Difficulty in video games. Reply.

The Strawman

Your article is a long condescending strawman argument towards dedicated players and/or people who merely have a minimal understanding of how a learning process takes place in video games and its focus on something as obvious as reward. Regardless of being game developers or not. We may use a different terminology, but the concepts are pretty basic.

We already know game difficulties aren't static, but related to the player. Actually much better than you. It's either manipulative or very naive to imply players (namely, players with a minimal knowledge and common sense) interpret difficulty as a rigid property. Even if it's presented in the form of let's make like we talk about what players think about us, game developers, when in reality we mean that your concept of difficulty is wrong.

What's perceived as hard can be perceived as easy after a learning process. Even a child can quickly realize this.

Some activities or problems are commonly perceived as hard by default, because we know how complex is the learning process that they imply. Some are and even remain hard because of our human limits.

But generally, there are thousands of tutorials and analysis of video games ever since pretty much every player had access to internet. We have been noobs, we mastered some video game, and we tried to help others to understand its mechanics and nuances to make the learning process more pleasant/less tedious (if they need it) and improve their performance.

We have explored some games to the point of discovering mechanics that the developers themselves weren't aware of. Which is why testers exist.

Precisely because of such learning process and self-realization video games are fun.

The misconception of many is actually to refer to fun as some static variable in certain games, or even areas/types of exploration of the same game, when it's mostly the final part of a concrete learning process (this includes steps/parts of a wider process of learning/mastering a game). If you didn't learn and progress enough in certain games, it won't feel rewarding. This doesn't meant the vieo game is not fun (inherently).

Individuality

Why some people couldn't learn and progress enough to feel any reward in a concrete video game? In other words, to have fun instead of feeling just stress and frustration without a proportional reward?

To understand why, you have to first interpret our design. As I have said many times, human beings psychobiologically tend to prefer quick and easy rewards than long-time and more complex ones. Our design evolved in a very different context, where saving energy and a conservative balance between curiosity, exploration, predisposition to invest effort in an activity and tolerance to stress, frustration were more crucial.

Learning implies an enormous investment, and by that time we didn't have a pretty much guaranteed roof over our heads and 3 meals/day (obviously I refer to people who can even afford video games in developed countries; there are sadly still many people who don't enjoy such conditions).

Obviously we couldn't evolve genetically as quickly as technology and civilization did (and still do), which is why people tend to prefer 500 memes than 1 elaborated text, even if they could perfectly afford the investment in terms of energy and sources (attention, cognitive abilities, activation of the sympathetic nervous system and arousal, etc.).

However, our design is at the same time very flexible, and with proper education, experience and stimuli, some people will prefer to read the long elaborated text instead of the 500 memes.

The analogy is far from being perfectly accurate, but this can be applied to video games.

Some games have such a focus/challenge system, that they can either integrate different difficulties or they offer a quick-reward analogous to the memes.

Others, however, are designed in a different way, at the very least from developers' perspective and intentions. The type of learning process shouldn't be more flexible because of how their system of reward is designed and pre-established.

But what about people with a different basal experience?

Person A may have more experience than person B when starting to play the same game. Thus, for A it may be a natural learning process, were frustration is minimal, and the final experience is fun/rewarding; but for B it's maybe not rewarding quickly enough or... perhaps B is even stuck at some sub-step of the whole learning process because he/she lacks the minimal knowledge/observational skills from experience, to understand, for example, some implicit mechanic.

This is true. And I won't even talk much about person C, who may have so much experience and knowledge, that the reward is lacking precisely because of previous experiences and pattern recognition.

Going back to person B... There are plenty of people who don't understand why DMC4/SE have such a lock-on system where the player is mostly holding L1, or why there isn't a dedicated dodge button. And this is even a game with different difficulty-modes. Not understanding the reason of such mechanics can lead to frustration without reward.

However:

1) This is what tutorials, veteran players willing to help, etc., are for. There are of course toxic veteran players (sometimes not even veteran or very experienced themselves), but one only needs to take a look at YT tutorials about DMC, Ninja Gaiden, Fighting Games and what not to see how cooperative communities are.

