[dota_fanatic]

> “I do feel apologetic toward anyone who feels there’s just too much to overcome in my games,” Miyazaki told me. He held his head in his hands, then smiled. “I just want as many players as possible to experience the joy that comes from overcoming hardship.”

It's been great to see how their games have inspired so many people. If you go search any of the subreddits for their games, it's not rare to see testimonials of how the game "saved their life". It helped them learn to believe in themselves. To believe that they can change and overcome the challenges that are facing them, things they previously despaired were insurmountable. To use terminology from the Dark Souls series, they were hollow and through mastery of the game they were able to reverse it.

Although they didn't have quite such an effect for me, these experiences nevertheless have built confidence that I otherwise wouldn't have. Just because something is difficult, just because I don't understand it now, doesn't mean it will always be that way. If I keep at it, if I think and experiment enough, the thing at hand becomes legible and one day soon, doing that thing that used to be so hard will become second nature. It's an empowering experience.

[MattyRad]

I've always thought that the only way to lose at Dark Souls is to give up, and go Hollow.

It's a small missed opportunity that From Software didn't indicate where in the Game players went Hollow; that is, if a player died, show their bloodstain and how they died. If a player died and hasn't resumed playing for a very long time (they gave up), then put a new hollowed enemy instead of a bloodstain.