Easy Modes

[a327ex]

This post was written in reaction to this.

Challenge is an exclusionary aspect of video games. It's kinda like competition, except for single player games it doesn't exclude people by making them lose when someone else wins, but by preventing them from progressing in the game. This can be seen as unfair so developers generally add easy modes so that people can keep playing without quitting and generally have a better experience. This is fine, desirable even.

The problem comes with the notion that "every game should have an easy mode". This is simply not true because challenge is exclusionary and if, as a developer, you want to target your game solely at people who really like challenge, adding an easy mode to it diminishes its appeal to those people.

There are multiple ways in which this happens but the main ones are: it diminishes your achievements, as if you spend 10 hours beating a boss and someone beats it way faster by just decreasing the difficulty your feat becomes lessened; and it fragments the community, suddenly you're not talking about one game with other people, but about 3-4 potentially very different games. These might sound irrational and they are, but they are deep drives within people, just like the need for a good story with lots of exposition is a deep drive for other people. Those who like challenge really feel strongly that the playing field should be fair and that everyone else should have access to the same tools and the same challenges. An easy mode is a direct attack on that.

One of the reasons FromSoft games were able to succeed so much was because they embraced the exclusionary aspect of challenge fully and understood their audience. From games have a single difficulty that's pretty hard, and that attracts people who are interested in the challenge in a big way. Because challenge is exclusionary, most developers capable of creating games at the quality From does shy away from embracing that aspect because it means that less people will play their games. That created a natural vacuum in that market a decade or so ago which was promptly filled by From, and many other games since then.

So my main point is that easy modes are great and that lots of games should indeed have them, but for games that are about challenge and aimed at an audience that likes challenge an easy mode not being there is also great and often times the right thing to do. The idea of letting people play games however they want also applies to people who like challenge and they should also be able to exclude people who aren't good enough from their games, if that's what the developers of the game desire such as is the case for FromSoft games, for instance.

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29/12/2019

Another example of the same discussion: https://twitter.com/Mike_Matei/status/1210959863733530625

This got a lot of both positive and negative feedback on Twitter, along the lines you would expect both sides to argue on.

The most interesting thing is that mostly game developers and journalists seem to disagree with it, in keeping with my notion that those groups have individuals who are generally higher in agreeableness and lower in conscientiousness than the general population, which would make them dislike the notion of exclusion generally.

[volumia]

The Soulsborne games would have succeeded regardless of whether or not they had an easy mode. Cuphead has an easy mode. Celeste has an assist mode. Both are games that are well known for their punishing difficulty and went on to sell pretty well. I don't like the idea that some people don't deserve to play certain games because they don't have amazing hand-eye coordination or don't game at least a couple hours every few days or so. And I feel like if you feel as if your achievements are diminished because someone else did them while given an explicit advantage, then that's really your personal problem. It's like being mad that a child is given gratification because they did a drawing even though you can do one better but no one praises you... that's really besides the point. Be content with yourself. This applies to all facets of life, not just gaming.

IMO, the most important thing is to present and acknowledge the easy mode in an intended difficult game as a compromise. Cuphead doesn't let you beat the game in easy mode, Celeste has 4 pages that drill into your head that this isn't the intended experience, etc. If that's done then I don't understand why anyone would have a problem with it other than gatekeeping.

[a327ex]

The point is gatekeeping. As I mentioned in the article, for people who like competition and challenge gatekeeping for gatakeeping's sake is part of the appeal of their more enjoyable experience. I personally don't like challenging games and I haven't played any of the soulsborne games, but it's very clear to me why people feel defensive when others mention easy modes for those games and as an indie game developer you should try to understand what motivates people even though you might not agree with them.

[hfr4]

Why do you think you "deserve" anything ? I believe that working hard learning a skill make it better once you master it. Not even in the gatekeeper kind of way, just being pround of yourself.

[volumia]

@adnzzzzZ I guess that's my problem really, I just don't agree with this thinking. Real life activities like sports or drawing or music can be enjoyed by anyone to its fullest, but getting better at them is its own reward. Even boxing can be enjoyed by complete amateurs (go ask small children). This is because life is dynamic, but games are (literally) a more binary medium. Everything is explicit. For example, people who play football / soccer casually might disregard the offside rule to cater to their tastes. In many difficult games, you're either good or you just can't play. I'm no psychologist, but I wonder if this mindset has any mental relation to the mindset of a bully blocking someone out of a sports game because they're younger.

I like hard games - but I know many people who don't. They're as entitled to a fun experience as I am, just as 12 year old Ihsan down the street is able to enjoy football as much as Lionel Messi.

