Difficulty in Gaming (Consumerism Version)
As of now there seems to be an issue as regards to how difficult games are “allowed” to be. I’ll go into detail.
Whenever someone purchases a game, the majority of the time they want two things out of their gaming experience. First, they want access to all the content of the game. Second, they want some sort of satisfaction, whether it be through power fantasy fulfillment or some form of in-game victory. Sometimes, rarely, games can engender the same feeling as when one finishes a particularly good book, or play, or any other medium, of just putting it down and reeling in shock at how fantastic the whole thing was.
In order to have a good game, the game has to be difficult, to some degree. Think about it, if games can be viewed as a simulation of life, is life rewarding at all without challenges? Isn’t it easy to slip into routine at a job or school and never come back? Is that “fun”? Hell no. And if you think it is, I might suggest a re-evaluation of your core values. So why should games be any different? Grinding in something like World of Warcraft, or filling out endless match-3 combinations are fairly easy to do, but they’re not fun or rewarding. In fact, that’s why often gamers will impose false restrictions or goals, simply to make their game more interesting. Things like console achievements or specific runs, like the permadeath runs of Far Cry 2, are examples. These are choices that players will impose upon themselves, willingly, to improve their gaming experience.
It is when that same difficulty is brought into the main game, as a vision of the developer, that the problem starts. Most developers try to ease players into the game with difficulty curves and tutorials and what have you. (Hopefully it’s not necessary, but that’s a Zen that requires something on par with Super Mario Bros.) But some gamers can’t cope. The game is too difficult for them to finish, no matter how hard they try. The old-school mentality tells them to suck it up and keep going until they’re good enough. Nowadays, developers pander to the gamer by giving them difficulty settings and things like grinding, wherein a player literally must eventually be good enough to beat any challenge. This cheapens the entire experience of gaming. Where is the glory of beating Halo, when anyone can do it? Why bother prestiging in Call of Duty, when eventually anyone can? The alternative is that not everyone will be able to complete all their games in totality. As consumers, gamers cry about this all the time. And it is an understandable complaint. 60 dollars is a lot to spend simply on a couple hours of gameplay. Free games get an excuse from the complaint about money, but that still does not address the problem that the industry has as a whole. Perhaps pricing should be dropped in any case.
All the same, there has to be a line. It’s simply not possible to create a meaningful experience (When I say meaningful, I mean either A: imparting value to the player, or B: creating a fun experience) if you start the player with an hour of holding their hand. Who enjoys tutorials? They fuck up the flow of the game and treat the gamer like they’re a child. That’s no fucking fun.
I’m not really sure how to deal with this problem. Perhaps lowering game prices and decreasing development time on things like tutorials and difficulty settings? I’m not sure. Blegh.
Additional Articles: The developer of Hydorah (I’ll talk about Hydorah later.) speaks about his reasoning in developing a hard-core extremely difficult, free shoot-em-up game. http://www.locomalito.com/filosofia.php
