When you love something a lot, it can sometimes turn into a kind of passion that is overwhelming to other people. When you express that on the internet, it becomes fodder for jokes. Now, one manās passion for not cheating in video games has become grist for the internet joke mill.
The debate about whether games should have easy modes has been going on for decades, or at least since I personally ate shit at Super Smash Bros. while playing against my older brother and his friends. Some people feel that easy or assist modes provide greater accessibility to players who are disabled or otherwise wouldnāt be able to enjoy a particular game. Others are less tolerant of that argument, positing that the sheer existence of an āeasyā mode would taint a developerās vision or cheapen the accomplishment of beating a tough game. These two camps tend not to see eye to eye.
The current subject of this round of that debate is the latest game from From Software, Sekiro. From Software specializes in making punishing games that reward you for paying attention and being persistent, but there are players who are physically unable to play the game as intended, or want to know why their friends are all screaming about umbrellas but donāt have the time to devote to learning Sekiroās complex combat systems.
Debating things on the internet usually does not end with people coming away with a greater empathy for the other sideās position. But this debate has reached a kind of Christmas Truce over a single tweet.
Last week, PC Gamer associate editor James Davenport wrote an article about cheating in Sekiro and not feeling bad about it. āSome might say I missed out on the intended catharsis, sidestepping the āartistās intent.ā So what?ā Davenport wrote. āThereās nothing to preserve for the greater good in Sekiroās design. Iāll get what I can from it. And I got a lot from Sekiro.ā Twitter user Fetusberry took issue with that position, and retweeted the outletās tweet with some commentary of his own.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1114364382606053378
Fetusberry clearly feels very strongly about the issue of cheating in video games. Unfortunately for him, there is nothing that the internet at large finds funnier than peopleās unvarnished, passionately held opinions expressed in a hyperbolic way. To wit, internet jokesters have started copying and pasting the text of Fetusberryās tweet into videos of using minor cheats in games and modifying the text for other social situations.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1115390025745625090
You cheated not only the game but yourself.
You didn't grow.
You didn't improve.
You took a shortcut and gained nothing.You experienced a hollow victory.
Nothing was risked and nothing was gained.It's sad that you don't know the difference of what true gamers are. pic.twitter.com/wI2ZHsUQlk
ā Justin (@PrinceOfPufftop) April 7, 2019
You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
You didn't grow.
You didn't improve.
You took a shortcut and gained nothing.You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained.
It's sad that you don't know the difference. pic.twitter.com/tBTeHK5f9W
ā TodoNintendoS (@TodoNintendoS) April 8, 2019
You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
You didn't grow.
You didn't improve.
You took a shortcut and gained nothing.You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained.
It's sad that you don't know the difference. pic.twitter.com/h8veGCFroE
ā š (@tj2gaming) April 8, 2019
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1115311877477871616
ā AK (@Akfamilyhome) April 8, 2019
ā Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) April 9, 2019
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1115713574679216128
Link: Hits Ganon once with a boomerang
Ganon: āYou cheated not only the game, but yourself-ā
ā Kelly Turnbull (@Coelasquid) April 10, 2019
Raphael: You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didnāt grow.
You didnāt improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing. pic.twitter.com/kLuqO6IllTā LittleKuriboh (@yugiohtas) April 7, 2019
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1115993471506997250
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1115686148419006465
You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained nothing.
You experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was risked and nothing was gained.
It's sad that you don't know the difference. pic.twitter.com/aPilBGKTnW
ā Casey Explosion (@CaseyExplosion) April 8, 2019
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1115333419062312960
https://twitter.com/embed/status/1114604053017890816
While all this is funny, and allows for some levity during a debate where people on either side have dug in their heels hard, you have to wonder what it must be like for the person who kicked it all off, now getting resoundly dunked on across the web. Fetusberry has since said that they find the jokes hilarious, tweeting, āI feel like thereās no point in getting upset about it, ācause what am I gonna do to change anything?ā Kotaku reached out for comment, but didnāt get a response in time for publication.
UPDATE ā 4/11, 11:21am: Fetusberry got back to Kotaku last night to give his thoughts on this whole affair.
ā[Davenport]Ā was talking about cheating to beat the boss and then saying āand I feel fineā bothered me; saying āI feel fineā is basically saying, āI did this wrong, and I know I did, but I donāt care. And you shouldnāt either.ā Yuck,ā Fetusberry continued. While he said that he hasnāt played Sekiro, his friends said that while it is hard, itās rewarding, and he believes that overcoming obstacles in games by applying yourself and being patient is a good avenue for self improvement.
Regarding how popular he meme about his tweet has become, heās says that mostly heās impressed by the creativity of what people are making out of it.
āHere we are, five days later, 22k likes, lots of people still doing their best to assure themselves that Iām angry and that Iām hating the attention, but no. Iām still having a good time,ā Fetusberry said. āIām actually laughing about a lot of these memes and more than anything Iām amazed it has gone as far as it has. I had no idea what I was doing at the time; I was just tweeting and now weāre here. I think itās really cool that this meme gets to become part of the internet tapestry, so to speak, and I kinda hope it doesnāt stop (though I know thereās gotta be an ending sometime).ā
