Difficulty in Games

I love playing games, and that is evident to anyone who knows me. So, today we are gonna go over a core concept attached to games: difficulty.

Games, like other art forms, have a huge amount of subjectivity attached to them. Every player is different, and in the end, prefer/want to have a different experience with whatever game they are playing. Traditionally, games were very hard. If you look back to the NES era, every game is obscenely difficult, so difficult that it makes Dark Souls look like a game made for infants. Mind you, this difficulty was not arbitrary, it was deliberately made to be hard because, back then, harder games = more time spent playing the game, and also an 8 KB cartridge can only hold so much content. Even though I look back at a lot of titles from that time with a lot of fondness and appreciation, in reality, it may be my nostalgia glasses and I wouldn't be able to beat a single level of Contra if I tried today. 

Now that we have established how games used to be back then, let's talk about the modern experience.

These days, gaming is more accessible than ever and that's an amazing thing. We are not bound to linear structuring or 8bit graphics on an 8 KB cartridge anymore, and hence we have some amazingly complex narrative masterpieces in the form of games. Now despite our marvels in narration, a player has to still PLAY the game (I know, right? Crazy.), and that's where difficulty matters the most.

It's an obvious thing that if you make a game too easy, it's no longer a challenge and the story needs to be astronomical levels good to make an enjoyable experience, and if you make a game too difficult, it just becomes annoying.

But, in my opinion, a game has to strike the perfect balance so that the game "earns" its difficulty and also the difficulty complements its overarching narrative, as opposed to "it should be balanced between too easy and too hard". Let me explain what I mean with examples.

Let's look at the good side first. The most common game often cited amongst modern gamers for the difficulty is Dark Souls. And, undoubtedly, it is indeed a very tough game. But, it's a game that earns its difficulty through both its narrative, and gameplay. Firstly, we are in Lordran, a gloomy place that has been long abandoned, and we play as a cursed undead, so you can say narrative-wise the difficulty makes sense. Secondly and more importantly, it's earned by its gameplay. You never die because the game decided to use a RNG to fill every path up with holes that instakill you, or any other unfair means. The game is fairly calculated and has relevant cues for just about everything in the game. So, it becomes more of if you do die, it's likely your own fault, and there probably is a strategy/move that could've avoided that. It's fair, it's earned, and it rewards players for being attentive and persistent. This is the right type of "difficult" game. We can look at another example of Celeste. Celeste is a fairly challenging game, which also beautifully aligns with the overarching theme of "overcoming challenges", and the gameplay is also fluent/responsive so every encounter feels well deserved, and the outcome is fairly in the player's hand.

Now, while that is difficulty being well "earned", there are games that are difficult and unfair just for the sake of being so. A lot of these games get annoying very soon and end up being not a fun experience. The difference between both of the sides can be fairly indiscernable, especially when you're in the middle of trying to cross something 60 times in a row, but whenever you take a moment to breath and observe, the difference should be obvious.

That's my take on difficulty. 

Here's a cute Celeste picture for having read through all that: