Re: Why are games easier? My take on the subject
Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 8:01 pm
I think it is difficult to say that games are easier now when there are so many more game releases nowadays than there ever were in the 80s and 90s. We went from hundreds of games on 8-bit and 16-bit consoles, to thousands of games on Playstation 2. And even if you include old arcade games, in modern times we have the explosion of the indie and handheld scenes. It's impossible to even keep pace with what is being released today, let alone play it all. With so many games, there have to be some highly difficult ones. And though this is the generation that brought us the term "walking simulator," it is also a generation of intensely difficult games like Super Meat Boy, I Wanna Be the Guy Gaiden, Cloudberry Kingdom, and Dark Souls.
If you're an old guy like me who has been playing games for the past 30 years or so, it's hard to judge if older games are harder because of their design or because you were a kid at the time and found them difficult because you were young and inexperienced with videogames. I can only judge old games I'm playing for the first time retroactively.
That being said, I think the more interesting question this thread has brought up is "how are different games difficult?" I think people have brought up good points about how difficulty can be achieved through different controls, or even controllers, level design, depth of strategy, etc. It's also interesting that difficulty is more important for some genres than others. With a strong enough storyline, difficulty doesn't even matter, which is how games like To The Moon, The Walking Dead, or A Wolf Among Us have managed to stay relevant. And was Dear Esther difficult? Obviously there were no challenges to your reflexes, but there were challenges in interpreting the meaning or understanding the nonlinear narrative structure of the game that don't fit neatly into our typical definition of what is difficult in a videogame. I'd be interested in hearing more about what people think constitutes difficulty. Battletoads, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Ultima 7, Space Chem, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, FTL, and Mega Man are all known for being difficult games, but they are difficult for entirely different reasons. So what are we even talking about when we talk about difficulty?
If you're an old guy like me who has been playing games for the past 30 years or so, it's hard to judge if older games are harder because of their design or because you were a kid at the time and found them difficult because you were young and inexperienced with videogames. I can only judge old games I'm playing for the first time retroactively.
That being said, I think the more interesting question this thread has brought up is "how are different games difficult?" I think people have brought up good points about how difficulty can be achieved through different controls, or even controllers, level design, depth of strategy, etc. It's also interesting that difficulty is more important for some genres than others. With a strong enough storyline, difficulty doesn't even matter, which is how games like To The Moon, The Walking Dead, or A Wolf Among Us have managed to stay relevant. And was Dear Esther difficult? Obviously there were no challenges to your reflexes, but there were challenges in interpreting the meaning or understanding the nonlinear narrative structure of the game that don't fit neatly into our typical definition of what is difficult in a videogame. I'd be interested in hearing more about what people think constitutes difficulty. Battletoads, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Ultima 7, Space Chem, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, FTL, and Mega Man are all known for being difficult games, but they are difficult for entirely different reasons. So what are we even talking about when we talk about difficulty?