If you consider interaction a core component of a game, affecting all other aspects of the "experience", then reducing that interaction, and level of awareness, time, practice, etc that builds into the experience clearly alters the experience.
Consider the extreme -- play through any given game with a mario super star.. it's difficult to imagine the game experience isn't radically changed.
These kinds of defenses for "easy" modes (that is, easier than the game was designed for) seem to be fundamentally based on the idea that an optimal game is simply a movie with some (perhaps optional) QTE's to keep you from getting bored. But they're not. Clearly not all games get any benefit out of increasing difficulty (most game's difficulty increase amounts to turning everything into bullet sponges -- this rarely alters the experience in any notable fashion), but that hardly means difficulty has no purpose or place.
An easy mode might not ruin the game.. but it may be a worthless mode to have, and one that ruins the player's experience. The souls series would be generally uninteresting if you weren't pushed towards playing careful and meticulously. The DMC series would be generally uninteresting if you weren't pushed towards better and faster (and more stylish) combo'ing. Shadow of the Colossus, BioShock would have absolutely no impact/weight (incidentally, an easy mode has been added I guess to latest remasters). Super Meat Boy wouldn't even be a game anymore.
Imagine never experiencing 100 to 0 pikmin loss! Without that threat, is it even the same class of game?
If you couldn't play them properly, it would probably be a waste of time. Their stories aren't that interesting. They ain't books.
Of course, for many games it doesn't matter. Uncharted series really is just a movie with some QTE events (and QTE events in the fashion of a cover shooter), and difficulty isn't a factor. CRPGs/JRPGs generally have such uninteresting encounters that you could rip out most of the non-roleplaying combat mechanics and still have much the same thing (but you lose that sweet, sweet timesink).
Mass Effect 1 and Star Control 2 barely justify the existence of combat in the first place (reduce the fuel needs in SC2 and you'll radically change its early game however, probably much worse). They can be made easy... but it hardly applies generally. And these are all examples where they can be made easier, because they failed to make any use of their difficulty in the first place.
I’m of the opinion that these are somewhat pathetic reasons to maintain any kind of design; let them be there, but they’re pretty minor. It’s not even clear they’re emotions worth keeping around.
Anyways, take it away from them, and they’ll just find something else to latch their identity to (eg speedrun). Or find it elsewhere. Not a big loss. A small group (actually by definition), a shallow reason, a weak design motivator.
Games are designed, with a particular experience, setting, balance, pacing in mind; if difficulty is part of that design.. then its a part of the design. That’s it.
Caveat:
Not all game features are actually part of a design.
Not all games have an intelligible design in the first place.
I really don't understand the drive to make everything easier. I've never beaten a *souls game because I don't have the skill or patience to do so, and I'm fine with accepting that. Why can't everyone else?
I do wonder if the trend towards casual and mobile gaming has stunted a generation of gamers into being unable to cope when a real challenge of skill or wit appears.
Why lock away content that someone purchased just because they aren't talented enough to beat your arbitrary tests? If you wanna play normal mode just do that, I don't see why options are ever a bad thing.
Completing a sudoku on software which gives instant correct/incorrect feedback on digits isn't as fun as puzzling it out together. Part of the fun of sudoku is going through the mechanics, fairly.
I've heard the Souls/Bourne games described as "tough but fair".
For some games, the idea is that the fun comes from beating challenges from the design of the game mechanics.
Similarly, there's fun to be had from Role Playing Games by not having magical foreknowledge about consequences. Saving, and loading to see how each choice plays out means the dynamic is "how can I get the best?" rather than "what would this person do?".
> Saving, and loading to see how each choice plays out means the dynamic is "how can I get the best?" rather than "what would this person do?".
I agree this changes the dynamic of a game. On the other hand, is it a bad thing? If someone is more interested in "getting the best" rather than finding out "what would this person do", then why should they be denied such freedom?
>Completing a sudoku on software which gives instant correct/incorrect feedback on digits isn't as fun as puzzling it out together. Part of the fun of sudoku is going through the mechanics, fairly.
That is entirely your subjective opinion. I would likely still have fun playing sudoku where my guesses had instant feedback
OK you've given me some opinions about why you personally wouldn't use easy mode. What if someone else wants to? Why can't you just push the down arrow and go to normal mode and let the people who want easy mode have an option? Why the gatekeeping?
1) As mentioned in other comments, it would result in significant work to add an easy mode, and the testing required to ensure the game is still balanced on easy would cost (hourly wage of a tester * 40 hours or however long it takes to beat the game * however many test playthroughs to get reasonable coverage) - you could easily get to six figures in cost to add the easy mode.
