This week we’re talking about Core Game Loop and Meta Game Loop, which are core loops that players keep repeating throughout the experience.

In class, I briefly analyzed Dark Souls’ Core Game Loop: Observe → Judge → Action → Get hit or Success → Adjust → Try again

The loop is very short and comes back quickly, every minute is repeated, and that’s what players have been experiencing throughout the entire process,

And Meta Game Loop is more like:

Frustrated → Adjustment → Strengthen → Advance → Restart the World (NG+) → Again Frustrated → Readjust → Advance Again

But to be honest, after sorting it out, I feel that there is no difference between Dark Souls’ meta and core… So I started thinking about another possibility: in a design like Dark Souls, core and meta are extended from the same set of souls, so they look very similar. The biggest feature of Black Souls is that it makes “fighting” and “growth” so coherent that core and meta are like the same nerve, and FromSoftware has sewn them together.

The core loop of Dark Souls takes place at the immediate level of player confrontation with enemies. When players face a new enemy, they often start by observing the movement and testing the attack. Because they don’t know the enemy’s moves yet, players will almost certainly experience defeat. After dying, they will become aware of the rhythm or flaw of a move, and then adjust their attack style, roll timing, or distance management. Then, they will try again with the understanding they have just learned. Instead of a story, players learn “how to survive” in the process. It’s a physical level of learning, even with a conditioned sense of acuity.

Dark Souls’ meta loop takes place on a longer timescale, which is a cycle of how players face the entire journey.

When players encounter huge setbacks while exploring an area, death, soul loss, and being forced to return to the bonfire, they have to reevaluate their build, equipment, tactics, and even routes. Players may swap weapons, adjust attribute points, change playstyle, or even choose to avoid an area and re-explore another route.

After starting anew, they will face the same difficulties or explore new locations again with a new strategy. The whole journey thus forms another cycle:

Frustrated → Return to the Bonfire → Adjust Build/Strategy → Set Off Again → Advance the World → Clear → Enter the NG+.

This cycle is not “how to beat a monster”, but “how to walk a long and unfamiliar road”.

It represents the player’s understanding, maturity and identity. This is a “psychological” level of learning.

Of course, multiple NG+ is also the most special part of Dark Souls, and I think it’s also a kind of meta game loop. Once in NG+, players will face the same world again with the knowledge, scars, and habits from the previous week.

Walk through the Firelink Shrine the second time and you suddenly realize the details you overlooked the first time; Entering the same area, you no longer panic, but read the environment with full understanding. You’ll start to know which enemies are honest, which spaces are actually teaching, and which NPCs have hinted at you what.

The journey of the second playthrough is not a repetition, but a revelation. You rediscover the world, and the world also allows you to rediscover yourself through difficulty increases and enemies change. This makes players understand that the growth of Black Souls is never a simple value, but a maturity of cognition。

Back to the original topic, for me, the difference between Core and Meta is more like “what happens in a minute” and “what happens in dozens of hours”. Essentially following the same set of values, they will look very similar, but on a different scale.

The values of Dark Souls are probably that death is allowed, failure is part of learning, no one will tell you the answer, and you are responsible for every step you take.

These things are also telling you: how you fight each battle (core) and how you go on your entire journey (meta).

So to experience, the short loop and the long loop give the player a very close feeling.

Although the objects of these two cycles are different, the shape is actually very similar: setbacks → digestion → change → and then face

The only difference between them is that the core takes place in a confrontation and the meta takes place in a journey, but they operate in the same logic.