Why Easy Games Fail Yahtzee's Game Theory

[odolwa]

Difficulty is both arbitrary and relative. Point in case, the numerous reviews of NG3 suggest starting at the hard difficulty, if you're already familiar with the series. But no, I again say, it's all relative. Consider Perfect Dark (& I think Goldeneye 64). Upon completion of those games, you have pre-stage settings for tailoring the enemy to be as weak or hard as you please.
Alternatively, give yourself a handicap, like 'not using a particular attack for the entire game'. Now it becomes more challenging, not because it was made that way, but because you yourself made the choice to make it more challenging.

When you take a more philosophical view, you won't give a flying f**k either way.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Give me more games like demons souls and less games like well anything AAA today.....

 

[teknoarcanist]

Dark Souls doesn't give a fig about being fun enough to keep you playing, anymore than War&Peace cares about stringing together exciting cliffhangers to keep you reading. It's why it's established within the narrative of the game. All these enemies you're fighting? Dudes who gave up and turned hollow.

What's that? The game's too hard, and you want to stop playing?

Well, fuck you then.

I think it's a mistake, and I think it's very limiting, to operate under the assumption that a game must bend over backwards to keep you playing, and that if you stop playing, it's the game's fault. I think this is a fundamentally wrong idea, I think it runs completely counter to the very idea of what challenge represents, and I think it cripples the ability of games to expand their reach and say anything meaningful, if we're asking them to drip-feed us "fun" every ten minutes. Or even that neutered version of fun, "engagement," which has become the new game design hot-word.

I object!

I say fuck engagement!

A game doesn't have to be "engaging" any more than a book does. Is War&Peace engaging? Jesus Christ, no, it's an absolute snore, same as most Russian lit. Does that make it less important? Of course not. A book only has to be the bare minimum of "logistically READABLE in my written language" -- like a game has to be the bare minimum of PLAYABLE. That's it. Nothing more.

Is Dark Souls "fun"? Sometimes. Not usually.

Is it engaging? Sometimes. Not for a while, though. In fact, it spends a lot of time trying to convince you to give up, and turn around, and go back to where the sun is shining and everything is safe.

But is it playable?

Oh god yes.

And is it Important, with a capital I?

Absolutely and unequivocally.

A game doesn't have to be accessible to anyone and everyone to be good. It doesn't have to open up and be capable of spilling its secrets to you, your grandma, and everyone in between. There are books that some people will never be able to understand. Not everyone is going to be able to read Cormac McCarthy. And not everyone will be able to complete Dark Souls. And THAT'S OKAY. And in fact absent of that, and absent of every single completely uncompromising and singlemindedly PURPOSEFUL design choice present at EVERY LEVEL of Dark Souls -- it wouldn't be noteworthy at all! The game would be completely unremarkable. Dark Souls is one of those few games where, when you're playing it, you're confronted with the sense that, whether you agree with it or not, every creative decision is 100% deliberate, and whatever the game is up to, it's certainly doing it consistently.

"And I wonder WHY this decision was made this way? What were they trying to say there...?"

And that lofty praise in no way applies to "any and all games which are really challenging." This isn't some wishy-washy Jane McGonigal -inspired editorial about the beauty of challenge, and how gamers are uniquely gifted to face it, and yadda yadda yadda, bla bla bla. That's bullshit, too. Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, and Battletoads are all hard as hell, and they have nothing new or interesting to say about the art of game design, much less the human condition.

Dark Souls does.

 

[Weaver]

I feel like this article was long winded and said in 8 paragraphs what basically could have said in 1.

 

[wintercoat]

I'd suggest the psychobabble term "validation" as a replacement for gratification. The feeling that you are a good person. Solving a challenge is internal validation (I'm smart/fast/lucky). A good plot is external validation (I have a mission/Bad guy is bad/I rule you weakling scum).

Plus, then you can make jokes about getting more validation from the car park where you buy the game. Oh, wait, now I've already made it. And there was really only that one. And it wasn't really that good. Never mind.

Validation requires a goal worked to. "Gratification" is enjoyment for the sake of enjoyment. It's sniping a headshot and giggling at the geyser of blood that results. It's picking Bloody Mess as a perk in the Fallout games. It's dressing up your character in the most ridiculous getup you can and beating people to death with a giant dildo. It's catharsis. It's revelry. It's fun "because I can".

 

[ManupBatman]

*Snip*

I appreciate someone else shares this sentiment.

Some people read Shakespeare, some don't care for the language.
Some listen to Chopin, some don't care listening to a 12 minute arrangement with no words
Some play Chess, some aren't interested in learning the movement patterns.
Some watch Citizen Kane, some can't get into Black and White narrative Dramas.

Though I do object. I do feel Dark Souls has strong context and gratification, but only if you can get pass the entry level challenge. I feel one of the dark secrets of our society today is that generally you have to learn how to enjoy challenging material. It is a bit of a leap of faith that if you put enough into it you will get something out of it. What you get out of Dark Souls is that pilgrimage(context). Both in a in game and out of game sense. It's not suppose to be easy, and you don't do it for any reward. You do it simply for the experience of it (Lest ye become the Crestfallen Knight). And as for gratification, swaggering through the Burg fully armored 1-hitting everything brings me extreme joy. Took be hours to get to that point, but now I boot it up just for that experience.

/pretentiouswankingoff

 

[teknoarcanist]

Snip.

Yeah, no, Dark Souls has a terrific sense of reward and validation. I just recently started replaying the game, after lending it to a friend, and was amazed how terrifically I found myself steamrolling in minutes things that took me hours before. And it wasn't even in that autistic youtube speedrun sort of way, where I had an encyclopedic knowledge of all the enemies or something -- I just knew how to play the game now. And like opening up a deeply-studied section of Finnegans Wake, the game just fell open in front of me, and clicked, and made perfect sense.

But I do remember the first time through, and while the gratification was there to be had in fits in starts, the overwhelming emotion I felt most of the game was not hope and empowerment, but despair and dread. I remember killing Queelaag, thinking, "There, Christ, I've FINALLY made it to the bottom of the world." And then I took one step further, found myself in the Demon Ruins, saw cracked plains and lava flows like something out of Dante's Inferno, and went, "My god, it just never ends."

And then I wussed out. I turned right around, and went back the way I'd come, sprinted back through Blighttown, scampered up the ladder to the Valley of the Drakes, hammered the "get the hell out" button on the elevator to Darkroot Basin, jogged wheezing up the staircase to the Undead Burg, burst back out into the sunlight, and fell down crying, because HOLY SHIT was I not going back down there again.

 

[tautologico]

A game doesn't have to be "engaging" any more than a book does. Is War&Peace engaging? Jesus Christ, no, it's an absolute snore, same as most Russian lit. Does that make it less important? Of course not. A book only has to be the bare minimum of "logistically READABLE in my written language" -- like a game has to be the bare minimum of PLAYABLE. That's it. Nothing more.

Is Dark Souls "fun"? Sometimes. Not usually.

Is it engaging? Sometimes.

Actually, a book/movie/etc DOES have to be engaging in some form. If you don't find a book engaging at any level, you won't read it. Of course you have to have the right background and interests to find War & Peace engaging, but it sure is for certain people. I certainly don't know why anyone would choose to read a book that they didn't find engaging in any form.

So I expect that you do find Dark Souls engaging, maybe not all the time but enough of the time to make you keep playing it. It's the challenge x reward mechanic and all.

Otherwise I agree that no game/book/movie etc needs to be engaging to everyone. But it must be engaging to someone, otherwise no one will play/read/see it.

 

[weirdee]

I don't know how to break it to Yahtzee, but Poacher feels like it was made purposely out of poor design decisions to be hard, instead of forged by the devil's blacksmiths into cold, calculating player hatred. It fails to deliver a tight experience, and in doing so, fails to support the the other two weaker legs of the game, because the rushed and barebones story, isolated jokes, and lack of actual victory gratification aren't doing anything.