It's worth mentioning that the three difficult games I mentioned, that is Dark Souls, Cuphead, and Celeste all have merit outside of being difficult. Dark Souls has unique storytelling and atmosphere, Cuphead is simply a love letter to classical animation with great music, and even Celeste has emotional value. These are things that I think that anyone is allowed to enjoy.

I don't like gatekeeping. I used to be the type of person who thought that certain people don't deserve certain things, but then I realized that I don't have a justification for why I should, so I abandoned that line of thinking. Even if someone doesn't end up enjoying a difficult game with an easy mode, isn't it better to give them the option rather than blocking it out entirely?

Speaking as a commercial developer and speaking as a person are 2 distinct things. I'm currently talking as the latter. Of course when I'm making something for players to enjoy and to purcahse I'll try to cater to their tastes as much as possible (without compromising my vision), but outside of that I can criticize the mindsets that lead them to those tastes (but not their tastes).

[a327ex]

I think the comparison between games and real life activities is missing something important: some real life activities are exclusionary by definition. Any competitive activity is like that, for example. Yes, people can have fun playing, but at the end of the day only one person/team can win. Some activities don't involve competition with others directly, but they're still activities that very few people will be able to finish correctly, for instance, creating anything complex enough like a game is like that. 95%+ of the people who start end up never finishing it because it's hard. Be it because they don't have the intelligence, willpower, time, discipline, whatever, activities in real life will always exclude lots of people.

In my opinion games are about emulating real life situations and have people go through them in a virtual environment and through that process have them become more skilled at dealing with those situations. A very hard game is emulating the fact that in life there are activities that are hard and that require a lot of skill, effort, discipline, time, or a combination of all of these to complete. This also comes with the pride of knowing that you were one of the few people who were able to complete this activity, that you were one of the best of the best. It's a very primal drive within people and to deny people who are driven by this their games is just wrong.

Even if someone doesn't end up enjoying a difficult game with an easy mode, isn't it better to give them the option rather than blocking it out entirely?

No, because it cheapens the experience for a number of other people who don't want to play a game that can be easily beaten by others. If developers want to do that then it's fine, but if developers don't want to do that then it's also fine. There are valid arguments for both options and it's up to developers to figure out what they want to do with their games, and people should respect the decision of each developer, whatever it is. In the case of Dark Souls the developer doesn't want an easy mode, perfect. In the case of Celeste the developer opted to add an easy mode or similar, and that's perfect too.

but outside of that I can criticize the mindsets that lead them to those tastes

I think you should understand that these things are very deeply rooted in people. They're not just a matter of opinion or lack of reason on someone's part. If you give everyone involved in this debate the same set of facts and the same set of assumptions, no amount of logic will make everyone converge on the same answer because people are fundamentally different. People who are more agreeable are more compassionate and more likely to reject exclusion, people who are less agreeable are less compassionate and more likely to enjoy exclusion and competition.

These biological traits (among others) drive people's decisions and what they like or dislike in a very deep and mostly invisible way, but both types of personalities have their valid roles to play in society and neither is right or wrong all the time, which is why trying to apply one solution to everything (all games should have an easy mode) is misguided. It's an assertion that people who are different than you shouldn't be allowed to have games made for them, which is ironically a pretty exclusionary stance.

[volumia]

Eh. This is a deeply personal thing. There's no global answer. I simply find it misguided. I'm not thinking about other people when I achieve things - I'm proud of me. This comes back to what I said about being content with yourself. I think that once you realize you is you, you start seeing people that are better than you as motivation, not threats, and people worse than you as what you were before. That's what happened to me at least.

This is a vehemently subjective subject. I can't really add anything outside of my personal anecdotes, since I'm not a psychologist so I can't add any sort of biological basis to my views. I just believe that if you are fully capable of doing something good for other people (and with minimal effort at that), why shouldn't you? But otherwise good discussion!

[zerocoolisgod]

The idea that you couldn't enjoy a game because you know someone else in enjoying the same game without "earning it," whatever that may mean to you, is such an unbelievably shitty personality trait that I don't understand how you could possibly present it as a reasonable position to hold.

If a game has to be exclusionary to appeal to a cretin group of people, then I don't think those people should be catered to. And I get the hypocrisy of excluding people who want to exclude people but for real though; if the way I play my game bothers you to the point where you can't play the same game anymore, even though we've never met and you don't have to see or hear me "play the game wrong," then that's a personality flaw in YOU. I don't think that should be respected as a reasonable argument.

By the way, being more or less compassionate is not biological unless you're talking about psychopaths or people with brain damage or other mental health issues.

"Other people who aren't as good as me, shouldn't be able to play this single player game even though it has no tangible impact on my life what so ever," is absurd and selfish.

That being said, make your game however you want to. You want to cater to ding-dongs that's fine. I'm not saying you can't make games without Easy Mode's, do you. But if that's your rational for not including one, that's pretty a weak argument.

