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Videogames, as everyone knows, are for losers—literally. In defiance of our participation-trophy culture, videogames demand that their players fail, repeatedly. Not many games can make you cry, but scores of them can make you feel frustrated, angry and impotent. The word that we gamers use for this cocktail of sensations is “fun.” Today’s most challenging games are dubbed “masocore,” a combination of “masochist” and “hard-core.” Masocore games are nearly devoid of instructions, kill new players within seconds, and require repeated trial and error to succeed. But it’s not all pointless vexation. These games reinforce a character-building truism: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” And they also inculcate some practical virtues. All of that losing, it turns out, teaches you how to win, and not just in videogames. Few games illustrate this as starkly as “Dark Souls,” developed by the Japanese studio FromSoftware and published by Bandai Namco. The third entry in the series was released last month. Bandai Namco says that three million copies of “Dark Souls III” have been shipped to retailers world-wide. The series has sold 13 million copies since the release of the first “Dark Souls” in 2011. “Dark Souls III” begins with the player alone in a nearly silent cemetery. There is no music and no dialogue, just a watery path to follow through an almost colorless landscape of browns, grays and blacks. Glowing markers on the ground explain how to attack the skeletons and other undead creatures that lurk ahead. Bloodstains show where players who came before you have died. Like them, you won’t survive. A new book on “Dark Souls” is entitled, aptly, “You Died.” A writer for Wired reported dying 437 times over the 74 hours it took him to complete “Dark Souls III.” I died seven times in the first 45 minutes. The game isn’t merely hard; it’s punishing. If you fail, you can be forced to retrace your steps and again defeat previously vanquished foes. Players who don’t get back to the spot of their demise lose their accumulated progress. Yet the interaction among player, controller and screen is so well tuned that death almost always feels like the player’s fault, not the game’s. To defeat these games, players collaborate online and in person, sharing advice over the Internet much the same way schoolchildren of my generation did on the playground to master “Super Mario Bros.” In “You Died,” a former psychological-operations specialist in the U.S. Army—who has now spent, he says, 1,400 hours playing “Dark Souls”—compares the “persistence and resilience” taught by the game to the virtues that he learned during his military career. “The game demands that you fully commit, have the guts to continue on and the patience to learn from your mistakes,” he says. Another player compares the game to confronting a field of land mines, finding a manual to disarm them, then learning that the manual is in Swahili. “But ‘Dark Souls’ also gives you a Swahili dictionary,” she says, continuing the metaphor. “It expects you to listen and to learn and to improve.” The data bear out these observations. More than a decade ago, John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, who now work at the consulting firm Accenture, surveyed 2,500 business professionals and concluded that people who played videogames as teenagers were better at business than people who didn’t. Their 2004 book “Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever” found that videogame players were more likely to consider themselves experts, to want more pay for better performance and to see persistence as the secret to success. Of course, games can be fun without being edifying. In “The Art of Failure,” the Danish game theorist Jesper Juul compares videogame players who seek out defeat (by playing games that they know they will lose) to moviegoers and readers drawn to works that evoke unpleasant feelings like sadness, fear and disgust. Playing “Dark Souls,” like watching “Old Yeller,” “Psycho” or “Alien,” can be time well wasted even if it brings no practical benefits. Even those who don’t have the dexterity (or time) to master masocore games can draw a lesson from their inadequacy: that, in the real world, sometimes it’s just time to quit. I know enough about the compulsive qualities of some videogames not to let our preschool-age daughters play much of anything. But when they get a little older, I will happily let them play “Dark Souls” or another well-crafted game. They teach patience, doggedness and the rewards that come from hard work.

was just chattin with a friend and we talked about this local horror series of books, Souls. i remember getting scared just looking at the cover of the Pontianak with the stitched mouth.

