The “Git Gud” Fallacy: Challenge and Difficulty in Elden Ring
by Mateusz FelczakAbstract
Difficulty remains one of the key factors in discussions on inclusivity in video games. This article looks at the award-winning title Elden Ring and offers an assessment of its challenges in the context of the so-called “git gud” discourse present within the YouTube and Reddit gaming communities. The key argument of this study is that the latest installment of the Dark Souls IP is designed against the gatekeeping “git gud” attitude, that is the claim that the narrowly understood mastery of the game’s mechanics is a necessary and the most important component of the “authentic” gaming experience. With the help of the tool-assisted frequency analysis and the implied designer theory, I identify the most prominent strands of the “git gud” discourse, as well as the examples of resistance to and reappropriation of some of the exclusionary practices.
Keywords: difficulty, Elden Ring, Git Gud, challenge, implied designer, intentionality
Introduction
The Dark Souls series and its direct successor Elden Ring are usually evoked in the context of their extraordinary difficulty, described as “relentless” (Robinson et al., 2023, p. 2), “infamous” and “harsh” (Welsh, 2020). Judging by the metrics of what can be called an “elevated kinaesthetic difficulty” (Vella, 2015), it is a fair assessment, as even the latest and the most successful to date installment of the franchise requires significant levels of hand-eye coordination and dexterity to smoothly operate its control inputs. In addition, the cryptic and obfuscated narrative of the Dark Souls games does not help to alleviate the sense of being overwhelmed by the game worlds and their challenges. Nevertheless, in 2022, Elden Ring won the prestigious Game of the Year award, a clear sign of mainstream acceptance and commercial appeal to the broader gaming audience. At the same time, the series retained its (in)famous reputation as the go-to challenge for the “true gamers” (see Paul, 2018). This unusual position of the Dark Souls franchise provoked game studies scholars to trace, discern and interpret the factors that make the series in question so renown despite its allegedly prohibitive difficulty. The focus of these inquiries were usually player communities which produced and encouraged strategies of coping with the negative feelings and frustrations caused by the gameplay. For example, the Elden Ring players were identified as socially aware and self-aware individuals capable of honing “relationship skills by offering support and advice to fellow players” (Czauderna et al., 2023). Another study interpreted the players’ coping strategies as means of producing a form of online subjectivity, with the traits of hardship, perseverance and exhibitionism forming a repetitive circle of meaning-making to be enacted in the gaming experience (Van Nuenen, 2016, p. 523).
This article interprets Elden Ring as a title built upon the heritage of FromSoftware games (especially Demon’s Souls, the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice). However, I claim that Elden Ring significantly departs from the combat and encounter design of the other titles. This divergence is crucial in understanding the debates on the existing academic discussions on the Dark Souls series, of which Elden Ring is a direct descendant. There have been claims that the design of the FromSoftware titles favors the “skilled labour” (Brock & Johnson, 2022, p. 598) approach, as well as claims that these games reward the creative collaboration of players who collectively resist the “neoliberalism and its drive towards ubiquitous productivity” (Welsh, 2020). Some researchers interpret the collaborative efforts of player communities as “affinity spaces” (Robinson et al., 2023) that foster user engagement and offer emotional support through continuous affective work of their members. However, not much attention has been paid to the nature of such collective efforts and the solutions they offer to the troubled players in relation to the physical and mental feats needed to successfully progress through the game.
The general consensus seems to point towards the unequivocally universal desire among all groups of Dark Souls and Elden Ring players for achieving the highest possible levels of in-game mastery. As noted by Timothy Welsh, “Dark Souls is designed to enter players into the game’s community, integrating it into the fictional world itself” (Welsh, 2020). I would argue that Elden Ring marks an important shift in what could be understood as the “collective mastery” of a FromSoftware game. The change in question reflects the change in strategies used to overcome challenges across games. My claim is that playing Elden Ring in line with the “git gud” discourse, which overstates the importance of the agility-based reflex training and learning the enemies’ attack patterns, is dramatically less effective than in the previous installments of the Dark Souls franchise. In the argument that follows, I will identify the recurring characteristics of the “git gud” approach to Elden Ring’s gameplay and offer a contextualized reading of its application on a spectrum from exclusionary and gatekeeping to the memetically ironic.
This article contributes to the ongoing discussions on video game discourse, especially the ones concerning “how videogames function as means and objects of communication; how they give rise to new vocabularies, meanings, textual genres, and discourse practices; and how they serve as rich vehicles of ideological signification and social engagement” (Ensslin & Balteiro, 2019, p. 2). This study focuses on a mainstream, acclaimed title that sparked numerous discussions concerning its difficulty and (the lack of) accessibility options. The results of this research could be used to broaden and nuance the understanding of difficulty in video games, particularly in the context of intentionality in combat and encounter design.
I do not consider Elden Ring to be an “easy” game, but I argue that its encounter design and combat mechanics -- the two aspects I focus on in this study -- could be interpreted as actively discouraging the “git gud” way of playing. To this end, I apply the Implied Designer Theory, conceptualized by Nele Van de Mosselaer and Stefano Gualeni. They state that “players ascribe meaning to gameworlds and act within them based on what they perceive to be the intentions of the implied designer of the game” (Mosselaer & Gualeni, 2020). Using this framing elucidates why players are inclined to preemptively evaluate certain strategies and gameplay approaches as being in line with a game’s intended design, and thus supposedly yielding the best kind of gameplay experience. In case of the FromSoftware catalog, the initial encounter with the games by new players is arguably influenced by the “git gud” discourse, which affects the discourses on accessibility and difficulty of the titles in question. To better understand the implications of this framing, a mix of methods is needed to assess both the elements of the “git gud” culture within the Elden Ring community and gameplay implications of obeying, or going against, the set of guidelines established within the “git gud” framework.
