, to overcome a mythical barrier in your life, and finally get to see what's on the other side.

With knowledge and patience, you can overcome frustration. Unfair randomness gives way to pattern recognition, which gives way to a breach right through. Don't give up, don't let yourself be taken over by anger. Pause the game for a bit, take a deep breath, pay attention to what you're doing, learn how to use the tools given to you, and try again. The developer of the game wouldn't just release it without testing the levels to see if they're possible, after all. If they did it, so can you.

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Hmm, dunno why but I felt like continuing this train of thought just a little bit further. Didn't expect I'd have more to talk about this stuff.

Well good. It's a reason to post more in my gallery, I guess. Gotta clean the dust off my account.

Might make a few more of these as time goes by. Still got some branches off of this idea.

Description
Do you remember some game you used to play several years ago, that had *that one part* which was just astronomically difficult or confusing to pass through, just this absurd insurmountable obstacle that nothing you did could help you out on it?

Did you ever try it again?

If you play games for long enough, you start developing your own skills. At first maybe you didn't even know what a "game" was, and you couldn't figure out how to move or jump properly. Maybe you even didn't know the game had a double jump, or that the buttons could be pressed in some specific order or rhythm that lets you do some more useful abilities. Maybe, much in my case, you didn't even know how to read at the time, so even textual information was just not an option for you to learn things.

But eventually as the time passes, you get additional knowledge. You learn the mysteries, you figure things out faster, your fingers get snappier and more agile. This knowledge gets transferred and reused in other games you play, even if they aren't even remotely similar. You learn the "language" of gaming. What at first seemed entirely impossible to pull off, maybe now you can figure out enough of it that you can finally make it possible, if not even extremely easy. Imagine, just how much gaming knowledge you must have accumulated since that last time you played "that one random game from several years ago".

I remember when I first played those games. They seemed genuinely impossible to me. No joke. There were many of them I got very frustrated with and gave up on simply because I didn't know what to do, or a part was just too hard for me to take it. But sometimes, a lot of time later I get hit with a wave of nostalgia, and I want to play them again. And when I do, turns out that this incredibly difficult part of the game that really infuriated me back then truly wasn't that big of a deal, I just didn't know or even bother to figure it out at the time. Maybe out of impatience, or because I didn't have enough leverage to discover what to do.

One of the things that makes people the angriest is trying to solve something through brute force alone, without having any way to even begin to research a better approach to it. It's like trying to paint the Mona Lisa without even knowing what geometric shapes are or what painting tools exist to use, and having no means to learn about any of that. Being frustrated in a game is the result of not figuring out what exactly is going on that makes you lose, and what you should be doing that makes you win next time.

But hey... You already know most of a game when you're replaying it, isn't that right? And after so much time, your experience accumulated with the years makes things a lot easier. Who knows, maybe you'll get to see the rest of the game if you try it again. It's like entering uncharted territory. An amazing feeling that it gives, to overcome a mythical barrier in your life, and finally get to see what's on the other side.

With knowledge and patience, you can overcome frustration. Unfair randomness gives way to pattern recognition, which gives way to a breach right through. Don't give up, don't let yourself be taken over by anger. Pause the game for a bit, take a deep breath, pay attention to what you're doing, learn how to use the tools given to you, and try again. The developer of the game wouldn't just release it without testing the levels to see if they're possible, after all. If they did it, so can you.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmm, dunno why but I felt like continuing this train of thought just a little bit further. Didn't expect I'd have more to talk about this stuff.

Well good. It's a reason to post more in my gallery, I guess. Gotta clean the dust off my account.

Might make a few more of these as time goes by. Still got some branches off of this idea.