This friction creates a psychological loop. By making the actions difficult to perform, the game validates the effort. When you finally learn to parry in Dark Souls or successfully dock a spaceship in Elite Dangerous , you aren't just pressing buttons; you are demonstrating a mastery of a complex system. The struggle validates the victory. The psychological appeal of the Struggle Simulator is rooted in a concept known as the "Dunning-Kruger effect" in reverse. In power fantasies, we overestimate our competence. In struggle simulators, we are forced to confront our incompetence, crawl our way up a learning curve, and eventually achieve a state of "flow."
You likely know the type. These are games that do not care if you have fun. They are indifferent to your schedule. They often strip away the tutorial hand-holding and the regenerating health bars, leaving you barehanded against a world that wants you dead, broke, or both. From the crushing medieval realism of Kingdom Come: Deliverance to the logistical nightmares of Death Stranding , and the evolution of FromSoftware’s library, the "Struggle Simulator" has become a dominant force. Struggle Simulator
Dr. Jamie Madigan, a psychologist who writes about the intersection This friction creates a psychological loop
The core mechanic is a lack of agency. In a standard RPG, if you see a mountain, you climb it. In a Struggle Simulator like Death Stranding , if you see a mountain, you must calculate the weight of your cargo, check the weather for timefall (toxic rain), assess the stamina of your boots, and plan a route that avoids invisible ghostly BTs. If you trip, you damage your cargo. The game forces you to respect the mundane. The struggle validates the victory
Consider Kingdom Come: Deliverance . In most RPGs, picking a lock is a minigame of timing or a simple button press. In Kingdom Come , it is a maddening exercise in rotating a cursor while pressing a separate button, all while your character’s skill level makes the lock jitter and jump. It is frustrating. It takes minutes. But when you finally pick it, you feel a surge of adrenaline that a "Press X to Hack" prompt could never provide.