Dead cabby leaves wife with debt of $68K Indonesian woman in the dark over family finances is now only left with $80 and 3 young kids to cope with. -TNP Fri, May 21, 2010 The New Paper By Arul John THE plate of fried noodles she had cooked for her children lay untouched hours later. Tragedy had struck the family with the sudden death of its only breadwinner. Taxi driver Sun Leong Hock, 49, collapsed and died in the toilet of his three-room flat on Ubi Avenue 1 on Monday. His widow, Madam Darsinah, a 30-year-old Indonesian, is now left to cope with their three young kids and heavy debt. Mr Sun handled the household expenses, giving his wife $10 a day to buy food for herself and the kids. This was the only money she ever handled, Madam Darsinah said, and now she must contend with overdue bills. She showed The New Paper reminder letters asking for payment of $2,109.50 arrears on their flat's mortgage and $113.70 in utility bills. Madam Darsinah said she had no savings and did not know if her husband had any. >> Next: Bankrupt Bankrupt It seems unlikely as checks showed that Mr Sun filed for bankruptcy in January over a debt of about $68,000. It is not known what the debt was for and Madam Darsinah said she knew nothing about it. A search through her late husband's belongings turned up only about $80. She said she found $39 and a US$5 (S$7) note in his wallet and his coin purse had about $40. Madam Darsinah, who has only primary school education, often sobbed into Mr Sun's black jacket while telling her story. "What am I going to do now? My husband paid all the bills and handled most of the household expenses," she said. "I never thought his illness would be so serious." Mr Sun came down with a fever on Friday but put off seeing a doctor because he wanted to save money. "He had been sick before but it was mostly coughs and colds and feeling 'heaty'," said Madam Darsinah. He remained feverish during the weekend and finally saw a doctor at a clinic near their home on Sunday. But his condition worsened. At 5.30am on Monday, he woke up to go to the toilet in their bedroom and asked his wife to fry some kway teow for their children, aged eight, six and five. Madam Darsinah said: "He said he had diarrhoea. I fried the noodles and then went to use the toilet in the kitchen. "When I returned to the bedroom, I saw my husband sitting on the toilet seat and propping himself up with his arms on a pail in front of the toilet bowl. He was breathing heavily. "I became frightened and cried and woke the children, and told my eldest child to help his father." Madam Darsinah then went to their neighbour's flat to call for an ambulance. She said: "The neighbour went to my flat and saw my husband in the toilet. I noticed his eyes and skin were yellow. "The neighbour asked me to put medicated oil on his nostrils. When I did that, I felt his body and it was cold." She said the paramedics pronounced her husband dead at about 6.30am. The death certificate indicated the cause of death as "cardiopulmonary failure pending further investigations". When The New Paper visited the family later that day, the plate of fried noodles was still untouched and Mr Sun's blue Comfort taxi was parked below the block. There was a television set in the living room, and two blue sofas, but no sign of any family photographs. The couple and the children all slept on two mattresses in one bedroom. The kitchen had a refrigerator, a stove and a washing machine. The children have hardly any toys but they have a pet dog called Appu. Madam Darsinah, the second of eight daughters born to Java farmers, said she met MrSun in 2000 when he visited the coffee shop in west Java where she was working. Previous << >> Next: Came to Singapore Came to Singapore He used to visit her once every fortnight and their first two children, a son and daughter, were born in Indonesia in 2002 and 2004. Madam Darsinah said: "After the children were born, he used to give me $50 or $60 whenever he visited me. That was just enough to get by but he did not have much more money to give us." In 2004, Mr Sun brought them to Singapore and they registered their marriage on June 25 that year. Their second son was born the following year. Madam Darsinah said: "Since moving to Singapore, I have not contacted my parents or visited them because my husband had no money. He was also not in contact with his family members." Madam Darsinah said she was worried about how she would pay her eldest son's school fees and her younger children's kindergarten fees. She showed us a letter from the Chinese Development Assistance Council that indicated they received a $150 cheque as financial help in February. Madam Darsinah said Mr Sun was a bus driver for 13 years, then a lorry driver for a few years. She said: "He began driving his taxi in January this year. He would start at 7.30am and return home for a rest at about 2pm. "Then he would drive his taxi from 5pm until about 8pm.He worked from Monday to Saturday." Madam Darsinah said they seldom went out on Sundays, save for occasional trips to Giant hypermarket at Tampines. She said she used to go to the market once every fortnight but had not done so for nearly a month. She said: "We usually bought the cheapest vegetables, small fish, some rice and noodles. I would cook simple meals with whatever was in the refrigerator or wewould eat out." Undertaker Roland Tay,who learnt of Madam Darsinah's plight from some residents in her block, said he would handle Mr Sun's funeral arrangements for free. He said he had paid $200 to the owner of a food stall below their block so that Madam Darsinah and her children could have free meals there. Mr Tay said a wake was held at Casket Fairprice parlour at Block 37, Sin Ming Drive, yesterday. Mr Sun's body will be cremated at Mandai Crematorium today and his ashes stored in a Buddhist temple. Previous << >> Next: Help on the way for troubled family Help on the way for troubled family THE Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC) said Mr Sun was referred to it for financial help by his Member of Parliament last year. A spokesman said his family received help from last November till last month. The case was due for review this month. After learning of Mr Sun's death from The New Paper, the spokesman said CDAC will give his family the necessary support and may visit them today. Ms Tammy Tan, ComfortDelGro's group corporate communications officer, said they would get in touch with Madam Darsinah to offer assistance. She could not disclose more details as the case was under police investigation. She said: "We will assist the police in their investigations." The principal of the school which the eldest child attends said they would do whatever they could to help him. She said: "The boy's well-being is our top priority. When he first joined the school, he could not speak English but now he can speak English quite well and did well in the recent exams." An SP Services spokesman said that it would try to help customers like Madam Darsinah by offering instalment plans or deferring payment on a case-by-case basis. This article was first published in The New Paper. ................................................................................ Hi MCForummers Need 10 kind souls' commitment to donate S$10 a month for the next 6 months. If you are willing please put your name down. Just 10 pax will do. I will gather the money for the first month and the next person do it for the second month onwards and so on so forth. Commitment entails helping to collect $10 from the 10 guys. Each one do it once. I believe it is important to visit and offer encouragment to the family so please do not just offer money alone. Meanwhile I will have to get the contact details of the family. If anyone knows please drop me a PM. Alternatively I may have to call CDAC etc and this takes time. If you are willing to make the commitment please pen your nick below and drop me a PM. Thank you and have a good day. Mods, pls bear with me. Thank you. 1. Piyopico

Thank you so much !! Ming [drivingcar]