The Vexing Art of Duchamp, Picasso and FromSoftware

Most big-budget video games work hard to appeal to a broad player base. Boot up The Last of Us: Part II and Red Dead Redemption 2 and you will be treated to cinematic introductions that neatly outline mechanics and plot, spelling out details with lengthy tutorials and exposition-laden dialogue.

Bloodborne, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, took a drastically different approach: It dropped gamers into the deep end and ignored their cries for help.

Fans of other challenging games by FromSoftware loved it. Others despised it. Dan Stapleton, convinced by enthralled co-workers at IGN to give Bloodborne a shot, called the experience “tediously repetitive and very rarely fun,” and “more chore than challenge.”

He was not alone. Based on public PlayStation data, less than half of those who begin Bloodborne defeat its first boss, a hulking antlered monster that players encounter in the game’s labyrinthine starting area. Only one in four players ever defeat Mergo’s Wet Nurse, the many-limbed eldritch horror who must be vanquished to reach the game’s most basic ending.

A century ago, influential artists like Picasso, Munch and Duchamp also confused and outraged audiences with difficult work that pushed the boundaries of the medium. The critic Julian Street, reviewing Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending a Staircase,” wrote that it was like “an explosion in a shingle factory.” Critics and audiences were similarly skeptical of modernist literature that demanded more from people than many were prepared to give.