Sunday, September 04, 2005
Difficulty in Gaming
This is my opinion. No actual research aside from personal experience went into it.
With the current mainstreaming of the videogame industry something I've noticed that has aggravated more longtime gamers is the decrease in difficulty in games. Some hearken back to the "good old days" when hard to very hard games were common and many took real fortitude to beat whether this was accidental or on purpose is often hard to tell but it is probably true that games were overall harder then than they are now. But is this lack of difficulty for real or is it something of perception, particularly of a class of gamers who have been at it for well over a decade?
The question of why games may or may not be getting easier, to me, is answered often in economics. Taken from a casual gamers perspective, a real difficult game may be a turn off and if that person can't get immediate gratification from his game he'll probably stop playing and probably not buy a sequel or possibly even other games from that developer. On that note casual gamers want rewards and lots of them as soon as possible. A game where you really have to work your ass off just to open up a small bonus or easter egg is probably not enough. For a casual the reward of beating the game often isn't enough to justify the $50 spent on the game.
This is frustrating for hardcore gamers who are the ones who'll put the time and effort into attaining the proper skill to beat the game and unlock whatever there may be. If it feels like he or she is blowing through the game a hardcore gamer will finish the game and possibly never pick it up again and maybe not buy a game in that series again or possibly from the developer. Which is at odds from the casual gamer. Often times if they aren't bursting a vessel just to beat this one level or boss they aren't feeling justified in their $50 purchase.
What can be done? Well the most obvious solution is difficulty levels. I'm not always a big fan of them though that they worked fairly well back in the day of the NES today it feels to me that the game feels broken when played on a higher difficulty or just too easy on a lower. While many don't have a problem with this I prefer a balanced difficulty that isn't too frustrating or too easy. Most games can't even provide that balance on "normal" difficulty so I'm not sure that making the game unbalanced either way is a good idea. The idea of teeter-totter AI has intrigued me but once again that could always allow for cheating and just playing good enough to move forward but not good enough for the computer to up the difficulty would also not work. I'm not sure if this would be great but a slider system sort of like what is used in sports game where a person could adjust the difficulty to their standards might be interesting but once again could result in a person horribly breaking the game's difficulty.
Other things that have made games easier is saving. It used to be that all but RPGs had save but now I can't think of a single modern game that doesn't have a save feature. Half the fun in many old games was that you had a limited number of lives and/or continues to work with and if you lost you had to start all over again from square one which had their own set of pleasures and frustations. And if they had a password sometimes it was a challenge just to make it work right. Nowadays that tension is pretty much gone and has led to games being easier in that sense.
Another thing that I think has resulted in seemingly easier games is perception. For those of us who've played games for nearly two decades (in my case 18-19 years) or more we often remember games being harder than they were. This is often due to many of us being younger and not having developed skills that would serve us in the future. When I was a kid a game like Super Mario Bros. was a challenge, Mega Man 2 ate me alive many times, Castlevania was just sick, etc. Now I can play these games like it is as easy as breathing. Still fun but not necessarily hard. Of course there are still hard games from then even now but often those are the results of poor programming rather than dedicated difficulty. Though if we were to give these games to people who cut their teeth on this or last generation those games sometimes will still provide a challenge. Though sometimes the perception goes from even last generation. Case in point, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs. Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
While I do believe that objectively TWW is easier than OoT part of that ease came from familiarity. When OoT came out, while not being the hardest game ever, provided challenges because the concepts, while familiar, were new being in a 3D world. TWW happened to come out after another 3D Zelda and me being over 5 years older so I was well aware of and understood the concepts that TWW ended up using. The new wrinkles didn't affect me that much. Yes the game was more forgiving in the damage department but I feel that was one of those instances of developers underestimating gamers and trying to provide a balance. If you weren't aware TWW had you often times fighting multiple enemies at the same time thus it is my belief that Nintendo tried to balance this new difficulty (which didn't exist in OoT or Majora's Mask) with a about 50% more forgiving damage ratio. In the end gamers who were veterans of 3D Zelda fighting had no problem due to this lessened damage which also was spread across to most of TWW's damage, except for the pig. Now over the past two weeks I've watched a friend of mine play TWW and have some difficulty with the game as he had never played OoT or MM prior and I wonder if me and others like me had gone in without our past experience if TWW would have been as easy as it was for us. This is all hypothetical as I'm sure there are instances of new to 3D, TWW players have an easy time at it but who knows.
In the end, I do hold the belief that videogames have gotten overall easier in reality and perception. But how much is hard to say since one person's breeze could very well be another person's stiff wind. Some of it may be due to the fact that developers are better at designing game now than they were in the NES era or it may be that they either underestimate us or want to keep gamers happy so they will continue to buy their games. Hopefully designers will strive for that balance that makes a game a challenge but not a practice in frustration.