Methods and Approach
This study draws data from two main sources. The first concerns content analysis of social media platforms, focusing predominantly on Reddit and YouTube. The second encompasses playthroughs guided by the strategies derived from the “gid gud” discourse on the one hand, and the strategies advised by Elden Ring Books of Knowledge (two volumes: Ziegler et al., 2022, 2023), which are considered official strategy guides for Elden Ring, on the other hand.
The YouTube data was based on two simple queries. The first involved a manual search for the simultaneous occurrence of the “git gud” and “Elden Ring” phrases in video titles, and then sorting the material based on relevance and viewer count. Field notes were used to develop an initial interpretative scheme and to assess the users’ comments, which allowed for an analysis of the diverging attitudes towards the various iterations of the “git gud” discourse as manifestations of networked, affective economy (Murthy & Sharma, 2019, p. 209). Only videos with more than 50k viewers and those directly referring to Elden Ring (and not to the whole Dark Souls IP) were considered. Importantly, short videos (shorts) were also taken into account. The second query built on results from the initial search and on the identification of key phrases with repeated appearances in the examined material. Building on that information, the second query broadened the research to include the phrases “OP” (which is an acronym of “overpowered”) and “Elden Ring,” again focusing on the videos with a significant viewer count. Filtering the footage that appeared after the search with these key words resulted in obtaining predominantly instructional videos, focused on how to build an “OP” character and, for the most part, how to circumvent or outright ignore some of the most dangerous mechanics in the game.
The analysis of Reddit r/Eldenring was conducted with the intention to highlight the most prominent strands of the “git gud” discourse and identify the key aspects of discussions on the game’s inclusivity and difficulty levels. To this end, I opted for simulating an experience of a new player searching for information on how to “get good” in the game and narrowed the analyzed data into two sets. The first one encompasses the most popular threads and upvoted discussions containing the phrases “how to improve,” “how to get good” and “cheese” (meaning, depending on the interpretation, “unfair” or “unintended” tactics). Then, to provide the context, I did the same with the phrase “git gud” to gain insight into the specifics of this particular discourse. Additionally, to help identify key phrases, the results of those two queries were narrowed down to the five most relevant threads (metrics-wise), then transferred into .docx format and analyzed with Voyant Tools, an open-source “online-based environment for frequency-based analysis of computer-readable texts” (Alhudithi, 2021). The process of pre-screening the analyzed material involved manually filtering out most of the textual meta-commentaries in the form of automated platform inserts, e.g. phrases such as “number of replies.” As a result, the final data file was trimmed down to 51,252 words and 5,313 unique word forms [1]. Again, in the selection of data, I followed the popularity and engagement metrics, sorting the threads by the “Top” and “Most Comments” filters provided by the Reddit platform. The textual material selected for the study was not meant to be representative for all the possible manifestations of the “git gud” discourse in gaming, but rather to provide an exemplary basis for cross-referencing and juxtaposing different key words and phrases associated with the Elden Ring community.
The last element of this study was a series of playthroughs informed by the content of Elden Ring Books of Knowledge. I strictly adhered to the advice contained in the Creating Builds section of the Volume I (pp. 46-49) and the Advanced Builds section of the Volume II (pp. 488-499) to test both the melee and ranged, magic-based characters. Furthermore, I took advantage of guide’s strategies for obtaining gear, advancing the story and using specific combat tactics. The data obtained through playing the game according to the FromSoftware-affiliated publications was used to juxtapose the advice identified in the “git gud” discourse with the particular in-game situations.
Defining the Gitguddery
Even though the term “git gud” appears in a variety of contexts in gaming culture -- also outside the FromSoftware and Dark Souls IP communities -- there is little consensus concerning its actual meaning. The most prevalent explanation ties with the “veteran” players being irritated by the newcomers who are looking for advice on how to achieve an easy win. In that sense, the deliberately misspelled “get good” phrase would be a dismissive remark used in response to the uninitiated players, making the point that achieving victory in video games requires effort, dedication and skill, all of which need to be developed over time. Both the Urban Dictionary [2] and Know Your Meme [3] sites point towards the term’s derogatory connotation, with the latter mentioning that the Metal Gear Online, Call of Duty and Dark Souls communities were instrumental in its dissemination in various outlets of the early 2010’s online cultures.
However, the phrase “git gud” is also used ironically and is meant to criticize the exclusionary discourse with its gatekeeping practices and unwelcoming attitude towards those who refuse to adhere to the standards set by the vocal minority of the most dedicated players. The following comment by the user spunkwotar0 provides a brief explanation:
Even in a pvp context, I feel like most people threw it around as a joke. I think this board and a lot of the newer players took it maliciously and as more of a gate keeping term. Especially in a pvp context. Though the tell is usually people using it without the typos like ‘git good’ or ‘get gud’[.] [4]
The results of my Reddit r/Eldenring query indicated that both these sides of the “git gud” discourse appear predominantly in the discussions concerning “fair” or “unfair” (labeled as “cheese”) tactics. In the analyzed threads, the “cheese*” word root appeared in 143 separate instances. Among the most used phrases were (in order of frequency): “cheese the game,” “cheese method” and “cheese a boss”/“cheese bosses,” but also “cheese you the whole time.” This last phrase indicates that using “cheesy” tactics and not trying to “git gud” at all costs was at times interpreted as a justified retaliation against the equally “cheesy” enemies. I found that this was a recurring theme in the YouTube comments as well.