He 'accidentally' designed the game to dwell on failures because you place checkpoints at the start and end of huge areas filled with points at which both your gun failing to fire because it doesn't think you're in range of a creature who then manages to hurt you a second after you misfire and your tendency to jump strangely followed by enormous knockback and control lockout after being hit is punished by being set back by a room or several, or dying, followed by being set back by ALL OF THE ROOMS. Although you do put save points in between sometimes, most of them are in areas where it is not actually difficult enough to justify it.

if the game were cleaned up and had music added, it might help slightly towards making it something i actually try to finish, instead of ragequit like mentioned in the article because i'm not getting anything out of the experience

 

[teknoarcanist]

A game doesn't have to be "engaging" any more than a book does. Is War&Peace engaging? Jesus Christ, no, it's an absolute snore, same as most Russian lit. Does that make it less important? Of course not. A book only has to be the bare minimum of "logistically READABLE in my written language" -- like a game has to be the bare minimum of PLAYABLE. That's it. Nothing more.

Is Dark Souls "fun"? Sometimes. Not usually.

Is it engaging? Sometimes.

Actually, a book/movie/etc DOES have to be engaging in some form. If you don't find a book engaging at any level, you won't read it. Of course you have to have the right background and interests to find War & Peace engaging, but it sure is for certain people. I certainly don't know why anyone would choose to read a book that they didn't find engaging in any form.

So I expect that you do find Dark Souls engaging, maybe not all the time but enough of the time to make you keep playing it. It's the challenge x reward mechanic and all.

Otherwise I agree that no game/book/movie etc needs to be engaging to everyone. But it must be engaging to someone, otherwise no one will play/read/see it.

Well there you go then. Well said. You've shown the need for a clearer definition.

Let's say "universally engaging."

A game does not need to be universally engaging. And I think this is a pretty core assumption a lot of us hold at present. Something like Portal 2 or Angry Birds holds it as its core design philosophy--that anyone should be able to pick the game up and complete it--and those games are lauded for how well they achieve that principle. And maybe rightly so.

But Dark Souls very insistently and very deliberately goes in completely the opposite direction, and accomplishes something extremely unique and important for it. If you think about it, and if you read developer interviews, MOST of its creative decisions are not made with any core specific player-set in mind, least of all the audience that carried over from Demons' Souls. It's not made, like Skyrim, to be "really appealing to RPG fans" or "really appealing to action-game fans" or something. Its made to be itself, as purely and straightforwardly as possible. Those decisions are made the way they are to uphold a singular, specific vision of what the game should be.

Now something like "Passage" by John Blow--and in fact a lot of games made by guys like Blow--have been toeing that same line for a while; the idea that a game doesn't need to be good on the terms of its intended audience, but simply NEEDS TO BE GOOD, on its own terms. And they've been called pretentious and obtuse for it. As has Dark Souls, actually, just with different terminology. "Stubborn," "frustrating," "punishing," unfair, unclear, inexplicable, etc.

And when you really think about, the idea that a game should be playable and enjoyable by everyone seems completely ass-backwards. It'd be like trying to sit down and write a story that "everyone in the world will like." It's insane, absurd, and impossible. And it's likely not going to result in anything special.

 

[TimeLord]

I prefer easy games when there's something else going on.

For example I was quite happy to play Mass Effect 3 on casual at all times. Partially because it was fun to go peanut banana crazy with the Prothean beam rifle while being more or less invincible while flinging Carnage shots at the cowards hiding behind walls, but mainly because there was something better waiting at the end. Most notably the story. I'm not saying that removing the gameplay from Mass Effect 3 is a good idea, it's still fun. But I was much more interested in playing out the story of my Shepard the way I wanted because I knew there was more to the cutscenes than other games (cure Genophage, resolve Geth/Quarianwar, shoot Ashley as many times as possible while she defends Udina etc)

 

[Scow2]

Look at the current best-selling games. Modern Fps garbage, WoW and similar MMo's and RPG #1742674. What do these all have in common? They're really easy. The only difficult and somewhat successful game I can think of is Dark Souls.

What? You've put up three completely non-existent Strawmen and decried them as "Really easy", without first defining any game except WoW (Which I highly doubt you've ever played: Most of the end-game dungeons are damn hard, and the only reason anyone has a CHANCE of survival or victory is the strategy guides).

As for FPS's... The only times I've found them to be "Easy" is when the difficulty was set to "Easy" or "Normal", the first being a sightseeing tour, the other being something anyone can beat with enough time. Sure, there are a lot of people capable of beating any Halo game on legendary, but they are far, far, far above and beyond the average gamer's ability.

As for RPGs... One of the biggest criticisms of Dragon Age: Origins is its tendency toward stupidly obtuse difficulty spikes. Other RPGs have a variety of challenge, but unlike any other genre, RPGs offer so many ways to tackle a problem that they end up being "Easy" by virtue of either exploiting an ill-balanced mechanic, or grinding themselves past the challenge (Like beating Hogger in WoW: Those of the "appropriate" level find him an infamously frustrating challenge, but just a few levels over him and he goes down fast.)

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Maybe "gratification" is better understood when called "achievement". That word certainly fits the happiness you get from activities varying from chopping a zombie in half to building a castle. Sure, "achievement" is increased when semi-frustrating challenge and/or intriguing context have come up before, but that's part of the balancing act.

But that doesn't work, because the game that spawned this theory in words was Saints Row the Third, and there was almost no achievement, but tons of visceral gratification in the ridiculous violence that was present when firing a man from a car canon, or poisoning people with a fart-in-a-jar, or punching someone into giblets with the apocofist. There's almost no achievement, but there is gratification.

 

[Ace2401]

snip

I agree with everything you said except for one thing: That all applies to the original Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox (and Ninja Gaiden Black, possibly to an even greater extent) just as much as Dark Souls. Ninja Gaiden is more than just a game with an arbitrarily high difficultly level, it's built into the game the same way difficulty is built into Dark Souls. The key difference is that Dark Souls has more focus on the environments whilst Ninja Gaiden put an emphasis on exceptionally intelligent enemy AI. Otherwise their approach to difficulty is very similar. For example, as far as boss fights go, I consider the games more or less equals. You know that feeling you get when you go to face Ornstien and Smough? The Alma bossfight in Ninja Gaiden evokes that same feeling. Ninja Gaiden also lends itself very well to that feeling of mastery and the rewards that brings, just like Dark Souls.

As an aside, that is why to this day Ninja Gaiden Black is by far the best game in the series (and IMHO the best action game ever made), because as much as I love NG2, it lost sight of what made the games before special, which is that same thing Dark Souls captures.

 

[Xman490]

Maybe "gratification" is better understood when called "achievement". That word certainly fits the happiness you get from activities varying from chopping a zombie in half to building a castle. Sure, "achievement" is increased when semi-frustrating challenge and/or intriguing context have come up before, but that's part of the balancing act.

But that doesn't work, because the game that spawned this theory in words was Saints Row the Third, and there was almost no achievement, but tons of visceral gratification in the ridiculous violence that was present when firing a man from a car canon, or poisoning people with a fart-in-a-jar, or punching someone into giblets with the apocofist. There's almost no achievement, but there is gratification.

The thing is, I define "achievement" as something the player's character does, as in beat a level or beat an enemy to shreds. Gratification is a synonym for satisfaction, but satisfaction comes much more when all of the elements are balanced. The phrase "gratuitous violence" makes sense for games like Saints Row the Third in general, but maybe others don't feel "gratification".

Oh, I don't know. This is confusing.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

Maybe "gratification" is better understood when called "achievement". That word certainly fits the happiness you get from activities varying from chopping a zombie in half to building a castle. Sure, "achievement" is increased when semi-frustrating challenge and/or intriguing context have come up before, but that's part of the balancing act.

But that doesn't work, because the game that spawned this theory in words was Saints Row the Third, and there was almost no achievement, but tons of visceral gratification in the ridiculous violence that was present when firing a man from a car canon, or poisoning people with a fart-in-a-jar, or punching someone into giblets with the apocofist. There's almost no achievement, but there is gratification.

