Games Are Too Hard or Games Are Too Easy

[ECM]

In what is a surely vein (but Herculean) effort, ECM decides to start a topic about game difficulty or the general lack thereof. He wants to believe that everyone will participate because this is an issue that touches us all in some profound way, unlike the Games Are Art thread which apparently only touched me and Zig (in a purely non-sexual manner). So let's have at it, shall we?

My contention: games are way too easy these days, beatable, in most cases, in one sitting without resorting to continues or even old school power-leveling. Why this is is, in some respects, a mystery.

I say this because, as a game publisher (*not* developer) you'd think they'd want people mired in a game for as long as possible so they don't sell it back used until the bloom is off the rose and they're getting peanuts in trade-in value[footnote:1]Used games being akin to offering succor to Beelzebub, Governor of the Sixth Level of Hell.[/footnote] or the old school trick of making it so hard that it isn't completable in a the timespan of a rental[footnote:2]Ever wonder why Contra: Hard Corps was made much, much more difficult for the West? It's because they didn't want you to be able to beat it one sitting and it increased the likelihood, no matter how minutely, that you'd go out and buy the game. That's a true fact.[/footnote].

What makes this extra-strange is that, upon a time, Western games (especially of European vintage[footnote:3]See: everything Psygnosis produced until the PS rolled around, not that their conception of difficulty was well-implemented.[/footnote]) were actually meaningfully difficult. They required precision and a good grasp of the play mechanics to make any headway at all. (I'd list examples, but I'd be here all day.)

Nowadays, though, I'm sure I'm not alone in finding that, more often than not, I'm being very lazy when I play, mindlessly hurling myself at mobs and bosses and, not surprisingly, this is actually enough to make headway in most games. Only when I'm totally bitch-slapped by a boss that a. hits hard enough to cause any real damage to my (usually) overpowered avatar and b. requires memorizing an attack pattern and/or having sufficient reflexes to weather the storm, do I step back and say "fuck, I just got raped." But, after that, I say "well, damn, I guess this game is actually going to be a challenge. Good."

So my question/vague commentary is/are: why do you think game pubs insist on super-easy games? Is it because today's gamers are pussies (they are, but I'm not sure that's causation because there's a chicken-egg thing going on here); is it because they have such tightly-packed release schedules that they want you through their game as quickly as possible (not likely given the vast swaths of time between releases except, perhaps, in the fourth quarter); it it because they want to drain you with DLC that you might otherwise skip if the main game dragged on for too long (ooh, now we might be getting somewhere)?

EDIT:

I guess it wouldn't hurt to ask: what is the hardest game you ever completed? That might help in establishing some sort of baseline for where "hard" is.

I guess it could be any of the above or something else entirely, but let's have it: why do you think they're too easy (if they are--maybe you think they're too hard...pussy)? Why do the pubs, more often than not, LOCK OUT the higher difficulty levels until you beat the game once in baby mode, something unheard of back in the day? Let's hear it! Wolverines!

This will, no doubt, trip Smithee's finely-honed "jingoism" detector, but that's the sort of risks we take around here.

[elchevalier]

Having the consumer spending too much time on a single game means they are not buying other games. I don't think pubs like that. Also, nobody cares about single campaigns anymore, is all about multiplayer and gimmicky dlc.

[ECM]

That would make sense BUT it's not like the devs want you buying someone else's game over theirs, so I'm not sure that's a complete answer. (Unless it's some grand plot by the game publishers to do...something! Illuminati! Lizard people! Oh my!)

I mean, if that were the case, then why is it only in the past, oh, ten years that games have become what you might call super mega easy (this certainly was not the case as reccent as the PSOne/Saturn/Dreamcast when games still offered a reasonable challenge)? If it was merely an issue of getting you through games to buy more of (anyone's) games, then surely the accountants would have hit on this decades ago?

I also entertained the idea that they were trying to broaden the audience by making them much easier but, again, that would have also made sense years ago and, hell, it isn't working since the guys playing PS360 are the same guys (different generation) that would have bought SNES' and Genesis'. [footnote:1]Overall console growth is flat, when you take into consideration population increases.[/url] .This obviously doesn't apply to Wii or DS but, then, those games are also super easy which tends to make sense in their super-gigantic niches, not so much for the core game crowd.

[elchevalier]

It's certainly helped bywhat you said, making a game challenging (not just cheap) takes time, planification, and with today's studios rushing their games there's no time for that.

As for me, i'm really not that much of a complainer regarding difficulties. It really depends on the game. We also have to remember that "challenge" these days is just waiting for the enemy to peek in the corner so you can peek from your own corner and shot him.

[ECM]

Right, exactly, but that kinda drains my interest in games when wait for it...wait for it...bang, your dead is the pinnacle of sophisticaterd gameplay (hey, I liked Winback as much as the next geek, but do we need entire genres laden with shooting gallery mechanics??)

