I've never been a fan of difficulty in video games. I tend to play in Normal or Easy and don't stick to video games that resist me too much.
For the longest time, I thought I was a sore loser, an all-around impatient player(to the point of being bad, no doubt)or just someone who draws too clear a line between games and work to appreciate hardships in a game. I still think all of those things are true to some extent.
But then I played Super Meat Boy and enjoyed it immensely. I was not repelled by the game's in-your-face difficulty. I died thousands of times and kept trying for more.
That led me to believe that there are two kinds of difficulty: the Right and the Punishing.
I compared tons of games I played, some for countless hours, others for mere minutes, and I came up with the following definition.
The Definition
The difficulty in a video game is Right (by opposition to Punishing) if most of the times the player loses:
- He/she feels like he/she died through faults of his/her own.
- He/she has a clue as to what must be done to improve and/or overcome the pitfall.
At face value, both conditions seem completely subjective. In the exact same situation, Player A will feel cheated, while Player B will see something he/she did wrong and get an idea for next time. Of course, no matter the game, there will always be some players who'll deem it a cakewalk and some who'll never be able to survive 2 minutes past the tutorial phase. Let's forget about the extremes and even the individuals for a second, to focus on the majority.
How do you make sure most people will feel like it is their fault if they lose? How do you give players clues as how to improve?
The rules
There ARE things the game designers should pay attention to, if they aim to craft an experience that will not turn most gamers off through unwarranted punishments. Here are some (not all) of those things in no particular order:
Rule 1: Fine tune the damn controls!
Never is frustration greater for the player than when he had the right idea but could not convey it in time to its avatar... because the controls failed him/her.
Finicky controls and complex commands are only fine if the related actions are not performed under stress.
Rule 2: Err on the side of the player
Say the controls are as fine-tuned as they can possibly get, yet there is still doubt as to what the player really intended to do. For instance, when the player targets with an analog stick, there will be times when it is impossible to determine exactly what the player was aiming for.
Let us say the game computes 48% chance of something sensible, like the next platform on the way to the exit or the enemy right in front of the avatar, and 52% chance of something utterly silly, like a fall to the avatar's death or the torch just next to the enemy's head...
The game should err on the sensible side. Chances are, that's what the player really wanted to do. If not, most players won't hold it against the game.
Rule 3: Feed back
There might be a perfectly sound chain of consequences between the player's actions and its avatar's untimely death, but that logic is void if it plays in the shadows, behind the player's back.
There has to be some way for the player to tell what's happening, especially if what's happening results in a game over. It doesn't have to be obtrusive like a blinking red screen or verbose like a detailed numerical account of damage dealt. It can be a tiny icon with a helpful tooltip when hovered, a color code, a specific animation, anything that will be seen and eventually identified by the player so that he/she will see what leads from A to B to C to Game Over.
Rule 4: Don't rub it in
Losing sucks.
The game or the player or both had set a goal, a score to break...and it failed. The avatar died, haphazardly crumbling like the mass of polygons it is, while a voice actor's throat was slit in the background... The player's rank has decreased, the "Indestructible" achievement is forever lost, the section has to be replayed yet again, the player's friends will make fun of him/her for days, another match-making session has started and will last at least fifteen minutes and the player feels the bitter taste of failure.
That is enough. There is no need for further punishment beyond what is required structurally. Seriously, there is never any need for horrendously long death sequences, already seen yet unskippable cut-scenes, shortages of checkpoints that induce waste of hours of gameplay or insane death penalties that serve no purpose other than deter players from daring plans.
One of the things that make Super Meat Boy such a gem is the way it rewards the player for dying: the more you die, the more awesome the replay video you're treated to. It doesn't make losing fun (it never is), but it makes it bearable.
Rule 5: Consistency over Realism
Games do not inherently need to be realistic. They are entertainement and, as such, they provide an escape from reality.
If we put aside so-called "serious games" that really are simulation softwares, no game is ever truly realistic. Sure, you might find here and there guns and cars that behave frighteningly close to how the real thing would... but what about the setting? Right.
Does it matter that your elven avatar has magical powers? That the Destroyer of Nations was killed for the 939729532nd time today? That you're surrounded by undead clones hungry for your brains? None of those things are realistic. But they're fun for millions of players, so who cares?
The problems arise with inconsistency.
It is perfectly fine to wield an incredibly powerful italian hunk who can hold on to a ledge by two fingers for 2 weeks in a row, fend off a hundred trained and armored soldiers barely breaking a sweat and fall down 200 feet without a scratch. But why on Earth can he not move furniture around?!?
In the space between what should logically be, in cohesion with the rest of the game universe, and what is actually implemented, there lie hurdles that will surely feel unjustified.
Ultimately, every game has to set its own rules. If game designers do not want their players to bang their heads on the wall yelling "WHYYYYYY?!?!", they would do well to actually decide on those rules, write them down and follow them themselves.
Rule 6: Do not half-tutor
There was a time not so long ago when tutorials were rare. Most games expected the player to read the manual or to figure stuff out on their own. Some hardcore gamers say that age was golden and that games should never take the player by the hand. I am anything but a hardcore player myself and I love to be eased into a game through a good tutorial.
I could probably write a pamphlet twice as long as this one on what makes a tutorial bad or good... for now, let's focus on just one thing: half tutorials. By that, I mean tutorials that introduce the player to only part of the mechanics in place in the game (usually the most easy to explain, which tend to be the most obvious and easily figured out on one's own).
Game designers. Please. Do not ever do that. If you're going to show the ropes, show all the ropes. Do not explain parts of what is needed to play and then throw the player to the wolves with the illusion that he/she is ready to fend for him/herself. That will result in blood, tears and betrayal charges vehemently screamed at the innocent screen.