“I think I Get Why y’all do this Now”: Reckoning With Elden Ring's Difficulty in an Online Affinity Space

The purpose of this study was to understand how players reckon with relentlessly challenging video games by exploring their interactions in a game-specific affinity space. The authors conducted a qualitative thematic analysis of a focal discussion thread on r/EldenRing, a Reddit community, to examine how players lend each other support in response to the game's mechanical, affective, and interpretive difficulty. The findings demonstrate how affinity spaces can play an important role in helping players navigate challenging games like Elden Ring by providing a space for them to strategize, vent, joke, and even philosophize about their experiences with the game. Through this study, the authors suggest that game designers might extend their design perspectives to consider players’ metagaming practices in affinity spaces, where they support one another to construct meaning of their suffering, perhaps leading to more players, more joy, and more joyful players.