2) The artistic vision of the games is to be difficult. Why should the developers compromise that for people who are explicitly not in their target audience anyway?
3) As the article says, beating one of these games is somewhat of an exclusive club - difficulty gatekeeping is necessary to preserve that.
I haven't yet seen a valid argument for adding easy mode - they all are based around the assumption that easy should be there, and has been taken away.
I don't buy disability as a reason to add it, considering a quadriplegic man has beaten Sekiro, and the other arguments I've seen are things like "I don't have the time anymore to beat games on full difficulty" which I don't find compelling - the market is full of titles which cater for that.
You're saying this like someone's holding the game company at gunpoint and demanding an easy mode. This has always only been about it being ok for a dev to add it if they want. Why are you fighting their choice to do that?
And... You don't think disability is a valid reason to add an easy mode? I hope you see some of the raw shit life has to offer then because that's a message that can only come from a place of very privileged contempt.
>This has always only been about it being ok for a dev to add it if they want. Why are you fighting their choice to do that?
The software companies can do whatever they want. I'm defending From Software's choice not to add an easy mode, despite pressure from individuals and gaming media to do so.
>You don't think disability is a valid reason to add an easy mode?
In this specific case (Sekiro, as per the article), if the game is able to be completed on standard difficulty by someone who is quadriplegic then clearly the difficulty is fine. I have no problem with disability related changes such as colour-blindness accommodations that do not change the difficulty of the game.
You can't climb Everest if you are disabled also. So what? Should that mountain be flattened to accommodate everyone.
From software games are hard and it's not like they cheated someone into buying the game, who is not in the target audience.
Disability options that don't affect the design vision are not a problem. But the developer should have the option to choose their market and audience.
You don't need to spend years gaming to beat a game. Gaming skill doesn't work like that. You practice the specific game you want to play. Spend a few hours and voila, you learn. It's literally that simple.
The problem is that games journalists don't want to play games. They want to get paid to write, and they were only able to get a job writing about video games. That's literally the only reason this is a topic. That and the fact that journalists as an industry have sussed out ways to increase monetization, and one such way that is particularly effective is the "rage bait" method, whereby you infuriate, or "nerd snipe" a particular demographic that feels invested in defending something to the point of sharing the thing they feel is attacking them.
What do you define as "content"? Given the position you're taking,I take it you don't consider game mechanics, difficulty, and the satisfaction of overcoming a challenge as "content"?
If you want a book, then buy a book. If you want a movie, then watch a movie. If you want to overcome a challenge, then accept that failure is a possibility and thus won't be allowed to enjoy the reward. Failure in these games is accepting specifically because the downside doesn't affect us in a meaningful way. We won't get hurt. We won't lose money. The failure itself is part of the game.
For example, Metal Slug 3. My steam stats show I used to play it for 100+ hours. Before they added easy mode via infinite continues, I was really enjoying the game. I had to learn how every enemy behaves, where the powerups would drop and plan strategies to beat bosses. Every day I would get a couple steps further into the game and I could have played it for years. There's a great satisfaction and getting better at something and seeing the results.
Then the change came and I completed the game in one afternoon. I didn't care about all the cool enemy setups on later levels, because I could just bomb them, die when I ran out of bombs and then bomb them again after I revive. There was no real challenge.
I never turned that game on after that. Easy mode has ruined it for me.
I'm not sure I follow.
I'm assuming the easy mode is something you have to explicitly select or at least have to the option to change to and from.
Could you not have simply ignored the option of the easy mode and continued playing the way you had done before?
That is not a given. Plenty of people ignore easy modes by choice, either because they prefer harder games, or because they sneer at the "plebs" playing "their" games
The thing is, once the option showed up, I turned it on once to try it. A couple hours later and I beat the whole game. At that moment, I didn't even know the game was ruined for me. It felt nice being able to see all the levels and content.
But a couple days later, when I thought about turning it on, I figured there's no point because I have seen it all.
It's so easy to fall into the trap of playing easy mode.
I wonder if part of the problem is the attitude that games are there to be "beaten". That the aim is to beat it, and then you're done.
If games were seen as something to be played and explored rather than beaten, perhaps people would approach them differently and get a lot more out of them, even if they'd already completed a playthrough.
I read an opinion piece[0] recently that suggested one of the (many) reasons that No Man's Sky was so poorly received at launch was due to the fact games have commonly been boiled down to constant action and "gotta beat the game" mentality, and that players don't know how to just explore and enjoy games as an open-ended single player experience.