2) There are plenty of quick-reward games as alternatives for people who don't want to make the necessary steps, who play games to relax, etc.

The difference in terms of basal experience between A and B being significant doesn't justify the implementation of easier difficulty-modes.

Habituation and Evolution of Video Games

Since I have talked about habituation sevaral times in other replies of this blog, I can pretty much copy-paste certain parts.

Habituation is defined in psychology as the minimization of the response under exposure of the same or similar stimuli. This is a very basic definition of the learning/adaptive process of habituation, present even in non-human animals. However, since it interacts with the rest of our design, it becomes much more relevant in our lives than what many could suppose from a first glance when reading this oversimplification.

Without digging too much into it though, what's important for this context is to understand that:

The simpler and more unoriginal are the stimuli and challenges, the sooner habituation will influence the players. Which is why there is a dominance of a fast-food cycle in music, movies, games in a capitalistic context, while products/pieces/games with higher complexity (related to the default difficulty to interpret/assimilate/play them) are relegated to a category like niche. This is why most games barely have any meaningful replayability. And it's not even planned per se; it's an indirect consequence of the system and our design.

Quick reward, but quick habituation -> I need a new game/song/movie faster.

What about Evolution... In video games it still takes place despite the fast-food tendency precisely because even people who are used to quick-but-shallow-reward need some changes/new features. Boredom has an important role in our design, and even the 500 memes become less and less funny. To the point even the majority needs more sophisticated ones or they end up scrolling through them without barely reacting like zombies (simply because it's less boring than doing nothing).

The new products may be similar and mediocre, but with at least something new.

Some people think that there is actually a regression, and not evolution, because even the niche games suffer from certain oversimplifications to appeal to the majority (who are used to the quicker reward).

It can be the case of DMC5, making aerial combat much more lenient, thanks to manipulating its physics. But at the same time, it still integrated new features that are clearly upgrades.

It's not that there isn't any evolution. It's about how intricate and contradictory evolution may seem in the mentioned capitalistic context interacting with our design.

Evolution in video games takes place, but it's far from linear.

But, in the end, what's the role of difficulty-modes in all this?

Not only is a bad a idea to suggest Very Easy Modes as the norm for Evolution. It's harmful. Precisely because of the described tendencies, the learning process and preference for the quick-reward, Very Easy Modes have a terrible educational impact.

It's not Very Easy Modes or Easy Modes what games need (which obviously also implies an investment to balance and tweak additional modes). It's in-game information to ease the learning process for those who have a lower basal experience, links to already recognized and high-quality tutorials, etc.

Souls Games have brief and simple in-game tutorials that should be enough for the 99 % of people. If someone still struggles, then maybe play first other more lenient games to get a basic experience and abilities to read enemy's AI and timings to dodge or parry. (I know the article I am replying to isn't suggesting additional difficulty-modes particularly for Souls Games).

Much more complex games like DMC4/SE, however, would benefit a lot from explanations about mechanics such as Jump Cancel.

Very Easy Modes only educate and lead people into thinking that it must be the game what needs to be adapted to them, and not the other way around. It's not beneficial even for the people who are asking for it, despite not being conscious about the how/why.

What about Disabled People though?

In this case it's not about being stuck in one of the steps of the progression/learning process, but an inherent impediment. True.

However, disabilities themselves are so diverse and complex, that it's next to absurd to consider that Very Easy Modes would benefit them all.

I would rather suggest to make video games entirely oriented to people with concrete types of disabilities and develop different types of controllers or devices. Additionally, people are already selective and know which games are for them, and which aren't (or at least the ones I know personally), and if they want to play them despite their handicap or not.

Conclusion

No. We don't talk about difficulty all wrong.

It's you who try to twist the narrative of people who are against features like Very Easy Modes, not understanding that we don't like at all the direction the industry could take because of them/the demand for them.

Most games are very easy modes themselves, and the last thing you should do is alter the core of even more games, handicapping the already non-linear and convoluted evolution of video games.

No, it's not the same but more cinematic. It's something that affects the learning process itself devaluing it. It makes it less meaningful. We already have cinemas for cinematic experiences, and progression in games takes place when one adapts to the game, not when the game adapts to you.