The economic strategy behind arcade games is simple: make the gameplay challenging enough to entice the player to keep pumping quarters into the machine. Some games accomplished this much better than others. Pac-man, for example, was exploitable by learning a set of patterns to follow when running the maze, allowing the player to play eternally on one quarter, barring only fatigue and/or boredom. Games like Gauntlet, on the other hand, did little to offer truly challenging gameplay, yet was enticing because it allowed up to four players to play simultaneously. Invariably, however, the character's health would run out, prompting the plugging in of another quarter. I remember once spending over twenty dollars on Gauntlet before being forced to quit to go home -- if that isn't the hallmark of a successful arcade game, I don't know what is.

Yet computer games offered arguably just as much challenge, but with the added benefit of ownership. You could play them whenever you wanted to, you paid a one-time fee to purchase them, and many of them allowed you to save your progress, eliminating the onerous task of having to start over again from the beginning (I'm looking at you, Ghosts 'n' Goblins). Yet even the burgeoning PC games market held on to the legacy of the arcade by keeping its games sometimes punishingly difficult.

Consider a game like Sierra On-Line's Sammy Lightfoot, a platformer notable for the exacting nature of its mechanics. Passage through the game's different environments required the player to be able to run, know exactly when and where to stop -- sometimes to the pixel -- and endure the concomitant frustration of dying over and over again until the player knew the exact route needed to progress. While this was often an arduous experience, it did breed a certain satisfaction when Sammy was able to make it to his goal, commensurate with the level of frustration engendered on the way. Put simply, the high of the victory was as strong as the low of the defeat.