That said, I guess I should have also asked if people are, generally, A-OK w/ it.

For example, maybe it's good if the difficulty is virtually non-existent if you're playing something like Gears of War (on default) because you're playing it for the, uh, story? (Work w/ me, I know it strains credulity, but I'm kinda stabbing in the dark since I like a challenge.) And maybe, in a shooter, it's bad that it's easy (which, if you're going to continue your way to victory, is pretty moot).

But you guys tell me: do you get different things from different genres and/or is the overall difficulty a non-issue?[footnote:1]I do know a few people that actually think this lack of difficulty is a good thing, but they also aren't what I'd call gamers in any meaningful sense, i.e. they only buy a small handful of games per year, at least one of those being Guitar Hero or Madden or *insert perennial title they can play, locally, w/ their gf/buds*.[/footnote]

And if you do, perhaps, that's what game companies are doing: catering to people that basically want a movie w/ the bare minimum of reflexes and user-input required so they can see the end w/o frustration?

Edit: of course that again begs the question: why not make them easier, sooner?

[AllenSmithee]

A large fault of game design today is that it forgoes an effort to teach the player through having them do things and instead assumes everyone is extra-baby AND explains it all to them.

This limits our chances to utilize mechanics in forms unseen, unless it is done through a fucking cutscene and a series of button presses.

[elchevalier]

I might sound weird, but i'm having a hard time thinking of a game that was so easy that the whole thing was ruined for me. Final Fantasy IX will be the closest thing, the game was too easy and you could finish it way too fast for my taste. In contrast, playing God Hand, a game i really like, in hard mode is an exercise in frustration, the game becomes way too hard. Don't listen to the crazy followers the game has, the game can get very cheap in lv die.

More than anything, these days i look for interesting gameplay mechanics, things that keep me on my toes, and that make the whole experience diverse.

[kog3100edw]

Mostly ECM, I agree with you. I think publishers might be trying to exploit or conform to the sense of entitlement that pervades all levels of society 'these days'. What you are seeing, I believe, is a lowest-common-denominator design that has its analog in the summer blockbuster.

Big budgets, flashy visuals, little sustance, no challenge (in movies little emotional or mental challenge).

However I also do notice that many devs do seem to understand this isn't an ideal development and so they have multiple difficulty levels (complete with blagging on you if you take on the easy ones), or underlying mechanics that reward the skilled player more than someone just mashing their way through. This sort of thing isn't always implemented well but I can appreciate that designers seem to be cognisant of the need still.

And the makers DO need to reach out to gamers of all skill levels because they need the cash to cover that development outlay. I cringe when horror films trim the grim to get a PG-13, but I get that they need/want all the teenage money.

I think the genie is out of the bottle on this one. Since the influx of casual gamers and the entitled, you aren't going to find too many games that just laugh in the face of 'easy'. Bangai-O HD is a monster in places. And there's no pussying your way through an easy mode. So it might take the odd Treasure or Cave or Platinum Games to still put out a strictly difficult piece of work. but it happens.

[kog3100edw]

Oh and 'hardest game ever completed'?

Jeez, that is really a tough one to answer just from sheer volume of games and the number of years this geezer's been playing.

Also I think of difficulty in video games more as moments or levels that gave me trouble. Like 'that one boss' or 'that one level' on the TV Tropes site. Its rare for me to think of a whole game as brutal.

Of games I've recently played, I'd probably say Baroque. But mostly for its inscrutability. Eventually I had to just pussy out and use a guide to figure out what to do. Once I knew what the game wanted it actually wasn't that hard. Literal skill-based difficulty in a recent game is probably the aforementioned Bangai-O HD: Missile Fury. Oh and any goshdamn Cave game. Playing a lot of Akai Katana Shin.

[ECM]

Yeah, I think Baroque (and Roguelikes in general) aren't really the best gauge of difficutly since even the best players can, on occasion, be waylaid by an unforeseen combination of starvation/poisoning/monster floor death.

As for the 'why' of it, yeah, I do expect a certain level of catering to the benighted masses (the 'core' are now the masses....how bizarre) but what I cannot countenance is locking the harder difficulties behind a wall that can only be breached via beating the game once on normal. That drives ECM spittle-flecked crazy and nearly undid Thunder Force VI (as one example) in. (That was saved, for good or ill, by a super-fast completion time, but that isn't something you can say of most 'narrative experiences' today.)

[kog3100edw]

I'm with you.
Not too long ago I played through Vanquish. I don't play that many third-person shooters so I just started an Easy mode game and got about thirty minutes into it before I backed out and restarted on Normal.

I LOVE Vanquish. But I'd have shat a Cadillac (and not in a good way-- sideways) if I'd had to have played through it on Easy first, such was the huge gulf in the challenge.

Conversely Cave shooters tend to be so hard, I welcome Novice modes. But of course they never force you.