What is or is not considered a “proper” way to play the game appeared to be deeply rooted in an individual perception of the intentions behind a particular design. User DL1943 offered a telling distinction between the “cheesy” play and the “allowed” exploitation of the existing game mechanics:
lots of folks ATM feel very strongly about gatekeeping, and as a result of this, the definition of "cheese" among ER players seems to be narrowing, to where some folks want to only consider things like exploits/glitches to be "cheese," but traditionally in souls games, "cheese" is a term meant to refer to things that are specifically NOT exploits or glitches, but that allow you to circumvent all or most basic combat fundamentals, and to win with virtually no risk. a great example of this in ER is the infinite FP comet azur cheese vs bosses who can be staggered by the beam. [5]
The problem with this assessment is that “circumventing all or most basic combat fundamentals” can usually be achieved by taking advantage of the equipment and skill synergies that are introduced as integral parts of the story. However, the case of the Comet Azur spell mentioned in the Reddit comment is a curious one, and it concerns an arguably overrated spell. Its usefulness, especially for the inexperienced players who do not know how to pre-buff their character with consumable items and additional equipment, is arguably very limited. The spell is obtained through an interaction with an NPC beneath Mt. Gelmir, a mid-game area. Achieving the full effectiveness of the Comet Azur spell requires the enemies to stand still or proceed towards the player character in a straight line -- a very unlikely scenario in the majority of difficult boss encounters. The heated discussions concerning this spell’s alleged “OP” (overpowered) status offer a noteworthy insight into the discourse dynamics within the Elden Ring online community. The visually impressive albeit niche application of the spell which requires much effort to set up properly as well as prior knowledge of the ideal use case scenarios became the crux of debates on the “git gud” approach, as it was relatively easy to create the YouTube content that would impress and entice the newcomers by showcasing the Comet Azur sorcery in action. Interestingly, one of the most useful groups of spells in Elden Ring, Night Sorceries, appears much less frequently in the “git gud” discussions, despite them actually “cheating” the enemy AI by disabling the dodge mechanic and effectively making most of the players’ attacks impossible to avoid even for the most deadly, high-level enemies.
OP According to YouTube
The most viewed YouTube video giving advice on how to “git gud” offers a set of tips on how to “win every fight” [6]. At the beginning, the content creator urges new and aspiring players to level vigor, a character statistic increasing the amount of health points. This seemingly simple and innocuous recommendation connects with two crucial elements of the “git gud” discourse.
Firstly, the highest praise for mechanical mastery is received when the “gud” level of a player is high enough to not get hit at all. This characterizes the speedrun playthroughs with self-imposed restrictions and clever, high-skill play with very limited resources. It is not uncommon to find the Elden Ring speedrun categories banishing any use of armor or leveling, while only permitting the use of extremely underpowered weapons. “Getting good” would mean that one does not need to level vigor at all; however, to achieve this level of mechanical proficiency, it is advised to level these statistics to create an opportunity to learn from the mistakes without the risk of immediate character death. The decision of leveling vigor at the expense of other statistics could thus be interpreted as a temporary “crutch,” useful on a journey towards combat prowess. However, investing in vigor is a viable strategy also for the very experienced players, especially in the context of the PvP (player vs player) mode.
Secondly, vigor refers to the implied intentional designer, personified, as is usually the case within the Elden Ring community by Hidetaka Miyazaki, the game’s creative director and company president. In a popular meme circulating in the Elden Ring community, Miyazaki receives an award for the Game of the Year, and his only comment towards the audience is: “For the love of god, level your vigor” [7]. The common denominator for the “git gud” discourse is that there is no magic formula that would make the game easier, and the only way to victory is through practice and perseverance. However, meticulous practice in Elden Ring is, in more than one instance, just a slower way of achieving the same results as by taking advantage of the built-in item and skill synergies. For example, the fight with the Godskin Noble Duo boss requires significantly less agility and spatial awareness from the player if they opt to use Poison, Scarlet Rot and Sleep status effects (Ziegler et al., 2023, p. 188).
Out of the popular (over 1 million views) YouTube videos giving power gaming advice, the vast majority concerns the early game, that is the initial character progression and items needed to achieve the “overpowered” status as soon as possible. The assessment of their content and comments reveals that they are not targeted at experienced players, but rather at newcomers -- not only to Elden Ring, but also to the Dark Souls IP and the “soulsborne” sub-genre. For example, under a video guide with 2.3 million views on how to obtain a powerful sword, there are highly upvoted comments by at least two self-proclaimed elderly gamers and a “retired, disabled veteran with TBI,” all praising the inclusive and easy-to-follow format of the guide [8]. This indicates that there is a significant subset of gamers who appreciate the community’s support in overcoming the game’s challenges. Moreover, the continuous abundance of easy-to-use solutions to difficult challenges preserved throughout several cycles of major fixes and patches suggests that the “intended,” consistent, agility-based difficulty in Elden Ring is a discursive construct advocated by proponents of very specific playstyles.
