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i might be getting caught on "cheese" as an ambiguous phrase, but for me, cheesing in games means discovering a way to beat a boss - finding a strat that just disables their advantages in some way, swings the fight heavily in my favor, or outright wins it for me - and i love those moments. (1/2)

You can just say "I feel the effort spent in the journey provides more value than simply arriving at the destination" A bonus of this approach is that it will involve a significantly fewer number of words dedicated towards making poor assumptions of the motivations or inclinations of your readers.

I like looking up best builds! I think it adds to a social play experience!! Learning how other people put the pieces together to build a different picture teaches me how to rotate the pieces in new ways! I think it helps showcase games that have deep buildcrafting vs games that are just complicated

When it comes to especially difficult games, I think they ask of the player a certain investment that they haven’t always earned by the time they’re passing around the collection plate. Similar to a story that starts teaching me its world’s dense history before I’ve bought into its characters…

Just finished reading this & I think a lot of people mischaracterizing it have clearly just not read it and that is a very damning thing to realize. If media isn’t reading a piece but arguing about it bc you shopped a cheesesteak onto a souls image, how can we expect our readers to do the same😀😀

Sir, let me play with my toys

If we reframe games not as media objects that aim to push players towards a single, expected experience but as systems in which players can express their own creativity against obstacles (even if it involves arriving at exploit solutions), it's interesting that communities of players can...

Can we just NOT publicly shame people for how they play games? It's another variant on 'git gud' ridiculousness.

The takeaway is recentering experiencing the game and not just beating it. The author is not shaming you personally, he's just reminding people to have fun in their videogames. Did you miss the playful tone everywhere?

What made you think I thought I was being shamed personally? I'm tired of people telling others that they're playing the hard game "wrong". Playful or not, the article goes on about 'meaningful' and authentic gaming experiences. The author is doing the same thing described in the opening.

Disagree!!! I think the first time you play one of these games, cheesing it is a vital part of the experience. You get the drake sword, you throw firebombs over the Capra demon's fog gate, you get help from any and everyone. Then you play it again with the knowledge that these challenges are...

... surmountable, and you get to express yourself more, make your own funky choices, etc. I think the insistence on "going in blind" is one of the major things that puts people off from this genre.

don’t hold a strong opinion in either direction but I do think there is a difference between discovering what feels like a cheat and expressly looking for one. If a boss gets stuck in a doorway I do not feel robbed of anything…but if I am following instructions to make that happen I am not engaging.

I think I care more about earning knowledge through play than importing knowledge that lets you bypass the experience. That first playthrough isn't just reconnaissance for eventual mastery. The uncertainty, failure, and gradual understanding are the experience!

I'm not sure I agree with every bit of this, at least when it comes to the idea of "cheesing" as an act of naturally exploring a game's bounds and ridges (organic cheesing??) but I 100% fw hating on the "how to win" meta. Especially in digital TCGs. It's so boring! What story does your deck tell??

I play StarCraft. Cheese is a viable strategy that needs accounting for in every build. Is that the only way to play the game? No, but it's a challenge to navigate and I will, sure as the sky is blue, 4gate your ass if I scout you playing economically greedy.

The games i enjoy were intended to be shared with other people Part of the process of playing them is collaborating and sharing your steps; a process that likely began with the game books that people left behind next to Tower of Druaga cabinets You're right it's bigger than clearing the game...

I guess I thought souls games were fine shorthand for "game with a challenge that puts a lot of immediate pressure on the player" and a giant cheesesteak on the cover image communicated something about tone. My mistake! I will learn from this! Discovering some new sensitivities on here lol

I think your tone in the original post was inflammatory and doesn't convey the actual content of the essay. In particular, people anchored on 'publicly shame anyone who looks up the best build', which is not even close to what the article is about, but it is the first words of the post.

lol I had seen the vibe around this but hadn’t had a chance to read until now and it’s fine? You’re fine? I don’t even fully agree with your read on a genre I adore but I’m also still fine??

Did I say something about a GENRE?!

I think you're missing two angles here. There's the community aspect - asking for help and providing help to others, which some games are built around. Then there's the modes-of-play aspect. Players are often more like actors than audience members. Is it meaningless to perform someone else's script?

In many games assembling The Build is the intended mode of play and the story and bosses are fellow actors meant to provide texture to your path to assembling that build. Wiki games like Terraria spring to mind.

sure a book club can deepen a novel but spark notes are used to replace them! the existence of discussion doesn't justify every form of it. and on the script point I would say an actor performs shakespeare's script but they don't perform another actor's performance of shakespeare lmao

I don't think that learning all game mechanics from first principles is necessarily "better" in any sense Take fighting games or chess for example, is it "not as valid" to use resources from outside the game to educate yourself? Theory, combos etc? Hell, take dwarf fortress, or terraria...

I do think your initial qualm is well founded though! Often when I am talking about, or even seeking advice about, a hard part of a videogame then someone will offer advice that allows me to "cheese" it I do think some people don't understand why I might not want to use certain strategies like that

Love bringing in fighting games here! Great point. I think the execution barrier in fighting games is so high that *learning* from the outside isn't quite the same as cheesing something. Sorry if that sounds like a cop out haha. To me that experience is more book club and less sparknotes

Sharing what you learned about the game with friends/strangers online is very much part of the intended experience, per actual interviews with the devs. This might be a good argument in other games, but not in FromSoft rpgs.

Respectfully, you're rebutting a claim I didn't make. My claim is that cheesing is a way of relating to games that privileges overcoming obstacles over experiencing them. Also I don't actually care what the devs wanted because I care about what produces my encounter with the actual work.

Right, but I'm saying overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles is the gist of FS rpgs. Looking back at them as no longer insurmountable, rather than diminish the experience, invites the player to try less optimal and goofier ways to repeat it. How is that not "experiencing them" to the fullest.