[In this in-depth article, originally printed in Game Developer magazine, designer Boutros takes a close look at difficulty in games, asking how creators can add unique, high-end challenges which excite, but don't frustrate skilled players.]
Difficulty modes in games are rarely discussed as an
important factor in our business. In some games, they are well-thought out
additions, built for the hardcore players. In other games, these modes are an
afterthought, provided to appease a publisher, or as an attempt to provide
direction to multiple audiences attracted by the same product.
For almost all
developers though, difficulty modes are tackled at the end of the project when
the game is being tuned, and they are tough to implement well without
significant time and thought.
For this piece, I'll aim to explore some methods and
philosophies behind how difficult play has been successfully implemented in
games overall, either in terms of general difficulty, or within an optional
objective that recontextualises play (such as Rare's super-tough multiplayer
bonus unlockable objective in GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64).
We'll explore where certain methods have worked, failed, and
where they are simply not relevant anymore. Since difficulty is so subjective,
I'll focus arguments around the following ideas:
"A player must always feel like the failure of a
challenge is entirely his own responsibility, and not a fault of a poorly
designed product."
"The player must understand how and why he failed, so
that he can learn from his mistake and increase the feeling of failure being
his responsibility."
Choosing a high difficulty is the act of wanting to be
tested on the part of the player. The reward of passing a test is a feeling of
worth and accomplishment-and to make a test enjoyable is to make it
challenging, while also achievable. Tuning difficulty in a quick and dirty way
can also change the game's play fundamentally-this is something many developers
don't factor into their decisions enough.
Tuning for Tough
Many games have sought to copy Rare's N64 GoldenEye model
for greater difficulty - double damage from enemies = harder game - but within the
context of other factors, doing this can actually change the consistent play
type of the game, and thus change the experience in a fundamental and arguably
unsatisfying way.
Let's say there's a fictitious FPS called NaziShoot 2000. In
this game's normal difficulty mode, the player can usually get shot, have a
second to think, recover, then react. In tough mode, players cannot risk being
shot as the increased damage and AI kills them almost instantly.
This forces
players to move and act more conservatively. In an ideal-world's well-designed
tough game, it would be possible to play through and not die, if the player
used the utmost care and thoughtfulness. However, this game had to hit a
deadline so the tough mode had to be evolved from the normal mode, and tuned to
a formula. In this memorizing bottleneck scenario, surprise snipes to the head,
and learning from trial and error become the dominant way to play.
And there is the difference: whereas one mode is a
reactionary and lightly memory-reliant experience, in the tough mode, the game
becomes very classically rooted in trial and error, using memory play as the
core consistent play type. The only way a player can survive with meager
resources and a damage disadvantage is by trying, dying, remembering, and
restarting.
This is a classic tenet of the old school 2D arcade
shooters. In a 3D game where an additional axis dramatically adds to your
things-to-worry-about radar, control complexity is usually increased, and
gameplay acts-core gameplay sequences such a shooting something and then
grabbing a power-up-are spread across a longer timeline because of the physical
world's scale increase. If the player can be killed in one hit, or by other
fatal game features, this can often result in an intense feeling of
frustration, and quite possibly lead to dissatisfaction with the game overall.