Hi, I'm relatively new to this site, programming, and have been designing games for ten years, so I thought I'd create a series of 'gaming philosophy' discussions going (starting with difficulty). How hard should games be standard (to be beaten)? I like a very hard game, but admit that an easy one is very nice too. The problem in my mind comes down to what the game's goal is. A game like Ninja Gaiden (xBox)is meant to be difficult and will very well appease a gamer, but a game like Flow (http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/) has a nice sedative effect. But when we run in to a problem, as I almost mentioned, is the fact that we have almost no relaxing games like Flow. The other issue in a "standard" difficulty in my opinion is if a game is made for experts (like the aforementioned Gaiden) should there be an easier mode for not-so-experts? How hard should game be max? I love a game made for their difficulty, but they also need to be finishable. The problem comes in deciding what is finishable. If you force a game tester to attempt one part of your game for a week, and he or she only just barely at the end of the week gets past it, is your game really finishable? If your game is hard, do you have a greater obligation to fine-tune controls? I've played a lot of games that are hard for all the wrong reasons (like a baseball game where everyone gets really impressed when you hit the ball even once), so I think controls should work great, but even better if your game is hard. So. Ideas? Opinions?

My opinion is, that if it is a game you are selling on the appeal of its story, you owe it to the player to enable them to see the whole story, which usually means the mandatory parts of the game must be easy enough for everyone (within the target audience, not couting toddlers and computer illiterates) to beat. Adjustable or self-adjusting difficulty settings are one way to try to make the game be always beatable without being boringly easy. Another is to make non-mandatory parts more difficult, or make each fight be an unwinnable gauntlet but reward the player for surviving longer.

From what I've studied about psychology and how it applies to games, the answer is the rather obvious one of making the game not so easy the player is not challenged, but not so hard that they give up in frustration. Since not all players are equal in skill level, and everyone will gain in skill as they play, most designers seem to take the route of a gradual difficulty curve of starting the game easy and slowly getting harder. All fairly obvious stuff, I know [grin].

The critical flaw that is the killer is if the difficulty jumps dramatically harder at a point in your game, as that will be a frustration choke point that many players will give up at. Classic examples are the over-tough boss fight in action games, or a puzzle that's just too difficult in adventure games. It's hard to spot these when you are the developer, because you are so close to the game it is hard to know what is difficult or not, which is why playability testing is so important. Giving the player alternative options around an obstacle (multiple solutions, non-linear gameplay etc.) will help a lot here too.

I also agree with the opinion that if you have the choice of making your game too easy or too hard, go for too easy. It's better to have the player finish your game too quickly then to give up. It's also likely you'll think your game is easier than it actually is, because you (literally) know your game inside and out.

Regarding controls: there's no excuse for not fine-tuning your controls. The interface between the player and the game is so critical you need to perfect it, regardless of the difficulty.

As I mentioned in the Metroid Rant thread a ways below, in my opinion one of the best ways to make a "hard" game is to make an "easy" game where the game becomes more challenging if the player can choose to not use something you've given to them. Examples from various genres include not wearing any equipment in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, or never using materia in Final Fantasy VII, or limiting yourself to a pistol in various FPS games, or playing Final Fantasy I with a party of four white mages, and so on. What this means for you as the developer is that everything in the game should be surmountable with very limited abilities on the player's part, so long as they are very skilled. Conversely, the unskilled players would take advantage of every available ability you grant them and still enjoy the game.

I would just like to say that I hate difficulty modes. I am not a great gamer, so I usually pick the easy mode to start with. When you beat the game on easy mode, the sense of accomplishment is diminished because you know you took the easy way out.

Playing on the hard mode is usually so impossible for me that it's really frustrating. It is harder than it really needs to be because players don't have to beat it.

I think that if games are well structured, the game will get harder as you go and there will be no need for the modes. Except in sports games I suppose.

Anyone agree?

Lots of interesting answers. The only one I might have a slight dispute in is Derakon's user-challenges. It's not that I'm completely against the user challenging him/herself, it's that I don't like playing a game under a self-determined condition and having nothing to show for it afterwards. I think that programmers should recognise the possibility of user-defined challenges and reward for such actions.

A great example of that might be Nethack. I don't know if anyone here's ever played, but in Nethack when you die, it gives you several messages for how you did. For example it might say "You were a fervent pacifist," or "You rationed your food very well."

This way even though you challenged yourself beyond the recommended difficulty, you are rewarded and given something to remember it by.

EDIT: Forgot to mention,
Simian Mad: Yes, agreed.
Traper Zoid: Interesting opinion, I guess a lot of designers ignore how smooth the difficulty slope is.
Sunandshadow: Seems true, although I know few games that sell just on their story.

I like difficulty modes. Unlike Simian Man, I tend to play most games on hard, and find games without difficulty modes to generally be far too easy. Most games do need an easy mode so that people of varying skills can play; and I think difficulty modes are the best choice there.

I agree with Splinter, i don't think "player created challenges" are a good part of game design at all. The player created challenges of not using items in Final Fantasy, for example, were not an intended part of the design; the games were just so mindnumbingly easy that skilled RPGers resorted to some crazy things to try and make it seem like a challenging game. However, Sunandshadow hit the nail on the head for the reason the Final Fantasy games are so easy: people buy them not for the gameplay, but for the story, and people want to be able to get all the way through to the end of the game and see all the story without having to worry about overcoming challenges.