The FromSoftware titles have retained a reputation that are meant to be played in a certain way. In that case, the phrase “intended design” could be linked with the notion of an implied authorial figure, an authoritative instance which oversees, judges and acts upon (e.g., by issuing patches) any breaches in gamers conduct. It is important to understand the “implied author as not referring to an actual person, but rather to be the sum of the creative intentions that the reader perceives to lie at the basis of a work” (Mosselaer & Gualeni, 2020, p. 3). These “perceived foundations” of the game in the case of Elden Ring are hard to unpack for new players who are initially confronted with the game’s obtuse user interface and questionable design decisions regarding the quest progression. Michał Kłosiński identifies this conundrum and points out that it works towards strengthening the problematic readings of the game as difficult and unapproachable by design:
As such, the ideology of difficulty is used to promote dark play, an idea linked to the exclusion of players tagged as “less able.” A game’s affective design is partly to blame for this, as it strengthens the rhetoric of failure, procedurally inscribed into the ludic seriality of the genre. (Kłosiński, 2022)
As noted by the author of The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games, the “extreme emphasis on skill” in “these games [the FromSoftware titles] target[s] those already part of videogame culture, especially when they are celebrated as essential, system-selling releases” (Paul, 2018). The established reputation of the FromSoftware games as punishingly difficult contributes to the hostile attitude towards those who question the difficulty being major part of the identity of the Dark Souls IP. However, I would argue that the in-game failure states, which are most commonly represented by the player character’s death, are largely inconsequential, which is communicated at the end of the obligatory, tutorial section of the game. There, even if players manage to win an uneven fight with the Grafted Scion boss, it is necessary to either jump off a ledge or to step on a crumbling cliff to die and progress further. It is worth noting that this mechanical and narrative solution is somewhat consistent across the different Dark Souls IP games, where at some point, players must die to advance in the game.
Gameplay and Story Progression
It is hard to avoid discussing intention when considering FromSoftware’s games. Commenting on speedrunning strategies in relation to the difficulty level, Timothy Welsh also invokes the implied, hidden logic behind the level design and character progression in Dark Souls, “Because all the areas are accessible, however, players can run through them without confronting the difficult enemies and acquire powerful equipment earlier than intended, thus breaking the game’s difficulty curve” (Welsh, 2020). What could arguably be considered a game-breaking strategy in Dark Souls becomes a bedrock for encounter design in Elden Ring. The first and perhaps most obvious way in which the latter detracts from the “git gud” formula lies in its open world design. If we limit this crucial feature to its ramifications for the difficulty level, at least three major factors must be taken into consideration. Firstly, the respawn-resting points, named Sites of Grace, are allocated quite densely throughout the map, which allows for more compartmentalized exploration of the Lands Between. Compared to prior games in the franchise, it is much less time-consuming for players to recover progress after dying in-game. Secondly, Elden Ring affords great flexibility when it comes to the bosses that players need to defeat to progress in the main questline. Items (such as Margit’s Shackle), incantations (such as Poison Mist) and powerful summons offer alternative paths to achieve victory without engaging in lengthy battles. These aids are scattered throughout the Lands Between and reward meticulous exploration of the gameworld by opening up additional options to tackle crucial challenges. The third factor, which is also one of the more telling detractions from the previous games in the Dark Souls IP, is the abandonment of the boss design encounters as learning devices. The first major story bosses, including Margit, Godrick and Radahn, are not necessarily verifying the mechanical skillset of players, but rather their accumulated experience, equipment and power level acquired thus far. These designated paths also have a visual component to them, in the form of flames floating over the Sites of Grace, which guide players towards the next major story beat. Even though in Elden Ring, similarly to the previous Dark Souls IP games, “death is a principal element in the universe, lore, and player interaction” (Freitas, 2020), its function detracts from the purely educational aspects of “teaching” players “the proper way” to play the game. Instead, it retains the IP trademarks of the failure-driven design of the FromSoftware games: the memes, stories and other forms of fans’ paratextual production document a great deal of potentially funny mishaps resulting in a player character’s death. The comedic undertones and “dark humor” (Hines, 2023) in Elden Ring would require a separate study, as they remain one of the most overlooked yet important aspects of the game’s community-focused design.
One of the most important aspects of the Elden Ring mechanics is that experience, in the form of runes dropping from the fallen enemies, is effectively an infinite resource. After the player character’s death, most enemies (except for major bosses) respawn in their designated locations. Overcoming the fear of dying, and losing all the runes accumulated since the previous level up as a consequence, could be considered a contributing factor to the game’s affective difficulty (Jagoda, 2018). However, the relatively favorable placement of respawn points and additional mechanics in the forms of Sites of Grace, Stakes of Marika or Sacrificial Twigs make the whole ordeal of gaining them back less time-consuming than in the previous installments of the Dark Souls IP. The aforementioned YouTube video on how to “git gud” even enlists a piece of “die to learn” advice, pointing towards valuable information that may be obtained by simply dying on purpose [9]. As succinctly noted by the Redditor DogIsDead777:
It's kind of a pain in the ass to keep hearing the good ol fashioned 'Git Gud' but it IS strictly the thing that will offset painful rune/souls loss. Eventually things will just kinda click with the gameplay or your build, and you'll find yourself not really dying to most stuff anymore or as often -- even if you’re leveling up less because you keep dying. [10]
The paradoxical, collateral consequence of the “git gud” discourse could be the more widespread acceptance of failure states not as punishments, but the integral and inevitable elements of gaming experience. In that sense, a more relaxed approach to interacting with a game -- one that may be goal-focused, but not performance-oriented -- could lead to a more enjoyable, stress-free interaction with core gameplay systems.
