How hard should a video game be? Should it tromp on your skull the whole way through until you break multiple controllers in aggravation? Or should it hold your hand throughout, offering a plethora of tutorials and stages easy enough for anyone to complete? Of course, the obvious answer is somewhere in between the two, but I think that it is even a little more complicated than that.
Take dying, for example. Losing a life in a video game is obviously something you want to avoid as often as possible. Heck, in Contra you can only do it three times before you have to start all over again (without the code, of course). So if you are a good player, why should it even happen once? In a perfectly designed game shouldn’t you be able to make it through an entire quest without ever seeing a “Game Over” screen?
Find out why I think so after the jump.
Most gamers would argue that you have to die a lot of times to get better. Kind of like with anything in life, you have to practice something before you can master it. One could never expect to walk onto a football field tomorrow and immediately throw a winning pass without first having months and months of training. You could hand me a trumpet right now and there is pretty much no chance that anything melodious would come out of it. Give me a year, though, and you may have a different story. So why then are video games any different?
When you play Super Mario Bros. for the first time you have no idea how to master it. It takes multiple tries to finally learn what is coming and give you the required skills to make it to the flag at the end of every level, right? Yeah, but that doesn’t make it okay. Video games and video game players alike have grown accustomed to a system of “trial and error” that has become the norm in the industry today. And I think that is a serious problem.
Some games are challenging solely because of their poor game design. Take a game like Total Recall for the NES. That game is downright impossible. Not only are the controls completely wonky, but there is so much stuff being thrown at you at all times that the game just turns into a chore. Add in the fact that there is almost no sense of which way to go in the poorly executed levels and you have a big ol' hot mess. These kinds of games are completely unfair and, even if you were a master game player, could never be beat without dying at least once.
It’s like giving a professional race car driver a car that always gets a flat tire. The driver could be the most talented stock car racer in the world, but if his equipment is bad, he will never stand a chance of winning anything. Games like Total Recall offer no hope for the player whatsoever, regardless of skill level.
Things start to get fuzzy once you focus on games that actually are genuinely well-designed (and well-received). One of my favorite games of last year, Gears of War, has so many things going for it. The graphics are perfection, the control is solid, and the challenge is pretty comparable to what most players are looking for in a successful, entertaining game. But there were plenty of places in Gears where I would die constantly, having to try again multiple times.
I have to admit, the satisfaction I got when defeating an extremely tough enemy was pretty darn rewarding. But how is a game where a player is pretty much guaranteed to die several times at certain parts not considered as sloppily designed as something like Total Recall? Why is it excusable for a gamer to have to keep trying something over and over until he/she finally conquers it?
You may have to humor me on this analogy, but bear with me for a second. If I was a soldier fighting a war I would have to approach each battle with as much strategy and skill as I could muster. It would be real life, so I would only get one shot at whatever I was trying to attempt. Yes, I could throw myself in front of the enemy, bullets flying, screaming at the top of my lungs with my shirt half ripped open (showing the world my impossibly huge six-pack), but that would most likely result in me, well, dying. If I were smart, I would strategize and use all the skills I had learned up to that point to take on the enemy in the best way possible, thus insuring a victory. I would only have one shot -- I would need to make it count.
But if this was a scenario from a video game, I could do whatever I wanted with no real consequences (there is always a checkpoint or continue waiting in the wings). I could hop out from behind a rock, let the enemy kill me, learn its pattern, and try once again (knowing this time what was coming).
If real life battles were akin to something like Devil May Cry 3 no one would ever survive and there would be no victories. I would give you everything I have ever owned if you could show me someone who picked up Devil May Cry 3 for the first time and beat the game without dying once. Seriously, I would even make the same offer if you took the best DMC3 player in the world and asked him/her to do the same thing. It probably wouldn’t happen. Playing video games is a skill all of us have worked hard honing over the years. Shouldn’t we be rewarded for this improvement rather than punished with increasingly harder and more frustrating games? High skill levels should come with benefits!
So what does all this bitching and ranting mean, Chad? What can be done to make you happy? Well, first off, I am very happy. I love video games more than anyone and I don’t mind utilizing “trial and error” to beat most of the games out there. Gosh, I am so used to it after all these years I can’t expect it to change overnight. But there are definitely some things that designers can do to really work on what it means for a game to be “hard.” Challenge should not be based on how many times a game kills you.
First off, get rid of the “cheap tricks.” This is the most common thing games utilize to increase the challenge level and one that I could easily do without. Mega Man 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, but think about how ridiculously hard levels like the Heat Man stage were. In one of the most challenging sections, a set of bricks you must hop across appear and disappear in an obvious pattern. Of course, all of this is done over a molten river, so one wrong jump results in an instant blue explosion (accompanied by that Mega Man death sound we all know too well).
