Clive Thompson’s latest Wired News column deals with “bosses” — the level-ending hard-to-beat adversaries in video-games, and why it’s so damned satisfying to kill one:
And the curious sense of satisfaction that comes from a boss battle. They’re among the most cherished tropes in gaming: Get a bunch of gamers together to talk about adventure games or action titles, and sure — everyone will praise the wonderful characters, the superb graphics, the intriguing narrative. But it’s the boss battles that leave scars on their souls. They wind up sounding like grizzled war veterans, reminiscing wild-eyed about facing The Flood in Halo, six-armed Goro in Mortal Kombat or even Bowser in Super Mario Bros. Bosses dominate the psychic landscape of games…
It’s like bosses are the SATs of the game world: “It’s a culmination,” Byron notes. “It’s not asking you to suddenly learn new skills. It’s asking you to remember everything you’ve learned.” You’re aiming for that “aha” moment when, desperate for some way to topple the boss, you suddenly hit upon a clever new way to apply your powers — and the insurmountable becomes manageable.
That’s one of the best feelings ever — and it’s also one we rarely get in everyday life. The enemies we face in our contemporary world are so much more ambiguous and internal, and half the time it’s ourselves. We try to find a meaningful job, to hack through a bad relationship, to blunder through the red tape of money and taxes. Even our modern literature of struggle has been blunted. The Greeks and Romans imagined their lives through metaphors of heroes facing down arcane monsters; we read The Corrections or Indecision or A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius