The n00b and the 1337, Pt. 1: Difficulty

In my last post, I sug­gested that some games require skill in order to really access their artis­tic value. This, nat­u­rally, got me to think­ing about skill and dif­fi­culty in games, and so I had ini­tially intended to write a sin­gle arti­cle about both of these top­ics. Instead, the more I worked at them, the more I real­ized that, as they are really two sides to the same coin, they deserved two sep­a­rate but related arti­cles.

So, today, we are going to talk about dif­fi­culty in games: the impor­tance that a game gen­er­ally not be too easy or too hard, and how this bal­ance is impor­tant not only to be an enjoy­able game or to hold a player’s inter­est, but also for artis­tic rea­sons. Specifically, I am going to explain how dif­fi­culty is an inte­gral part of atmos­phere, con­sis­tency, and what I will term “sym­pa­thy”; by “sym­pa­thy” I mean the player’s abil­ity to con­nect to the point-of-view char­ac­ter and sym­pa­thize with his or her sit­u­a­tion and feel­ings.

But first,

A Couple of Notes About Difficulty

First, in other media, dif­fi­culty is not gen­er­ally a good thing in and of itself. It is some­times nec­es­sary in order to prop­erly tell a story or explore an idea, but a work does not gen­er­ally derive its artis­tic value from its dif­fi­culty (though there are excep­tions). Inception does not gain its worth from its dif­fi­culty, its dif­fi­culty is sim­ply nec­es­sary in order to really explore its ideas. (Indeed, one might argue that, in an effort to avoid alien­at­ing audi­ences by being “too dif­fi­cult,” it avoided deal­ing with some of the inter­est­ing impli­ca­tions of its the­o­ries).

In fact, gen­er­ally, I would sug­gest that in most cases, a work should strive to be as clear as it can be with­out doing dam­age to its con­ceit. Some works sim­ply have to be com­pli­cated and dif­fi­cult, or they feel like they are under­es­ti­mat­ing their audi­ence and afraid of really tack­ling the idea head-on. I think it is gen­er­ally under­stood that need­less obfus­ca­tion is a lit­er­ary sin: it usu­ally serves to obscure a lack of con­tent, inflate the artist’s ego, or need­lessly exclude most peo­ple from engag­ing with the art­work.

This is not, how­ever, nec­es­sar­ily the case with video games. A game’s “ideal” dif­fi­culty cer­tainly depends on what the game is try­ing to be– not just its “tar­get audi­ence,” but what sort of artis­tic state­ment it is try­ing to make, if any. I Wanna Be the Guy, as a “sar­donic lovelet­ter to the hal­cyon days of early American videogam­ing,” should be mind-numbingly dif­fi­cult. It would not func­tion very well as a satire of NES-era pun­ish­ing dif­fi­culty if it wasn’t, well, dif­fi­cult. But most games should not be nearly that dif­fi­cult. Conversely, one could argue that as Prince of Persia, is, as men­tioned before, “all about flow,” and as the Prince’s side­kick Elika is strongly implied to be backed by the local deity, it makes some sense that it’s impos­si­ble for the player char­ac­ter to per­ma­nently fail.

But that said, a game needs to be dif­fi­cult enough to be hold a player’s inter­est, and as such, “as sim­ple as pos­si­ble” is not a good idea with video games, for rea­sons which I hope will be explained in the rest of this arti­cle. I would sug­gest that this notion, that some mea­sure of dif­fi­culty might almost be an end-in-itself, is one unique to video games. It is dif­fi­cult to think of any other medium where the answer to “how dif­fi­cult should it be to expe­ri­ence” is any­thing other than “as easy as pos­si­ble with­out need­lessly repeat­ing expla­na­tions or avoid­ing dif­fi­cult issues.” In video games, the answer is “easy enough for most pro­fi­cient play­ers to be able to play it with­out too much frus­tra­tion, but hard enough to hold their inter­est and main­tain atmos­phere, con­sis­tency, and sym­pa­thy.”

Second, the fol­low­ing con­cerns are pre­sum­ably why many games imple­ment dif­fi­culty set­tings, so that vet­eran play­ers can still expe­ri­ence the nec­es­sary chal­lenge with­out ren­der­ing the game unplayable by new­com­ers. But for some kinds of games (plat­form­ers, in par­tic­u­lar), “dif­fi­culty set­tings” aren’t really fea­si­ble. It’s easy enough in a shooter to change the amount of dam­age an enemy can take or the fre­quency of ammu­ni­tion, but with­out going through and redesign­ing every sin­gle level, a plat­former can’t really change its dif­fi­culty very much. Thus, many games require more than sim­ple dif­fi­culty set­tings to try to make sure the game is acces­si­ble to the right audi­ence.