As someone who plays almost exclusively single player games across a vast numbers of genres, I enjoyed No Man's Sky's "exploring and discovering the unknown" game play at launch and have ever since, as they add more and more content.
I’m pretty sure the bigger issue was that it was a very weak simulation, with relatively little interaction. Exploring a simulation/procedural generation is not about getting to view the infinite permutations that randomness gives us — it’s to explore the rules that create the simulation, and then to manipulate those rules.
The reason sim city and dwarf fortress are intersting, and NMS and Spore were not, is because the simulation is sufficiently expanded as to be worth manipulating (while of course not being so expanded to hinder understanding your manipulations; this is the craft); whereas NMS and Spore had very trivial rules: they didn’t really have any. Which is also why when Dwarf Fortress breaks down, its interesting, while in NMS, it’s pathetic.
Note that I’m only referring to NMS on release; though I doubt the simulation has been developed since (I’d bet that the game has since gotten prettier worlds, but not more interesting ones)
Tldr; it was poor simulation/generation game, regardless of whether the current market has ADD
We're talking Metal Slug here. It's completely linear game. Once you complete it, you have seen it all.
Well, there are 2 branching paths you can take on some levels, so you should play the game twice to see it all. But that is it, once you played it twice, there's nothing new to see or explore.
> But a couple days later, when I thought about turning it on, I figured there's no point because I have seen it all.
I just had the same experience with Pathfinder Kingmaker, but came away with the opposite sentiment.
I am super glad to have an easy mode. I don't want to waste more time than I already do playing video games. I want to see what narratives and mechanics they have to offer, not reload the same level for 20 hours.
Cheat Engine exists and it's a valid way of "correcting" the difficulty in games. I enjoyed Resident Evil 2 hardcore difficulty but I found the saving limitations weren't up to my tastes so I removed them.
To me, it really depends on the kind of game, and why I'm playing it. Some games really are about the challenge. They're meant to be hard, because the game is the challenge. Remove the challenge, and there's no game.
Other games are about the content, the story, and the challenge is preventing you from accessing it.
For example, I play The Witcher on easy mode, but strategy games on hard. I've used save-scumming with some roguelikes, and that tends to ruin them a bit. It's a core feature of roguelikes that you're not supposed to play like that. I'm currently playing CK2 on Iron Man mode (no reloading old saves), which means I'm forced to stick with bad decisions and bad luck, and that makes the game different than I planned, but a lot more interesting; I'm no longer automatically the most successful ruler in the world.
Although in the case of CK2, it does add value that I can also play without Iron Man mode; it allows me to explore alternative histories where I'm more successful than I deserve. But should a game like Pac-Man have an easy mode to allow everybody to finish all levels? I don't think so.
Oh come on. I have only played Dark Souls 1 but it's not even a particularly difficult game. Just look up guides and summon and you can breeze through it.
There's a certain amount of "artistic vision" to a game like Dark Souls and I see no need to compromise that to pander to people not willing to put the effort in (and make no mistake, effort is the only factor at play here). The difficulty is part of the game; if you don't like it, you just don't like the game. Don't play it, don't demand it to pander to you.
The entire movie/captioning analogy is off. Language spoken in movies isn't meant to be adversarial but gameplay is. It's just not an accessibility issue. I hate this argument because it feels manipulative. If it's about accessibility and if you still say no, you're a monster.
Game authors are welcome to do as they please, of course. But as someone who both likes video games and is quite bad at them, I've pretty much stopped buying them. Oh well...
They say the customer is always right. In game dev users will ask for extra lives and powerful starting items in a multiplayer rougelikelike.
I don't think it can always be as simple as giving them everything. Users should be catered to and given the best support, but at a certain point the developer knows best.
The biggest players aren't always the most vocal. It is better to observe how the fanatics are playing and help the newbies grow into that level of game play.
I find that every few weeks a new game that is going to require an entire year of my life comes out. I have carved out about 1 hour 2-3 days a weeknight in which to play and every few weeks I get a Saturday or Sunday. I like to have the option of easy mode during the week and normal mode at the weekends - easy mode gives me the advantage of not spending 50% of my playing time remembering how to play!
Games should be accessible to all and you should never be made to feel less of a gamer because you changed the difficulty setting.
Yes, it does. If you have to play a long time before any meaningful challenge appears, this makes the game not fun to play. People loved Flappy Bird because it was so hard to avoid dying. Imagine Flappy Bird Easy Mode. Nobody would play that.
Easy mode doesnt ruin a game. Lack of options does. E.g. GTA is easy mode and you can't even change it. And e.g. Max payne 3 has difficulty settings but even on hard it's still easy.
