Last night I was talking with one of my friends about one of the titles that made the cut for the IGF competition this year, Super Meat Boy. He doesn't believe SMB should be a finalist because it is not innovative. He tells me people find it innovative for its difficulty and its art style. If this is true, I'd have to agree with him. A high difficulty and 8-bit art style is regressive, not innovative. But then another thought occured to me, and this is what I wish to discuss with you here today. Difficulty can be a catalyst for innovation, or at the very least excellent game design. We have already presupposed that difficulty does not make a game innovative. If a game is too easy however, it will most assuredly be boring for the player. So, where is the middle ground? Difficulty gives players an excuse to become enthralled by your game. It gives them a reason to master gameplay mechanics. What is required then is both intense difficulty and great gameplay if you wish for a difficult game to be recognized as "good". Take the newer generation Ninja Gaiden games as an example. Ninja Gaiden 1 in particular is one of the most difficult games I can remember playing in recent years, and I loved it! I love a challenge in video games and I always have, but overcoming enemies in Ninja Gaiden was truly a cathartic experience, all because of its beautiful mechanics. Let's take a look at Ninja Gaiden from a very objective standpoint, mentioning nothing about its difficulty and see how compelling it appears. You play as a Ninja who must use his clan's sacred sword to fight demons in a series of levels. You fight ninjas, demons, tanks and helicopters. There are many different weapons to use and a few different kinds of Ninjitsu magic available as well. Sounds fairly generic if you ask me. The world itself is not very interesting. It doesn't have the immediate appeal that a description of Bioshock or Deus Ex would have. However, NG shines because of the way it allows the player to 'speak' using its game mechanics. In a game like Mario there are so many verbs available to a player. "Run", "jump", "duck" are all very common of course. In a fighting game you have many verbs available to you, your character's entire move set compromising your potential verbs. All of these verbs are something that the user can 'speak' with. NG is beautifully designed because of the way it allows its player to speak in amazing ways. You are not just saying "jump duck jump run jump". To beat Ninja Gaiden the player is forced to learn how to write poetry using the verbs available. The player must learn how to speak in very long, continuous sentences in order to defeat his opponents and the experience is nothing short of extraordinary. Mastering the gameplay system of Ninja Gaiden is a very difficult experience, but a rewarding one at that. It is not just a matter of numbers. Many fighting games have more moves available to the player than NG does, but NG forces the player to become a master of these moves if they wish to succeed. Some may argue that Ninja Gaiden is too difficult, but I think that is why it is such a special experience. When you beat Ninja Gaiden, you feel you have accomplished something. You have mastered a beautiful, difficult system and used it properly to accomplish your goals. What a rewarding experience! What place do you think difficulty has in games? How is the emergent narrative of playing Ninja Gaiden (I finally defeated this room of ninjas by using X-Y-Z!) juxtaposed with a more traditional narrative of a game such as Heavy Rain, Deus Ex or Bioshock?