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With the current mainstreaming of the videogame industry something I've noticed that has aggravated more longtime gamers is the decrease in difficulty in games. Some hearken back to the "good old days" when hard to very hard games were common and many took real fortitude to beat whether this was accidental or on purpose is often hard to tell but it is probably true that games were overall harder then than they are now. But is this lack of difficulty for real or is it something of perception, particularly of a class of gamers who have been at it for well over a decade?
The question of why games may or may not be getting easier, to me, is answered often in economics. Taken from a casual gamers perspective, a real difficult game may be a turn off and if that person can't get immediate gratification from his game he'll probably stop playing and probably not buy a sequel or possibly even other games from that developer. On that note casual gamers want rewards and lots of them as soon as possible. A game where you really have to work your ass off just to open up a small bonus or easter egg is probably not enough. For a casual the reward of beating the game often isn't enough to justify the $50 spent on the game.
This is frustrating for hardcore gamers who are the ones who'll put the time and effort into attaining the proper skill to beat the game and unlock whatever there may be. If it feels like he or she is blowing through the game a hardcore gamer will finish the game and possibly never pick it up again and maybe not buy a game in that series again or possibly from the developer. Which is at odds from the casual gamer. Often times if they aren't bursting a vessel just to beat this one level or boss they aren't feeling justified in their $50 purchase.
What can be done? Well the most obvious solution is difficulty levels. I'm not always a big fan of them though that they worked fairly well back in the day of the NES today it feels to me that the game feels broken when played on a higher difficulty or just too easy on a lower. While many don't have a problem with this I prefer a balanced difficulty that isn't too frustrating or too easy. Most games can't even provide that balance on "normal" difficulty so I'm not sure that making the game unbalanced either way is a good idea. The idea of teeter-totter AI has intrigued me but once again that could always allow for cheating and just playing good enough to move forward but not good enough for the computer to up the difficulty would also not work. I'm not sure if this would be great but a slider system sort of like what is used in sports game where a person could adjust the difficulty to their standards might be interesting but once again could result in a person horribly breaking the game's difficulty.
Other things that have made games easier is saving. It used to be that all but RPGs had save but now I can't think of a single modern game that doesn't have a save feature. Half the fun in many old games was that you had a limited number of lives and/or continues to work with and if you lost you had to start all over again from square one which had their own set of pleasures and frustations. And if they had a password sometimes it was a challenge just to make it work right. Nowadays that tension is pretty much gone and has led to games being easier in that sense.
Another thing that I think has resulted in seemingly easier games is perception. For those of us who've played games for nearly two decades (in my case 18-19 years) or more we often remember games being harder than they were. This is often due to many of us being younger and not having developed skills that would serve us in the future. When I was a kid a game like Super Mario Bros. was a challenge, Mega Man 2 ate me alive many times, Castlevania was just sick, etc. Now I can play these games like it is as easy as breathing. Still fun but not necessarily hard. Of course there are still hard games from then even now but often those are the results of poor programming rather than dedicated difficulty. Though if we were to give these games to people who cut their teeth on this or last generation those games sometimes will still provide a challenge. Though sometimes the perception goes from even last generation. Case in point, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time vs. Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
While I do believe that objectively TWW is easier than OoT part of that ease came from familiarity. When OoT came out, while not being the hardest game ever, provided challenges because the concepts, while familiar, were new being in a 3D world. TWW happened to come out after another 3D Zelda and me being over 5 years older so I was well aware of and understood the concepts that TWW ended up using. The new wrinkles didn't affect me that much. Yes the game was more forgiving in the damage department but I feel that was one of those instances of developers underestimating gamers and trying to provide a balance. If you weren't aware TWW had you often times fighting multiple enemies at the same time thus it is my belief that Nintendo tried to balance this new difficulty (which didn't exist in OoT or Majora's Mask) with a about 50% more forgiving damage ratio. In the end gamers who were veterans of 3D Zelda fighting had no problem due to this lessened damage which also was spread across to most of TWW's damage, except for the pig. Now over the past two weeks I've watched a friend of mine play TWW and have some difficulty with the game as he had never played OoT or MM prior and I wonder if me and others like me had gone in without our past experience if TWW would have been as easy as it was for us. This is all hypothetical as I'm sure there are instances of new to 3D, TWW players have an easy time at it but who knows.
In the end, I do hold the belief that videogames have gotten overall easier in reality and perception. But how much is hard to say since one person's breeze could very well be another person's stiff wind. Some of it may be due to the fact that developers are better at designing game now than they were in the NES era or it may be that they either underestimate us or want to keep gamers happy so they will continue to buy their games. Hopefully designers will strive for that balance that makes a game a challenge but not a practice in frustration.
