![]() ![]() i think if games want to try to ask people that, it's an interesting question to ask, but they're under way less obligation and it's certainly not the same thing as trying to establish a skill level. So, for some, a difficulty selection screen might be an opportunity to ask "what experience do you want to have with this game?". it always really stuck in my craw when such people would hide this unreasonable demand behind the perfectly valid rhetoric of wanting to cater for disabled gamers in many a bad-faith reductive piece about easy modes. i think this is about as sound a demand as a mode in, say, undertale that gets rid of all the characters and simply has you play the combat minigame for about 8 hours. one of my favourite genres of gaming youtube video is "can you beat X souls game " - they put strong emphasis on this type of all-range problem-solving which trusts the player to find a way or make a way, often recontexualising parts/areas of the game that are easy to overlook or forget. it is what was so refreshing about the series a very long time ago - though perhaps tarnished now as the series focuses more on straight-forward insane dodgerolly boss battles and less on interesting, hazardous environments that can be prepared for and adapted around. This is the special thing about the series in its popular context. ![]() they require time, attention and perhaps a baseline of respect for the game's threats and rules - the type of respect which lets a player determine their time would be better spent trying to find a clever way to deal with a problem than just headbutting it again and again and probably complaining about bonfire runbacks they require the player to fairly voraciously look up external information, to look for every rotten stinking scam in the book to throw at a situation, to go away and grind for a bit or get the right item/spell. they require the player to be an absolute nerd goblin. games have absolutely no obligation to players who a drastically different experience from the one on the table.įromsoft's soulsy series (sorry) is the largest popular game series holistically built around being difficult, and yet there are tons of tools available in the game to make things easier - but they do still require something fairly high-level of the player. games have an obligation, wherever possible, to cater for different ability levels. The second question is where people start to throw tomatoes at me. a checkbox that just makes the game more fun? also of note - having more and more assist options helps more and more for people with very specific needs, but is likely to be extremely overwhelming if someone just wants a lil' general boost - again, we're asking them to become a game designer i would not really expect a random layperson to really understand what effect the "infinite stamina" or "infinite airdashes" really have on a game like celeste, for example. The whole thing about assist options certainly is an advancement in this regard, but at the same time they ask a layperson to become a game designer, so they leave me a little cold. a global game speed modifier - a completely nuclear option, messing with the basic language of timing, always seems like overkill for someone being a bit inexperienced at a game, but it could be just what the doctor ordered for someone with cognitive issues etc. someone lacking genre literacy may benefit from rigid, forced tutorialisation whereas such things are liable to make someone like me immediately stop playing. Of course, it's very hard and annoying to pin down the concept of a player's "ability level", such a thing being the cross-product of a ton of different things - what is their genre literacy or indeed literacy with video games as a whole, what are their "baseball card stats" like reaction speed or quick-thinking, what applicable disabilities etc do they haveīut all of these have to be addressed differently. what experience does the player want with this game?ĭifficulty options (generally) condense these questions into one stupid, coarse-grained question and are too blunt a tool to correctly address either one.what is the player's existing ability level?. ![]() My problem with difficulty options is that when a player starts a game, there are two fairly large questions the designer should be concerned with. ![]()
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