I personally despise dynamic adaptable difficulty. I hate the idea of the game dumbing itself down to make it easier on me if I'm doing poorly, and I cry inside every time I hear another designer talk about this system as if it's the holy grail of game development. I can tell when a game is "adapting" to my difficulty, and all that makes me do is want to "game" that part of the system: I quickly figure out that the fastest and easiest way to beat the game is to play really poorly on purpose until the key points where I need to overcome something. This is counterintuitive, and not fun. To me, it's like winning a race and knowing that the other person "let you win". I stopped being amused by that behavior when I was four years old and figured out that's what my parents were doing. I want to overcome challenges, not have challenges lie down and let me walk over them if they start to assume I'm not doing well. I also like to become better at games. There is no incentive, and sometimes no actual way, to become better at games with adaptable difficulty, because they constantly keep making themselves easier to the point where you assume you're good at the game, when actually you are not.

Finally, I somewhat disagree from the idea that you have to make a game easy enough for most people to beat and avoid any difficult spots in the main path. I'd wager there are just as many, if not more, games where players stop playing halfway through due to the tedium of too-easy gameplay than there are those that players give up on for hitting a difficult spot. I don't think designers are under an obligation to ensure that every possible player can get all the way through to the end of their game. The worst you have to worry about is word getting out that your game is too hard. This will possibly hurt sales, but it just might also attract jaded and/or experienced gamers who are sick of the current trend of overly easy games, and would like an actual challenge. The best way, in my opinion, is to have difficulty modes to cater to all skill levels.

I'd like to take a moment to defend the "player-created challenges" idea. What's wrong with people intentionally denying themselves some part of the game to make the game harder? Is it a bad thing that people can choose to play The Legend of Zelda without picking up any heart containers? Does that detract from the depth of the game somehow? Health, armor, and ammo expansions, new weapons, special abilities, and experience points all are often helpful but rarely required to finish games. Should they be required? Why? I'm not saying that you should depend on player challenges to create "difficulty levels", but there's little reason to make them impossible. I'm basically just saying that you should consider having helpful but non-essential things in your game, that people can choose to omit if they so desire. That way the player can tailor the game to fit their own ability levels. People having trouble with a particular segment can take some time to level up, or go back and search more thoroughly for powerups, while people who aren't having difficulty are not forced to endure treasure hunts for gear they don't need.

As for giving official recognition for your skill, that's definitely a good idea. Two common implementations I've seen are to include your playtime and item collection rate at the end of the game, so that players have some way to compare penis lengths. :) The Metroid series in particular will reward players with different images or cutscenes based on their completion level of the game, and the latest 2D Metroid (Zero Mission) also both had special images for minimal-item runs, and made the last boss harder if you collected 100% of the items.

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Original post by makeshiftwings I personally despise dynamic adaptable difficulty. I hate the idea of the game dumbing itself down to make it easier on me if I'm doing poorly, and I cry inside every time I hear another designer talk about this system as if it's the holy grail of game development. I can tell when a game is "adapting" to my difficulty, and all that makes me do is want to "game" that part of the system: I quickly figure out that the fastest and easiest way to beat the game is to play really poorly on purpose until the key points where I need to overcome something. This is counterintuitive, and not fun. To me, it's like winning a race and knowing that the other person "let you win". I stopped being amused by that behavior when I was four years old and figured out that's what my parents were doing. I want to overcome challenges, not have challenges lie down and let me walk over them if they start to assume I'm not doing well. I also like to become better at games. There is no incentive, and sometimes no actual way, to become better at games with adaptable difficulty, because they constantly keep making themselves easier to the point where you assume you're good at the game, when actually you are not.

Not to be instulting or anything, but this strikes me as silly. Let me explain why: a game, by definition is an artificially imposed challenge. It fails as a game if it is so hard you keep losing and thus can't keep playing. So all games are intended to be winnable. All puzzles have built in solutions, all monsters are weak and/or stupid, the game as a whole is a challenge which is meant to 'lie down and let the player walk over it'. All adaptable dificulty does is move the guesswork about the player's abilities from the design phase to the play phase where these abilities can actually be tested instead of guessed at.

Also, adaptable difficulty games do not keep getting easier and easier, they generally will get adapt to the player's ability once near the beginning of the game and then stay at that level of difficulty because the player's ability won't change that much because most of a player's ability is based on instincts and subconscious strategies, which in turn are based on reflexes, IQ, and personality, which are permanent qualities of the player.

Makeshitwings: Then you should NEVER play Burnout, lol. I agree though. Sunandshadow, games are meant to be beated, but not to a pulp. Games like the original Mario Bros. were built so that after a while of playing, your skills could grow to where you could beat the game. Then the game would not say, 'good job,' or 'I think you've done enough,' it would say 'Congrats. Maybe now you'd like to play at a higher difficulty.'

Derakon: Hm, my opinion hasn't changed, but I can't disagree with you. I think there's nothing really wrong with maybe the gamer defining a game-style, but rather feel that it is good design to forecast possible user-defined goals and plan for them. The Metroid example of earlier was a very good example, it allowed for an optional condition and even planned for it.