42 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 96.3 ms ] threadConsider the extreme -- play through any given game with a mario super star.. it's difficult to imagine the game experience isn't radically changed.
These kinds of defenses for "easy" modes (that is, easier than the game was designed for) seem to be fundamentally based on the idea that an optimal game is simply a movie with some (perhaps optional) QTE's to keep you from getting bored. But they're not. Clearly not all games get any benefit out of increasing difficulty (most game's difficulty increase amounts to turning everything into bullet sponges -- this rarely alters the experience in any notable fashion), but that hardly means difficulty has no purpose or place.
An easy mode might not ruin the game.. but it may be a worthless mode to have, and one that ruins the player's experience. The souls series would be generally uninteresting if you weren't pushed towards playing careful and meticulously. The DMC series would be generally uninteresting if you weren't pushed towards better and faster (and more stylish) combo'ing. Shadow of the Colossus, BioShock would have absolutely no impact/weight (incidentally, an easy mode has been added I guess to latest remasters). Super Meat Boy wouldn't even be a game anymore.
Imagine never experiencing 100 to 0 pikmin loss! Without that threat, is it even the same class of game?
If you couldn't play them properly, it would probably be a waste of time. Their stories aren't that interesting. They ain't books.
Of course, for many games it doesn't matter. Uncharted series really is just a movie with some QTE events (and QTE events in the fashion of a cover shooter), and difficulty isn't a factor. CRPGs/JRPGs generally have such uninteresting encounters that you could rip out most of the non-roleplaying combat mechanics and still have much the same thing (but you lose that sweet, sweet timesink).
Mass Effect 1 and Star Control 2 barely justify the existence of combat in the first place (reduce the fuel needs in SC2 and you'll radically change its early game however, probably much worse). They can be made easy... but it hardly applies generally. And these are all examples where they can be made easier, because they failed to make any use of their difficulty in the first place.
Also there is satisfaction in knowing you beat something that not everyone who bought the game has.
Anyways, take it away from them, and they’ll just find something else to latch their identity to (eg speedrun). Or find it elsewhere. Not a big loss. A small group (actually by definition), a shallow reason, a weak design motivator.
Games are designed, with a particular experience, setting, balance, pacing in mind; if difficulty is part of that design.. then its a part of the design. That’s it.
Caveat:
Not all game features are actually part of a design.
Not all games have an intelligible design in the first place.
I do wonder if the trend towards casual and mobile gaming has stunted a generation of gamers into being unable to cope when a real challenge of skill or wit appears.
I've heard the Souls/Bourne games described as "tough but fair". For some games, the idea is that the fun comes from beating challenges from the design of the game mechanics.
Similarly, there's fun to be had from Role Playing Games by not having magical foreknowledge about consequences. Saving, and loading to see how each choice plays out means the dynamic is "how can I get the best?" rather than "what would this person do?".
I agree this changes the dynamic of a game. On the other hand, is it a bad thing? If someone is more interested in "getting the best" rather than finding out "what would this person do", then why should they be denied such freedom?
That is entirely your subjective opinion. I would likely still have fun playing sudoku where my guesses had instant feedback
2) The artistic vision of the games is to be difficult. Why should the developers compromise that for people who are explicitly not in their target audience anyway?
3) As the article says, beating one of these games is somewhat of an exclusive club - difficulty gatekeeping is necessary to preserve that.
I haven't yet seen a valid argument for adding easy mode - they all are based around the assumption that easy should be there, and has been taken away.
I don't buy disability as a reason to add it, considering a quadriplegic man has beaten Sekiro, and the other arguments I've seen are things like "I don't have the time anymore to beat games on full difficulty" which I don't find compelling - the market is full of titles which cater for that.
And... You don't think disability is a valid reason to add an easy mode? I hope you see some of the raw shit life has to offer then because that's a message that can only come from a place of very privileged contempt.
The software companies can do whatever they want. I'm defending From Software's choice not to add an easy mode, despite pressure from individuals and gaming media to do so.
>You don't think disability is a valid reason to add an easy mode?
In this specific case (Sekiro, as per the article), if the game is able to be completed on standard difficulty by someone who is quadriplegic then clearly the difficulty is fine. I have no problem with disability related changes such as colour-blindness accommodations that do not change the difficulty of the game.
From software games are hard and it's not like they cheated someone into buying the game, who is not in the target audience.
Disability options that don't affect the design vision are not a problem. But the developer should have the option to choose their market and audience.