[a327ex]

is such an unbelievably shitty personality trait that I don't understand how you could possibly present it as a reasonable position to hold.

Many people throw their entire lives into whatever they pursue, giving up their friends, families, even health, all because they want to be the best and win. The world is generally run by such people as they're the ones who are willing to work the hardest and sacrifice the most towards their goals.

However shitty you think this attitude is the world is filled with people like this and this personality trait is roughly what controls it. And it manifests itself roughly in the way I described in gaming, at least as far as I've been able to notice.

if the way I play my game bothers you to the point where you can't play the same game anymore, even though we've never met and you don't have to see or hear me "play the game wrong," then that's a personality flaw in YOU. I don't think that should be respected as a reasonable argument.

It's fine if you don't respect it, it doesn't make it any less reasonable. It's perfectly reasonable to want to exclude people out of something you do even if they have no direct interaction with you. Maybe you're failing to also take into account that single player games are as much a community experience as they are an isolated one, and if the community around a challenging single player game is filled with people who can barely play the game and only beat it because they put it on easy then that will directly and indirectly diminish your experience (if you're the kind of person who really cares about the game's challenging aspects).

By the way, being more or less compassionate is not biological

Compassion is defined partly by a personality trait called agreeableness which has genetic components to it. There is a lot of nurture involved to how compassionate a person ends up, but there's also a lot of nature to it.

[zerocoolisgod]

However shitty you think this attitude is the world is filled with people like this and this personality trait is roughly what controls it. And it manifests itself roughly in the way I described in gaming, at least as far as I've been able to notice.

If you're saying these people exist, I concede that point. It's the idea that their position is reasonable or even good, is what I have an issue with.

It's perfectly reasonable to want to exclude people out of something you do even if they have no direct interaction with you.

How is that reasonable? Person_A performs Action_A using Method_A. Person_B performs Action_A using Method_B. Method_B has no affect on Person_A, has no diminishing affect on Action_A and dose not prevent the use of Method_A. Person_A, however, feels totally justified in insisting that Method_B be disallowed. Even if, or explicitly because, it prevents Person_B form performing Action_A at all.

That's just childish selfishness. It dose not indicate that Person_A is a harder worker, so I don't know how you can draw that conclusion. If there were some sort of direct competition I might be able to see where you're coming from.

Compassion is defined partly by a personality trait called agreeableness which has genetic components to it.

Lastly, I see you referencing the Big Five personality framework quite a bit. I don't know how in depth your study is, and I will admit to simply giving my self a quick crash course at the University of Google so I'm happy to hear any corrections you may have to my understanding of it. But it seems that one of the big critiques of that framework is that there is no underlying causal theory driving it. As in, it is just an observation of common traits that seem to clump together in some people with out any understanding as to why they do. So stating with confidence that those traits have biological basis (like there is some part of your brain or body that is responsible for agreeableness) seems not to be supported by solid scientific evidence.

[a327ex]

How is that reasonable?

Your example is more like this:

Person_A performs Action_A using difficult Method_A. The value of Action_A is high. Person_B performs Action_A using easy Method_B. Now the value of Action_A is low.

The value of Action_A is a global that increases the harder it is for people to achieve it. Think of an achievement that only 1% of players unlock, that's something that has a lot more value than an achievement that 80% of players unlock, right? Even Steam prominently displays the percentage of people who have completed an achievement and makes an achievement glow if it's been completed by a low percentage of players:

It's clear a lot of people care about this and it's a very similar dynamic for challenging games. The higher the value of Action_A the more difficult it is to achieve, and the more it naturally attracts people who want to seek actions of high value to pursue due to their personality. To add an easy way of performing Action_A is to decrease its value and simultaneously make it less attractive for those kinds of people.

But it seems that one of the big critiques of that framework is that there is no underlying causal theory driving it. As in, it is just an observation of common traits that seem to clump together in some people with out any understanding as to why they do

It's a framework that has been created by administering personality tests to the population and then running statistical analysis on the data and seeing what clumps together. As time passed psychologists started filling in the holes and gathering evidence from other subfields that seemed to provide more explanations. And so there's quite a lot of research done on the biological basis for all the traits. Search "big five brain structure" or "big five genetics" and similar and you'll find things to read on it if you're interested.

However I will say that this is pretty beyond whatever point I made that made you object to this notion. At the end of the day people will have differences in personality that are fundamentally incompatible and they just can't be changed by arguments alone. It's our job to be able to communicate with one another, despite our fundamental differences, so that we can create a better world for everyone. I don't like challenging games personally, but I can understand the people who do without thinking that they're morally wrong for acting in the way they do, mostly because they actually aren't morally wrong, as exclusion is an essential part of how society functions and without it things would be a lot worse.

