friction vs. the time respecters

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 22:33:00 GMT

The year opened with a bunch of arguments about "friction", which I like the idea of but then its proponents start talking about things like big open worlds without fast travel and bosses where you laboriously memorize animation tells and dodge timings. I try to be generous but there are places they go that I just can't follow. On the other hand!

A few years back I recommended Outer Wilds to B. who came back a few days later saying "I gave up a few hours in, I'm just doing the same thing over and over and half the time I'm not even getting anywhere new." Their complaint was valid but emotionally alien to me; I enjoyed the delighful miniature solar system and the way you flew around it in and out of your ship enough that I was happy to keep looping and uncovering new clues for as long as it took.

But then this year after playing both Blue Prince and Silksong--excellent games, I've got Silksong as my GOTY but they're close and different enough it could go the other way--I went online to see what folks were saying and in each case there were a lot of people who were really unhappy with the game, saying that its rng/runbacks/difficulty/obscure postgame riddles "didn't respect the player's time." Which is the flip side of the "this thing you think is bad is actually good" friction snobisme and for my dollar substantially worse. Be like B. and say it's not for you, you aren't enjoying it enough to give it the time it needs, but imputing weird and hostile motives to what are clearly labors of love is just gross. You do need patience! But if you enjoy what you're doing, spending time in the place, that patience comes easily.

A side note: another thing that struck me about both games is that I'd try something thinking "this will never work" and it did! Figuring out something that isn't obvious and having the game acknowledge it feels amazing and if the consequence is having things that get missed because they aren't obvious it's worth it. I'll confess: I looked up some hints. Everyone's got different insight and blind spots--embarrasingly, about halfway though Silksong I completely lost my ability to notice breakable walls--and if you try to build a game that stumps nobody there's a danger that it also delights nobody.

Side note two: Another thing Blue Prince has in common with Outer Wilds is deciding what clues you're following up on and making a plan before you start a run, while keeping the option to go check out something else if you stumble across something new. It's not a feeling you get from a lot of adventure games! Automatic vs. manual note-taking is a difference but not a fundamental one.