The problem is that games journalists don't want to play games. They want to get paid to write, and they were only able to get a job writing about video games. That's literally the only reason this is a topic. That and the fact that journalists as an industry have sussed out ways to increase monetization, and one such way that is particularly effective is the "rage bait" method, whereby you infuriate, or "nerd snipe" a particular demographic that feels invested in defending something to the point of sharing the thing they feel is attacking them.
If you want a book, then buy a book. If you want a movie, then watch a movie. If you want to overcome a challenge, then accept that failure is a possibility and thus won't be allowed to enjoy the reward. Failure in these games is accepting specifically because the downside doesn't affect us in a meaningful way. We won't get hurt. We won't lose money. The failure itself is part of the game.
For example, Metal Slug 3. My steam stats show I used to play it for 100+ hours. Before they added easy mode via infinite continues, I was really enjoying the game. I had to learn how every enemy behaves, where the powerups would drop and plan strategies to beat bosses. Every day I would get a couple steps further into the game and I could have played it for years. There's a great satisfaction and getting better at something and seeing the results.
Then the change came and I completed the game in one afternoon. I didn't care about all the cool enemy setups on later levels, because I could just bomb them, die when I ran out of bombs and then bomb them again after I revive. There was no real challenge.
I never turned that game on after that. Easy mode has ruined it for me.
The thing is, once the option showed up, I turned it on once to try it. A couple hours later and I beat the whole game. At that moment, I didn't even know the game was ruined for me. It felt nice being able to see all the levels and content.
But a couple days later, when I thought about turning it on, I figured there's no point because I have seen it all.
It's so easy to fall into the trap of playing easy mode.
If games were seen as something to be played and explored rather than beaten, perhaps people would approach them differently and get a lot more out of them, even if they'd already completed a playthrough.
As someone who plays almost exclusively single player games across a vast numbers of genres, I enjoyed No Man's Sky's "exploring and discovering the unknown" game play at launch and have ever since, as they add more and more content.
0: http://www.thegeeklygrind.com/opinion-no-mans-sky-doesnt-mul...
The reason sim city and dwarf fortress are intersting, and NMS and Spore were not, is because the simulation is sufficiently expanded as to be worth manipulating (while of course not being so expanded to hinder understanding your manipulations; this is the craft); whereas NMS and Spore had very trivial rules: they didn’t really have any. Which is also why when Dwarf Fortress breaks down, its interesting, while in NMS, it’s pathetic.
Note that I’m only referring to NMS on release; though I doubt the simulation has been developed since (I’d bet that the game has since gotten prettier worlds, but not more interesting ones)
Tldr; it was poor simulation/generation game, regardless of whether the current market has ADD
Well, there are 2 branching paths you can take on some levels, so you should play the game twice to see it all. But that is it, once you played it twice, there's nothing new to see or explore.
I just had the same experience with Pathfinder Kingmaker, but came away with the opposite sentiment.
I am super glad to have an easy mode. I don't want to waste more time than I already do playing video games. I want to see what narratives and mechanics they have to offer, not reload the same level for 20 hours.
Other games are about the content, the story, and the challenge is preventing you from accessing it.
For example, I play The Witcher on easy mode, but strategy games on hard. I've used save-scumming with some roguelikes, and that tends to ruin them a bit. It's a core feature of roguelikes that you're not supposed to play like that. I'm currently playing CK2 on Iron Man mode (no reloading old saves), which means I'm forced to stick with bad decisions and bad luck, and that makes the game different than I planned, but a lot more interesting; I'm no longer automatically the most successful ruler in the world.
Although in the case of CK2, it does add value that I can also play without Iron Man mode; it allows me to explore alternative histories where I'm more successful than I deserve. But should a game like Pac-Man have an easy mode to allow everybody to finish all levels? I don't think so.
There's a certain amount of "artistic vision" to a game like Dark Souls and I see no need to compromise that to pander to people not willing to put the effort in (and make no mistake, effort is the only factor at play here). The difficulty is part of the game; if you don't like it, you just don't like the game. Don't play it, don't demand it to pander to you.
Then I changed the difficulty to the highest setting and it was much more interesting. I had to plan everything and take a lot of care to not to die.
In contrast, Alien Isolation is an unforgiving frustrating game in most difficulties. I hope it gets better on a second playthrough.
I don't think it can always be as simple as giving them everything. Users should be catered to and given the best support, but at a certain point the developer knows best.
The biggest players aren't always the most vocal. It is better to observe how the fanatics are playing and help the newbies grow into that level of game play.
Games should be accessible to all and you should never be made to feel less of a gamer because you changed the difficulty setting.