This same exclusionary force that leaves some people dispossessed and unable to achieve or enjoy something is what drives other people to work hard towards that same thing and eventually get to it. If you remove the exclusionary aspect of it you simultaneously remove the motivation to work towards achieving it.

[zerocoolisgod]

Value is subjective, you are arbitrarily assigning more value to challenge over having a complete experience.

Action_A does not change, only Person_A's perceptions of Action_A's value. Which ignores Person_B's perception of Action_A's value.

Person_B insisting that Method_A be removed because its too hard would also be wrong.

I don't know if you are saying Achievement Systems would be worthless with easy modes or if you are just using that as an example of exclusivity being intrinsically valuable but either way, most games with difficulty systems tier out the achievements based on the difficulty selected, ie. "Completed X on Easy" vs "Completed X on Nightmare." Some even disable achievements altogether on easy modes.

If exclusivity is an absolute requirement for Person_A to be satisfied, then completing the game on the harder difficulty is still exclusionary. Person_A still accomplished something that Person_B did not and could not. I don't know why that's not enough.

To be clear, I do not think hard games are bad or that people who like hard games are bad. I'm 37 years old. I've beaten 7 out of the 11 classic Mega Man games and all but two of the 2d Castlevainia games on original hardware without savestates. And yes, it was satisfying to point out that I didn't use savestates, but their existence didn’t diminish my feelings of accomplishment.

I think that if in order to enjoy an accomplishment, you have to know that others are being prohibited from that same accomplishment, that if in order to appreciate what you have, you have to know others are without, then you are a bad person, and no one should be encouraging you to think or act that way.

And this is in the context of single player games only. Which is why I think the fromSoftware example you keep going to is a bad example. Souls games have multiplayer components and weren't even that difficult from a mechanical standpoint. Most of their difficulty came from them being obtuse, and the challenge came from figuring out what items did, where to go, what to do when you got there and why you were doing those things in the first place. The community aspect came from everyone pooling their knowledge on the internet. You could argue that someone turning on infinite stamina mode, running to the end and killing Gwyn wouldn't be particularly compelling to watch or play, but it wouldn’t change anything about what made the game good or fun to figure out.

My previous example was pretty explicit with it's rules. Person_B has no way to affect Person_A, can not tangibly damage Action_A and does not prevent the use of Method_A, therefor Person_A is being unreasonable in insisting that Method_B be disallowed solely to serve their need to have a smaller pool of people enjoying Action_A.

Who the people are, what the action is and the methods used are irrelevant provided no tangible harm is done. I don't think you should put ketchup on a steak. it would be unreasonable for me to insist that a restaurant not carry katchup just to prevent the possibility that someone would put it on a steak when I wasn't around to stop them. And only an asshole would be unable to enjoy a steak knowing that somewhere someone if squirting ketchup on a ribeye.

[a327ex]

Value is subjective, you are arbitrarily assigning more value to challenge over having a complete experience.

I'm not doing it arbitrarily. I wrote this article as a direct response to the idea that every game should have an easy mode. I'm simply stating that the perception of value from the perspective of the people who value challenge is also valid.

I think that if in order to enjoy an accomplishment, you have to know that others are being prohibited from that same accomplishment, that if in order to appreciate what you have, you have to know others are without, then you are a bad person, and no one should be encouraging you to think or act that way.

Well, I think this is wrong. Exclusion is valuable and acknowledging that fact and agreeing with it isn't morally wrong. Without exclusion many things in our society wouldn't work properly. If you have something that others don't and you worked hard for it you should be able to feel good about yourself and you shouldn't be ashamed of your achievements and of whatever feelings of superiority you feel over others who didn't manage to achieve as much as you. This is a pretty fundamental set of feelings for people and it's a good part of what drives many people to work hard towards their goals. Maybe you don't like to think about the fact that many people who think like this exist, but they do.

In any case, I think we've reached a point in this discussion where we won't really gain anything more by arguing. We disagree on some basics and no amount of words will change that fundamental disagreement, which is partly driven by our different personalities. However, I would urge you to reconsider assigning poor morals to people who are different from you so easily. Most of the time people simply have different ways of looking at the world and you should try to understand that most of those ways have their validity in different circumstances, even though they may feel disgustingly wrong.

[zerocoolisgod]

To be fair I was not "assigning poor morals to people who are different from" me, I was saying denying people access to something simply so you can feel better about having access to it yourself is wrong. Whether it is a driving motivator for some people or not.

But like you said, I believe you understand my position and disagree with it. Just as I understand and disagree with yours. Thank you for your time.

[suaviant]

Agreed. If the game's too hard don't play or get gud. Setting difficulty levels is for the developer to decide based on whatever logic they want. Let the market decide.