Third, I want to draw a dis­tinc­tion between two kinds of dif­fi­culty in a game, what I’ll call micro-difficulty and macro-difficulty. Micro-difficulty refers to the dif­fi­culty of a par­tic­u­lar enemy or sit­u­a­tion in a game, whereas macro-difficulty refers to the dif­fi­culty of the game as a whole. A game might have a low macro-difficulty, with moments of high micro-difficulty: plenty of games are not excep­tion­ally dif­fi­cult in the macro sense, but have moments of sheer hair-pulling frus­tra­tion, either in the form of bad game design, optional bosses, or just strange spikes in the dif­fi­culty curve

So, with those points made, let’s get to the meat of the mat­ter by look­ing at a few games and gen­res.

BioShock: Atmosphere and Sympathy

Among the ele­ments most critically-applauded in 2007’s excel­lent BioShock were the huge, lum­ber­ing ene­mies known as Big Daddies. These behe­moths wan­der about the streets of Rapture pro­tect­ing the “Little Sisters,” lit­tle girls infused with a pow­er­ful, strength-enhancing sub­stances, from any and all acts of aggres­sion. Periodically through­out Jack’s trav­els in Rapture, he will encounter Big Daddies wan­der­ing about, chatty Little Sisters in tow, on some unknown mis­sion. But what makes the sit­u­a­tion inter­est­ing is that, unless pro­voked, Big Daddies will in no way harm Jack. It is only if the player chooses to assault the girl or her guardian that the Big Daddy will attack. The player can thus choose whether or not to engage with the Big Daddies, and must do some basic risk-reward analy­sis.

These Big Daddies are gen­er­ally quite hard to defeat, but not impos­si­ble, and it is this care­ful plac­ing on the dif­fi­culty curve that makes them work. Were they too easy, there would be no deter­rent to attack­ing them and res­cu­ing or har­vest­ing the Little Sisters, and were they too dif­fi­cult, the dilemma would sim­ply be a false choice: if it’s impos­si­ble for me to kill the Big Daddies, I have no choice but to let them on their way. But by ensur­ing that Big Daddies remain a sub­stan­tial chal­lenge, but not an impos­si­ble one, BioShock ensures that the player is kept in sym­pa­thy with Jack and behaves more like a rea­son­able human being would in the sit­u­a­tion– only attack­ing the Big Daddies with prepa­ra­tion and trep­i­da­tion.

Furthermore, BioShock’s much-lauded atmos­phere is heav­ily reliant on the Big Daddies, and would also fall to pieces with­out the care­ful plac­ing of their dif­fi­culty. Few things make you feel more like you’re in Rapture than wan­der­ing through a quiet tun­nel, observ­ing the beau­ti­ful scenery, and not far in the dis­tance, hear­ing the whale-like moans of a Big Daddy and hear­ing his tromp­ing feet some­where nearby. You feel as though you’re in the pres­ence of some­thing both dan­ger­ous and harm­less, and, in the best moments, it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. This is only pos­si­ble because you know that, if pro­voked, that Big Daddy will not hes­i­tate to mur­der your stu­pid self. You find your­self care­fully mea­sur­ing your steps, and being very care­ful with your gun­fire as you fight lesser ene­mies. You don’t want to anger him acci­den­tally. If you must attack him, you want to be very well pre­pared.

Horror Games: Atmosphere

In this case, sym­pa­thy and atmos­phere are very closely related. Presumably, in a sur­vival hor­ror game (or any other kind of hor­ror game for that mat­ter), the goal of the game design­ers is, at least in part, to scare the player. This can only be done if the atmos­phere of the sit­u­a­tion is right.

Horror games may be the only instance where almost uni­ver­sally the macro-difficulty should be higher than in most games. The fun of a hor­ror game is in hav­ing to be Very Careful, lest the mon­sters sneak up behind you or pop up from in front of you and devour you whole. This does not work if the mon­sters are pushovers. A prob­lem with both Dead Space and Resident Evil 4 is that, even on high dif­fi­cul­ties, towards the end of the game, one’s guns have been upgraded to the point where most vil­lains pro­vide little-to-no chal­lenge. The games sim­ply quit being scary. Conversely, the game quits being scary and starts just being frus­trat­ing if the dif­fi­culty is too high. We want to play the terrified-but-heroic char­ac­ter who escapes in the end, not one of the myr­iad goons that dies along the way.

Several of the most fright­en­ing crea­tures in games are announced by loud sounds that can be heard from a long way away, much like the Big Daddy above. Left 4 Dead’s Witches and Resident Evil 4’s Regenerators, to use two exam­ples, are quite vocal about their pres­ence in an area. Witches sob loudly, and Regenerators con­stantly breathe this ter­ri­ble, hack­ing wheeze. It’s very unlikely you’re going to stum­ble over one with absolutely no warn­ing. But what makes the sob­bing or the wheez­ing ter­ri­fy­ing is not the noise itself (though that might well be a bit unset­tling), but rather what it sig­ni­fies– that one of the hard­est indi­vid­ual mon­sters in the game is wait­ing around a dark cor­ner some­where close, and, if you’re not care­ful, you’ll trip right into it and get eaten and/or clawed to death. Witches quit being scary when one fig­ures out that, on lower dif­fi­cul­ties, it only takes a shot­gun blast or two to the head to quiet that obnox­ious sob­bing, and Regenerators are no longer fright­en­ing on your twelfth playthrough with a fully-upgraded Hand Cannon.