Elden Ring modernizes the Dark Souls formula even further by streamlining multiplayer and social aspects of the game, at least to some extent. In the context of the “git gud” discourse, summoning other players for help is a contentious point. Unlike the other Dark Souls games, the player-friendly summons of Elden Ring (known in-game as Spirit Ashes) do not increase the difficulty of a given fight by increasing a boss’s maximum health. They can also be upgraded and accommodate diverse playstyles, e.g. by absorbing big hits or just distracting the enemy. In one interview, Hidetaka Miyazaki himself stated: “my approach or play style was to use everything I have at my disposal, all the assistance, every scrap of aid that the game offers” (MacDonald, 2024), which also implied the use of Spirit Ashes. They could be considered a decisive factor in increasing the game’s accessibility and flattening its difficulty curve. This, however, does not bode well for the proponents of “gitguddery.” This is just one, albeit a significant example of such critique:
(…) summons completely void having to actually learn most of the bosses. I beat Elden Ring four times without actually learning any of the endgame bosses, and because of that I thought they were all mid. Just because someone used summons doesn’t mean they didn’t beat the game or anything but exclusively using summons makes you miss out on a lot, because they are overpowered and the game would absolutely be better off without them. [11]
In Elden Ring, one can also summon other players to aid in difficult battles, albeit the process is still cumbersome compared to the other most modern online games. This feature comes with a drawback, in how summoning other players to aid in combat also makes it possible for enemy players to “invade” the host player’s game. When the multiplayer mode is enabled, messages from other players can be found in the world, but are not necessarily helpful in achieving specific goals, such as defeating a tough boss or avoiding an ambush. Although this communication system “provides the means for a player to influence the narratives of others” (Spawforth & Millard, 2017), it hardly impacts the difficulty level of specific combat encounters. Scrutinizing the post-release policy of FromSoftware in the case of Elden Ring, one might observe the general tendency to address balance changes in a way that was generally favorable to the single-player mode gamers, resulting in the increase of effectiveness of even then already powerful sorceries and incantations [12].
Cheesing the Git Gud
Identifying different types of challenges in video games, Patrick Jagoda listed mechanical, interpretative and affective difficulty (Jagoda, 2018). Building on this work, Robinson et al. (2023) offered the following observation:
In Elden Ring, for example, mechanical difficulty can be experienced as fast-paced action, complex controls and leveling, brutally powerful bosses, and competition among players in PVP battles, all of which coheres around the mastery of hand-eye coordination in relation to the game world. (Robinson et al., 2023, p. 5)
The accounts of players on Reddit and the observations from my own playthrough confirm that, indeed, the combat in Elden Ring is faster paced than that of the other Dark Souls games. This is especially evident in boss encounters. The intensity of these fights is similar to FromSoftware’s infamously challenging title, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. However, unlike in Sekiro, this design decision pushes players to explore other ways of overcoming the mechanical challenge -- solutions offering other options than just “the mastery of hand-eye coordination.” Both volumes of Elden Ring Books of Knowledge often advise on using such “cheesy” ways of overcoming the odds. The recommended method of triumphing over one of the so-called Great Enemy Bosses, Ancient Dragon Lansseax, involves guiding the mythical beast towards a death trap: “you can achieve an easy victory by luring Lansseax to the bottom of the precipice directly northwest of her initial position” (Vol 2, p. 201). An interview with Miyazaki in the same volume provides an important comment: “…we didn’t want to impose a ‘correct way’ to defeat certain enemies” (Vol 2, p. 515). The note on how to defeat Elder Dragon Greyoll also includes the most popular “cheesy” method of inflicting Blood Loss through a weapon of choice (p. 124), thus allowing for very effective and efficient leveling, which directly influences the difficulty of subsequent encounters.
In one Reddit discussion explicitly devoted to “giting gud,” one of the users said that Elden Ring “…[is] not a game about having bigger numbers than the boss, it’s not a game about getting an overpowered weapon and coasting through the game like a hack and slash” [13]. Nevertheless, applying strategy advice from Elden Ring Books of Knowledge more often than not led me towards such a path of overcoming the odds. Not only did I defeat Grafted Scion with “the benefit of total impunity” (Ziegler et al., 2022, p. 223), and Ulcerated Tree Spirit “with complete impunity” (Ziegler et al., 2022, p. 231), but I also used the Frostbite and Blood Loss status effects freely, which made my journey considerably easier. Even in my initial playthrough, conducted without the aid of any aforementioned guides, I was resolved to use tactics shunned by the proponents of the “git gud” attitude. The means to dominate some of the key encounters became even more available in subsequent patches. Judging by my own experience, I could concur with the Redditor who, somewhat begrudgingly, commented on the matter of post-release changes to the game:
Not even trying to be all gatekeep-y on difficulty, but this is what power creep looks like. Everything has been buffed that some mechanics on bosses aren't even experienced because they get burned down or stunned so much. [14]
Playing according to Books of Knowledge certainly brought such results. I took advantage of “many options at the player’s disposal to confront challenging situations and use [their]… cunning to outsmart enemies and bosses” (Turi & Miyazaki, 2022), as Miyazaki remarked in one of the post-release interviews [15].
Therefore, where does the urge of inventing and imposing a set of arbitrary and “correct” rules of play in the “git gud” discourse come from? Why is the “intended” playstyle identified in a way that in many aspects contradicts both the in-game encounter design and the explicit statements of the game’s director and president of FromSoftware? Searching for an explanation, it is important to note that the implied designer considers “the background knowledge, the sensitivities, the gameplay preferences, and the socio-cultural context of the player doing the constructing” (Mosselaer & Gualeni, 2020, p. 5). The context of “gitguddery” is either humorous, pointing towards the occasional frustrating moments when our gameplay choices fail to lead to a successful conclusion, or gatekeeping and derogatory towards those who wish to find their own way of enjoying the game. In one of the studies concerning chat messages accompanying the Twitch streams of the Dark Souls games, the “git gud” message was interpreted as “friendly irony,” but it was noted that it could also be read “as aggressively negative without this context” (Mihailova, 2022, p. 1843). The context in that case was a charity speedrun stream, which further complicates the question of distinction between the ironic and the toxic usage of “git gud.” Speedrunners apply strategies that perfectly fit the “serious” definition of “playing gud” (especially in the runs with self-imposed restrictions), but they also do not shun the “cheesy” tactics that exploit the limitations of enemy AI and capitalize on the unbalanced item synergies. This issue highlights the ambiguities and pitfalls of weaponizing the “git gud” approach against those who refuse to adhere to the oftentimes intrinsically contradictory rules.
