It took me about half a dozen plays before I managed to win a game of Endeavor Deep Sea cooperatively. At that point I had played the game with every possible group size and introduced it to a number of new players along the way. I found it amusing how even after multiple attempts, I never quite managed to win a game. By contrast, I recently played The Great Evening Banquet (the new release by Saashi). During my second play of it, I already managed to max out the scoring track.

A difficult game tends to stoke our ambition. We feel as if the design is calling us out, almost daring us to try to squeeze a decent score from it. (see also Khora). This kind of game can easily keep our interest over multiple plays. But I don’t find it particularly pleasant reason to want to play a game. It feels more like duty, a challenge to my “honor as a gamer” not to back down from such a game. So naturally, I played Endeavor again and again.

I remember this kind of tenaciousness from when I was a teenager. I remember it from playing video games that were just a touch too difficult for me to complete on the first twenty or thirty tries. A particularly challenging boss fight (or even just a long game) kept me coming back to reach the end credits. And eventually I did manage to beat M.Bison or blow up Andross.

The relief and sense of triumph I felt, when I finally succeeded, was undeniable. All the frustration, anger and swearing tirades I’d gone through to get there, were quickly forgotten. I’m a little older now. I’m more relaxed when I play, in comparison to when I was still at school, and I’d like to think I’m generally more level-headed as well. Things in games don’t upset me quite so easily. And when they do, I can calm myself down soon enough and forget about what happened.

But I’ve also noticed that games that still manage to make me “angry”, or deny me a satisfying conclusion, still motivate me to play, but they don’t really make me enjoy those games more. Most importantly, once I’ve reached my goal all my motivation vanishes. Once I’ve “beaten” the game, I find little reason to play again.

It doesn’t have to be this way, though. This became apparent to me, after playing The Great Evening Banquet a few times. Its solo mode offers a fairly mild challenge to experienced gamers (or simply those with luck on their side). You just puzzle along to get a decent score. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. More accurately, it was during my second try that I ended up in the highest scoring category of the game. But unlike with Endeavor, I don’t feel as if my motivation to play again has dissipated.

Quite the opposite, actually. I no longer feel any pressure to overcome the rules complexities or beat particularly difficult game states. I simply enjoy play itself. I get to relax while I plot, puzzle or plan. Not because I feel the need to get the highest possible score, but because I enjoy the act of play. I like to get my synapses puttering along without pushing them towards maximum performance. I get to relax with this gentle tension, of whether I will get the token I need, or whether I will have to pivot towards another strategy.

Which is not to say, that I don’t like challenging, heavy games. Or that these games are somehow better or worse. But it’s become apparent to me, that these challenging and heavy games inevitably steer towards a natural end point. Eventually, I’ll have scaled that mountain. I will have set a new record. I will have cracked the safe. The game will feel played out. Once the puzzle is solved, all that is left is to move on to the next game, the next puzzle or the next challenge.

This might be the reason why some circles consider variability an important marker of a high quality game. When setup is different every time you play, the looming moment of when you lose interest in a game gets pushed back further and further. This way the game gets to stay in your collection. It has not been “solved”, yet. If I were to remove all the games from my shelves, that I have “beaten”; I’d be staring at a pretty empty Ikea rack.

What kind of game I will recommend to others or get to the table myself, is usually a gut decision. It’s a question of what kind of mood I’m in and the vibes of the evening. Sometimes I have players over, who explicitly came to push themselves towards new mental heights. Players who will – regardless of what game we play – aim for the absolute maximum of victory points, they could possibly score. Anything less would feel like a betrayal of their player ethics. (Or “not fun” as it is colloquially called.) But just as often, I have players at the table, who just want to spend a nice time with each other. These are game nights, where the experience we share is seen as more valuable than the personal gratification of having played particularly well tonight.

To me, these are convincing signs to conclude that games don’t need to be hard to master, to get us excited and interested in them. That our enjoyment of the game doesn’t need us to get challenged “just right”. It’s the way a game feels to play, that appeals to us. It’s the “vibes” that make a game special. It isn’t the promise of wrestling with the game’s challenge that gets us back to the table. This might run counter to accepted wisdom among gamers, but I think it’s true.