As an inter­est­ing side note, Dead Space offers an answer to the “dif­fi­culty set­tings” ques­tion by employ­ing a game mechanic which, while allow­ing for dif­fi­culty set­tings to pro­vide greater and lesser degrees of dif­fi­culty, still ensures that the game is never too easy. Unlike most shoot­ers, Dead Space’s necro­morphs are most vul­ner­a­ble in their limbs, such that in order to con­serve ammu­ni­tion and kill them more quickly, one has to not aim for the monster’s cen­ter of mass, but rather its arms and legs. This is made more dif­fi­cult by the fact that said limbs are usu­ally flail­ing errat­i­cally try­ing to cut poor Isaac into rib­bons. This helps ensure that even on the eas­i­est dif­fi­culty, sim­ply point­ing at the Slasher and hold­ing down they fire key is not a rea­son­able course of action– you will quickly run out of ammu­ni­tion and end up try­ing to beat the mon­sters to death with your bare hands, a frus­trat­ing and nearly-impossible task.

Dragon Age: Awakening: Consistency

My final exam­ple for the day con­cerns one of the most dis­ap­point­ing games I’ve ever played. The expan­sion pack to one of my favorite games of all time, Dragon Age: Awakening has a num­ber of flaws, but one of the most egre­gious is that the game is absurdly easy, even on higher dif­fi­culty lev­els. This is a prob­lem for sev­eral rea­sons. (As a few notes: I played on Hard with an Orlesian dual-wielding Rogue who spe­cial­ized in Assassin/Duelist/Legionnaire Scout. I did not par­tic­u­larly power game beyond that– I was still using basic runes and only mod­er­ately decent equip­ment).

First, and prob­a­bly most detri­men­tal to the game’s enjoy­a­bil­ity is that the game’s lack of dif­fi­culty means that the game requires lit­tle to no thought, and its com­bat is not inter­est­ing. I quite lit­er­ally walked through all of Kal’Hirol sim­ply by push­ing the thumb­stick for­ward and mash­ing the A but­ton, and that would be bad even in a beat-em-up. In a tac­ti­cal role­play­ing game, it’s just a sign of bad game design. (It could, the­o­ret­i­cally, also be a sign that I’m just very good at Dragon Age, but see above for why I don’t think that’s so. There are, I am sure, dozens of bet­ter builds for the Warden-Commander than that one.)

But more impor­tantly for our pur­poses, it makes the game’s cen­tral con­flict seem silly. We are repeat­edly told that the Mother’s dark­spawn are a ter­ri­fy­ing threat capa­ble of anni­hi­lat­ing all of Amaranthine. The game begins with said dark­spawn sack­ing the Grey Wardens’ strong­hold, killing tens of trained Wardens and Lord knows how many reg­u­lar guards. But this, cou­pled with the fact that in-game, such vil­lains are rarely, beyond the ini­tial hour or so, remotely a threat to any remotely com­pe­tent player, just ends up imply­ing that every other Grey Warden in Ferelden is incom­pe­tent.

Furthermore, in the end of the game, one has to split one’s party between two locales, both of which will fall under assault by Darkspawn hordes. If one has not prop­erly equipped Amaranthine’s army, inspired the other half of the party, and so forth, one runs a seri­ous risk of los­ing that half of the party not under your con­trol to the dark­spawn inva­sion. On the face of it, this makes sense: a small group of war­riors being over­whelmed by hordes of vil­lains, if their sup­port­ing army is not appro­pri­ately equipped, is pretty sen­si­ble. But the fact is that, in-engine, when those four or five char­ac­ters are under your con­trol, they can anni­hi­late a more or less unlim­ited num­ber of dark­spawn.

It ends up sug­gest­ing that your NPCs fight at some­thing like one-tenth their nor­mal effec­tive­ness when you’re not with them, which, though per­haps intended to be a flat­ter­ing indi­ca­tion of the Warden-Commander’s lead­er­ship, just ends up look­ing silly. If such threats are to be taken seri­ously, and not seem arbi­trary, and if the world itself is to seem rea­son­able and con­sis­tent, the game just flat needs to be harder.

In Conclusion

On the face of it, the fact that games need to be chal­leng­ing with­out being impos­si­ble seems sim­ple, and I am not sug­gest­ing that these thoughts are rev­o­lu­tion­ary– rather, I sim­ply hope that I have illus­trated the point. Furthermore, I intend to use this point as foun­da­tion for next week’s arti­cle (already mostly writ­ten), about skill in games, and how, if games need to be at least a lit­tle bit chal­leng­ing in order to be artis­ti­cally valu­able, then a cer­tain amount of skill on the part of the player is going to be nec­es­sary in order to unlock that artis­tic value. Next week, I will dis­cuss what that means for the skep­tic and the new­comer, and how this fact may not be as unique to video games as you might think.