One of the most upvoted comments in the Reddit threads analyzed in this study tried to alleviate this predicament by insisting that “git gud” should be invoked to push back against those who unfairly criticize the game: “…[If] someone is like
It is also important to note the differences in narrative and combat mechanics in the FromSoftware games. In Sekiro, options to “cheese” enemies are few and far between, which could be due to the game offering a pre-defined protagonist. In Sekiro, players take on the role of a shinobi (ninja) named Wolf. The effective gameplay in Sekiro affords very little creative leeway to choose the right tactics or strategic approach, and its parry and posture systems remain an extremely consistent basis for all combat encounters. In Sekiro, players must follow the shinobi (ninja) code of conduct. In Elden Ring, players can define the aesthetic properties of their avatar, but more importantly, they are forced to take responsibility for the subsequent stat allocation and equipment choices, which, to a significant degree, open up along with the gained levels. Choosing one of the ten starting classes heavily impacts the gameplay only at the very beginning of the game, and the pre-defined differences can be easily leveled out by equipment choices and the order of tackling the game areas. Meanwhile, Sekiro affords its players only one option: to play as a shinobi and to fight in the way such a warrior would have according to the narrative rules established in this particular FromSoftware game. If, following the framework proposed by Regina Seiwald, we “locate authorial intent on the one side and player agency on the other side, with a gradual move from the one to the other” (Seiwald, 2023, p. 724), then the designer figure constructed by the FromSoftware communities would be more rigid and defined in Sekiro than in Elden Ring. Sekiro’s consistent visual, mechanical and narrative style makes it more prone to the interpretations following the figure of the implied designer and the “intended” gameplay. Mosselaer and Gualeni observe:
[a]s designer intentions are implicitly present in the ways the gameworld appears and responds to the player, every element can be perceived as deliberately designed to be there, and thus as carrying special meaning and encouraging certain kinds of behavior. (Mosselaer & Gualeni, 2020, p. 11)
Elden Ring is slightly different in that regard, with the narrative weight of the player character’s actions defined from the very beginning. In this title, even seemingly inconsequential decisions could lead to the radically different narrative outcomes. The Elden Ring’s “git gud” discourse, however, is self-centered and preoccupied with the players more than with the gameworld. The Voyant-aided text analysis showed that the “people” keyword appeared quite often (185 unique instances) in the discourse. Among the top collocations one can find phrases such as “people just want,” “people should play,” “people that are” and “people who say,” which indicates a recurring theme of Redditors formulating generalized opinions about other players and their way of interacting with the game.
Conclusion
Most discussions on the accessibility of the Dark Souls IP FromSoftware games boil down to the fact that none of them have adjustable difficulty. However, the fact that there is no slider automatically reducing enemies’ health or incoming damage does not mean that the Dark Souls IP titles are all unequivocally hard for any playstyle. Elden Ring, especially, goes a long way to let the players adjust its difficulty on the go, through their gameplay decisions and willingness to engage with a plethora of helpful community paratexts (or the refusal to do so). That being said, the game may become increasingly challenging at later stages. In Elden Ring’s late-game, encounter design difficulty gets diluted by the player character’s overall progression, and there are an increasing number of environmental design challenges. The crucial takeaway remains that Elden Ring is not designed around the idea of communicative, gameplay-oriented feedback loops. What’s more, the standard “git gud” advice to learn the attack patterns and to train reflexes is dramatically less effective than in the previous FromSoftware games. Playing that way is only necessary when one insists on following a set of arbitrary rules. In one of my playthroughs, the strategy guide authorized by FromSoftware and Miyazaki himself advised that I “don’t hesitate to abuse Skills like Golden Parry” (Ziegler et al., 2023) to move past one of the more troublesome Initial Area Bosses for my particular build. In numerous other instances, the game offered me significant advantage when I did not have to solely rely on my reflexes and hand-eye coordination. Admittedly, I might have skipped some of the content and boss animations by playing that way, but I have discovered weapons and skill synergies that I would otherwise be unaware of.