The thing is, I define "achievement" as something the player's character does, as in beat a level or beat an enemy to shreds. Gratification is a synonym for satisfaction, but satisfaction comes much more when all of the elements are balanced. The phrase "gratuitous violence" makes sense for games like Saints Row the Third in general, but maybe others don't feel "gratification".

Oh, I don't know. This is confusing.

Right, but the context-challenge-gratification system is what the player feels, not the PC, so it's still falling short. A different word and it's meaning must be found, or else this system might have to expand a little, instead of contracting as some of his correspondents suggest. Including something like "achievement" wouldn't be a bad start, something that shows as a fitting catharsis or reward to the challenge, and utilizes the gratifying aspect of the game towards that end. Pesky.

 

[Scow2]

Maybe "gratification" is better understood when called "achievement". That word certainly fits the happiness you get from activities varying from chopping a zombie in half to building a castle. Sure, "achievement" is increased when semi-frustrating challenge and/or intriguing context have come up before, but that's part of the balancing act.

But that doesn't work, because the game that spawned this theory in words was Saints Row the Third, and there was almost no achievement, but tons of visceral gratification in the ridiculous violence that was present when firing a man from a car canon, or poisoning people with a fart-in-a-jar, or punching someone into giblets with the apocofist. There's almost no achievement, but there is gratification.

The thing is, I define "achievement" as something the player's character does, as in beat a level or beat an enemy to shreds. Gratification is a synonym for satisfaction, but satisfaction comes much more when all of the elements are balanced. The phrase "gratuitous violence" makes sense for games like Saints Row the Third in general, but maybe others don't feel "gratification".

Oh, I don't know. This is confusing.

Yahtzee's three pillars of game design are all standalone from each other. "Achievement" is a direct result of Context (I just brought peace between the Quarians and Geth) or Challenge (I just killed a dozen zombies!). "Gratification", however, can be as simple as running around as a naked catgirl in any TES game jumping from roof to roof. Yahtzee's definition of the "Challenge" pillar is both, the stressful build-up of getting your ass handed to you time and time again, and the release as you finally overcome the challenge and come back down triumphant.

 

[Kahunaburger]

As for FPS's... The only times I've found them to be "Easy" is when the difficulty was set to "Easy" or "Normal", the first being a sightseeing tour, the other being something anyone can beat with enough time. Sure, there are a lot of people capable of beating any Halo game on legendary, but they are far, far, far above and beyond the average gamer's ability.

Halo is IMO a rare example of a modern FPS doin it rite re: difficulty. The standard tactic is to make enemies do more damage and take more bullets, but when enemies aren't smart enough to flank or flush a player out that just boils down to tedious gameplay, not harder gameplay. But Halo, on the other hand, scales the damage factor, enemy AI, enemy capabilities, and even lets you add specific challenges or twists with the skulls.

As for RPGs... One of the biggest criticisms of Dragon Age: Origins is its tendency toward stupidly obtuse difficulty spikes. Other RPGs have a variety of challenge, but unlike any other genre, RPGs offer so many ways to tackle a problem that they end up being "Easy" by virtue of either exploiting an ill-balanced mechanic, or grinding themselves past the challenge (Like beating Hogger in WoW: Those of the "appropriate" level find him an infamously frustrating challenge, but just a few levels over him and he goes down fast.)

Bolded text: the main problem with Dragon Age: Origins' difficulty, IMO. Sure, enemy health/damage scaled, but that doesn't really make the game harder when you can stunlock and/or kite things around all day. Some roguelikes are IMO the best examples of RPG difficulty - creative exploitation of the mechanics is intended. You're supposed to find ways to not fight fair, and that is in fact the only way to win fights on lower dungeon levels. The result is a game that really rewards creativity, which I find enjoyable.

 

[Kanatatsu]

Yahtzee seems to consider most games either too easy or too hard. I think he genuinely has problems with moderate difficulty games. He doesn't seem to actually be very good at video games, but likes to complain games are too easy a lot.