The Surge
GameBy Deck13 Interactive · Released May 15, 2017
Documents about The Surge
Whitepaper19 pages
Why Do We Suffer for Fun? Ordeal Pleasure in Souls-like Games
This paper introduces the Ordeal Pleasure Framework (OPF), a model explaining why repeated failure in Souls-like games such as Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Hollow Knight can become satisfying rather than merely frustrating.
- The paper proposes the Ordeal Pleasure Framework (OPF), which explains why repeated failure in Souls-like games such as Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Hollow Knight can feel satisfying rather than merely frustrating.
- OPF rests on three interacting mechanisms: Ludic Cultivation (trust built through fair, learnable difficulty), Aspirational Deferment (reading present frustration as investment in future competence, which depends on that trust), and Communal Mythopoesis (shared ordeal stories that amplify but do not cause the experience).
- The paper frames its central claims as hypotheses requiring causal and empirical testing, and its quantitative support is deliberately modest: a 95-participant survey of Dark Souls III players (Petralito et al., 2017) and an analysis of a 2,363-comment Elden Ring Reddit thread (Czauderna et al., 2024).
DiGRAJun 2026
Report104 pages
Annual Financial Report: 2019/20
Focus Home Interactive's annual report for the year ended 31 March 2020 documents a record year for the French publisher of video games developed by external studios.
- Focus Home Interactive's gross profit grew 20% to €36.6M, with a gross margin of 31% (up from 29% last year), and operating profit increased 36% to €19.2M for the year ended March 31, 2020.
- The Group held a net cash position of €18M on March 31, 2020.
- Focus Home Interactive has established new collaborations with Saber (for new projects and porting existing titles to Nintendo Switch and mobile) and Sumo Digital (for a new multiplayer game developed by Sumo Newcastle).
Pullup EntertainmentOct 2020