The only caveat to this statement is that towards the end game, with optional bosses (like Malenia) and obligatory bosses (like the Elden Beast), players are pushed towards very specific strategies to achieve success, and the overall difficulty level seems to rise. These design decisions, along with making many late-game opponents less vulnerable to some types of damage, are arguably more impactful for the difficulty curve than a re-iteration of the Dark Souls’ gameplay cycle of “incessant repetition and similarly incessant progression” (Illger, 2020). The consequence of affording a greater level of agency to players while generally putting less emphasis on manual skills arguably results in a less balanced game in terms of difficulty. As a result, this fosters the type of engagement that I call a community-driven instrumental play, which describes the collective desire towards exploiting power gaming strategies, mainly focused on achieving the “overpowered” status as fast and as easily as possible. Interestingly, this trend is heavily criticized by the “git gud” advocates within the Elden Ring community, which warrants further research on the evolution of what power gaming traditionally stands for. In her study of engaged player communities, T.L. Taylor identified crucial aspects of instrumental play and power gaming strategies: “focus on efficiency and instrumental orientation, dynamic goal setting, commitment to understanding the underlying game systems/structures, and technical & skill proficiency” (Taylor, 2003, p. 302). In Elden Ring, these descriptors cannot be exclusively attributed to the game’s most devoted players. The dramatic difficulty spikes also undermine the “git gud” mantra of sticking to the tried and tested strategies and persevering through the most time-consuming challenges. The “git gud” way of interacting with the game may be an attractive means to grasp the audience’s attention during a Twitch stream or in the context of a YouTube playthrough, but for most players it remains a boredom-inducing chore. User Alpcantr provided a considerable statement while commenting on one of the most (in)famous (and completely optional) fights with one of the game’s toughest bosses, Malenia, Blade of Miquella: “My first time I was stubborn, claymore 2handed took me a good 83 tries lol Now I go with whatever cheeses her best, I already served my time” [17].
Whereas this study focused on difficulty levels from the perspective of able-bodied gamers, further discussions on inclusivity and accessibility must include the context of people with disabilities (see Hassan, 2023). In the context of Elden Ring, the especially contentious issues potentially barring people with disabilities to fully enjoy the game are connected with the multiplayer “anti-cheat” measures imposed by FromSoftware, which effectively prohibit any third-party, alternative UI and in-game control tools. These issues have already been raised by gaming content creator Stephanie Sterling who voiced her concerns with the “git gud” discourse detracting from the much-needed implementation of inclusive gameplay options in the name of opaquely understood integrity of the allegedly intended design (Sterling, 2024).
Finally, it is important to note that the encounter design and mechanical difficulty in Elden Ring remains in tune with its narrative component, therefore the generalized observations made in this article have exceptions. During my playthrough, I came across a number of optional bosses, some of which were actually slightly altered copies of creatures encountered previously in lower-level areas, with added attack patterns and scaled-up statistics. I would argue that many of these encounters were designed to evoke a special reading of a particular side area rather than to provide an interesting mechanical challenge. Elden Ring's DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree (FromSoftware, 2022), seems to follow this design philosophy, rewarding exploration-based resourcefulness in dealing with the challenge, instead of doubling down on difficulty solely through numerical and mechanical means. The introduction of Scadutree Fragments, a new resource necessary to increase the player’s chances of survival in the DLC setting, the Realm of Shadow, not only directly encourages thorough examination of the new locations, but also mitigates the consequences of applying virtually the same area-based difficulty level progression introduced in the base game. Since the DLC gameworld is smaller than the base game’s explorable spaces, the sense of being overwhelmed by challenge for those not collecting Scadutree Fragments can be frustrating. A detailed analysis of Shadow of the Erdtree remains out of scope of this article, but it can be argued that the initial poor reception of this DLC among FromSoftware’s self-proclaimed die-hard fans was partially a consequence of its anti-“git gud” design. Refusing to engage with the newly added systems and treating the exploration-based leveling system as unnecessary crutches for less experienced players may indeed have negatively impacted gameplay strategies involving skill and memory. This hypothesis, however, would require further research into the paratextual production and longitudinal changes in the reception of Elden Ring, Shadow of the Erdtree and the Dark Souls franchise as a whole.
Whereas “games have something special to offer us in return for our temporary obedience to the rules and norms of play” (Nguyen, 2019), it is also crucial to distinguish between the rules of the game and the norms of play reinforced by the player communities and game media. In the case of Elden Ring, the former are not as rigorous as some of the fans would wish them to be. Players do not need to engage in subversive counterplay to go against the claim that all the FromSoftware titles are equally difficult. The community members who unironically evoke the “git gud” arguments infer the implied designer in a way that is both unfaithful to the words of the actual designer(s) and, perhaps most importantly, to the design of the game itself. To sum up, the open-ended design of Elden Ring not only includes the option to ignore whole questlines and vast areas of the game, but also affords the option to ignore many of the game’s fundamental mechanics. By doing so, it indirectly rejects toxic norms that judge how individuals interact with video games in all their shapes and forms.
Endnotes
[1] The Voyant database with the analyzed corpus can be accessed here: https://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=511ab1c0c44e44eb9b16112d481b761f&stopList=keywords-763a8779c9d6bbec854fb2df9daea2d1&panels=cirrus,reader,trends,phrases,corpuscollocates. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[2] For reference, see https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=GiT%20GuD. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[3] For reference, see https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/git-gud. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[4] For reference, see https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/xfjdg3/what_does_git_good_mean/. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[5] For reference, see https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/17y1jct/does_this_count_as_cheese/. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[6] “9 CRUCIAL Elden Ring Tips & Tricks To Make You 'Git Gud' And Win Every Fight”, Nizar GG, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB-hxjnibe0. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[7] For reference, see https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/zhbq3u/from_the_man_himself/. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[8] For reference, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTa5QPW7Epg. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[9] Referring to the aforementioned video: “9 CRUCIAL Elden Ring Tips & Tricks To Make You 'Git Gud' And Win Every Fight”, Nizar GG, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB-hxjnibe0. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[10] For reference, see https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/18nzsa4/ive_been_playing_this_game_wrong_the_whole_time/. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[11] For reference, see BetterBurnStan https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/172v5yz/is_elden_ring_too_easy_with_summons/.
[12] For reference, see https://eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/Patch_Notes. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[13] For reference, see https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/u7ca34/people_take_git_gud_the_wrong_way/. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[14] For reference, see DjuriWarface, https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/136c5vb/30_attempts_over_an_hour_and_a_half_and_this_was/. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[15] For reference, see https://blog.playstation.com/2022/01/28/an-interview-with-fromsoftwares-hidetaka-miyazki/. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[16] For reference, see https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/xag43b/i_used_to_hate_the_git_gud_culture_then_i_joined/. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
[17] For reference, see Alpcantr, https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/136c5vb/30_attempts_over_an_hour_and_a_half_and_this_was/. Date of access: 18.01.2024.
References
Alhudithi, E. (2021). Review of Voyant Tools: See through your text. Language Learning & Technology, 25(3), 43-50.
Brock, T., & Johnson, M. R. (2022). Video gaming as craft consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture, 22(3), 598-614. https://doi.org/10.1177/14695405211016085
Czauderna, A., von Gillern, S., & Robinson, B. (2023). Informal Social-Emotional Learning in Gaming Affinity Spaces: Evidence From a Reddit Discussion Thread on Elden Ring. Simulation and Gaming. https://doi.org/10.1177/10468781231209697
Ensslin, A., & Balteiro, I. (2019). Locating Videogames in Medium-specific, Multilingual Discourse Analyses. In A. Ensslin & I. Balteiro (Eds.), Approaches to Videogame Discourse. Lexis, Interaction, Textuality. Bloomsbury Academic.
Freitas, J. (2020). From epic fail to epic music: music, silence and failure on Dark Souls 3. Journal of Sound, Silence, Image and Technology, 3, 55-74.
FromSoftware. (2022). Elden Ring [Microsoft Windows]. Digital game directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki & Yui Tanimura, published by Bandai Namco.
Hassan, L. (2023). Accessibility of games and game-based applications: A systematic literature review and mapping of future directions. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231204020
Hines, M. (2023). “A Crown is Warranted With Strength”: Bosses, Fantasy, and Democracy in Elden Ring. Games and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231186476
Illger, D. (2020). The Lifelike Death: Dark Souls and the Dialectics in Black. Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture, 11(1), 111-123. https://eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/article/view/vol11no1-7
Jagoda, P. (2018). On Difficulty in Video Games: Mechanics, Interpretation, Affect. Critical Inquiry, 45(1), 199-233. https://doi.org/10.1086/699585
Kłosiński, M. (2022). How to Interpret Digital Games? A Hermeneutic Guide in Ten Points, With References and Bibliography. Game Studies, 22(2). https://gamestudies.org/2202/articles/gap_klosinski
MacDonald, K. (2024, May 26). The game design secrets of Elden Ring’s Hidetaka Miyazaki. The Guardian.
Mihailova, T. (2022). Navigating ambiguous negativity: A case study of Twitch.tv live chats. New Media and Society, 24(8), 1830-1851. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820978999
Mosselaer, N. Van de, & Gualeni, S. (2020). The Implied Designer and the Experience of Gameworlds. Proceedings of DiGRA 2020.
Murthy, D., & Sharma, S. (2019). Visualizing YouTube’s comment space: online hostility as a networked phenomena. New Media and Society, 21(1), 191-213. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444818792393
Nguyen, C. T. (2019). The right way to play a game. Game Studies, 19(1). https://gamestudies.org/1901/articles/nguyen
Paul, C. A. (2018). The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games. Why Gaming Culture Is the Worst. University of Minnesota Press.
Robinson, B., Czauderna, A., & von Gillern, S. (2023). “I think I Get Why y’all do this Now”: Reckoning With Elden Ring’s Difficulty in an Online Affinity Space. Games and Culture. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231203134
Seiwald, R. (2023). Beyond the Game Itself: Understanding Authorial Intent, Player Agency, and Materiality as Degrees of Paratextuality. Games and Culture, 18(6), 718-739. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231181193
Spawforth, C., & Millard, D. E. (2017). Multiplayer Games as a Template for Multiplayer Narratives: A Case Study With Dark Souls. Narrative and Hypertext Workshop 2017.
Sterling, S. (2024). Disability, Difficulty, And The Discourse That's Lost The Plot (The Jimquisition). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQZBGLeJnA4. Date of access: 18.03.2025.
Taylor, T. L. (2003). Power gamers just want to have fun?: Instrumental play in a MMOG. DiGRA ’03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up, November, 300-311. http://www.digra.org/dl/display_html?chid=http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05163.32071
Turi, T., & Miyazaki, H. (2022, January 22). An interview with FromSoftware’s Hidetaka Miyazaki. PlayStation.Blog.
Van Nuenen, T. (2016). Playing the panopticon: Procedural surveillance in Dark Souls. Games and Culture, 11(5), 510-527. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412015570967
Vella, D. (2015). No Mastery Without Mystery: Dark Souls and the Ludic Sublime. Game Studies, 15(1). http://gamestudies.org/1501/articles/vella
Welsh, T. (2020). (Re)Mastering Dark Souls. Game Studies, 20(4). http://gamestudies.org/2004/articles/welsh
Ziegler, C. K., Eisenheim, F. von, Grant, Shook, J., Hofstatter, L., Manox, M. N., Oroboro, Ahmed, S., & Norwood, W. (2023). Elden Ring Books of Knowledge Volume II. Shards of the Shattering. Future Press Verlag.
Ziegler, C. K., Eisenheim, F. von, Shook, J., Hofstatter, L., Manox, M. N., Oroboro, Ahmed, S., & Norwood, W. (2022). Elden Ring Books of Knowledge Volume I. The Lands Between. Future Press Verlag.