This level is totally classic and a great memory from my childhood, but, honestly, it almost completely relies on the player retrying the jumps over and over again until said pattern is memorized. There is almost no chance of anyone making it past this on the first try. It just isn’t designed that way. Same thing goes for Battletoads, as anyone who has experienced the hover bike sections can attest. Without “trial and error” and memorization those levels would be, literally, impossible. That just doesn’t seem right and is definitely not an example of good design.
Secondly, and maybe most importantly, satisfaction should not come solely from beating a game that killed you more times than any other. I remember patting myself on the back the first time I beat the original Castlevania. Hell, I think I actually threw myself a little parade. It was an immensely satisfying feeling to complete a game that had no shame in throwing effin’ Medusa heads at you while you tried to navigate some narrow gears (yeah, Castlevania, that’s fair).
Just recently, though, I went back to play the game again and realized it was not “fun” hard; it was just “annoyingly” hard. I lost more lives defeating Frankenstein alone than I think I did in God of War in its entirely. And, technically, Frankenstein really shouldn't be that hard when compared to an overly complicated battle with, say, the Hydra!
I am not asking for all games to be so easy that you can’t even die if you tried. Nor am I screaming for the reverse, cheap tricks added to just make the game easier (really, Wind Waker? I only lose half a heart for falling in that pit of lava?). I just challenge game makers to design a game that offers the possibility of completing it without once losing a life. Sure, I guess it is possible to beat any game without dying. I mean, just the fact that it can be beat means there has to be a chance, regardless of how slim it may be. But how much more rewarding would it feel to beat a really hard game because of the skills you learned along the way, not just based on how well you can memorize things.
I am not going to pretend there are any concrete answers (because there may not be). I have a huge respect for video game designers and think almost all the games mentioned above are works of art. It is just time for a change. This is a new generation for the industry and a lot of us are becoming pros at playing video games. Instead of trying to match our mad skills by just ramping up the challenge unfairly, game designers should embrace creative new ways to offer an experience that is both challenging and fair (since you must be curious, I feel like ICO and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time have come the closest so far to perfecting this).
Hopefully the days of the “Game Over” screen are long gone.
Contest:
5:01 PM on 04.20.2007
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Which has LITTLE to do with TIGHT controls, however... if a game is well designed, this plays a BIG role... like MARIO BROS, everyone loves it cause it tight. And simple or not... it all comes down to content and gameplay.
I personally prefer to play a single player game on teh easiest setting. I get absolutely no enjoyment out of defeating an impossibly hard AI character. And often times harded modes just cheat by giving the computer characters more life or more armor rather than making them smarter.
difficulty comes in multiplayer. Killing a really opponent is fun, and the difficulty in that comes completely in teh skill of the other player, at least in a well designed game in which you can't use glitches to cheat.
all in all, good write up Kokomo.
GAME OVER screens suck. Games that I have to RESTART, are often archived in the "not playing that damn thing again" bin, while games that allow saves/retries... yeah, I'll be there all night.
Fuck you David Perry.
As for your soldier in a war analogy, there are instances in warfare where you simply cannot live. Maybe you're the first man to storm the beach or the first man up the ladder. You know you're going to die, but you do everything you can so the men behind you can eventually break through. Video games may have similar scenarios (notably Call of Duty), but hopefully those games have a save or checkpoint system that lets you come back into the game without having to replay long sections.
Of course, the harder the difficulty level, the more you should die unless you're already very skilled at the game. On the easiest difficulty level, I almost expect to rush through the game without dying once. That's the purpose of 'easy', to familiarize yourself with the game before diving into the real challenge. Bonus unlockable material (and achievements) provide incentive to the player to keep coming back.
You also have to remember the purpose of the game itself may not lie in providing sufficient challenge to the player which may result in them dying multiple times throughout the course of the game. Some games are there simply to tell a story, and in which case, death makes no sense and only hinders the game's objective for the player. Who wants to listen to a long narrative half a dozen times while trying to make it to the next save point?
Games like WoW, though, don't give you anything for dying or any advantage most of the time because you have you go to your body and continue. Also, even the hard quests can be done without dieing if you just know how to play your character.
Prey is a step in the right direction, too. The negative side to that is that there is absolutely no penalty to dieing. You just shoot your bow at flying things and get back in.
A great game would be where enemies would have a new strategy every time you die. That way, the machine gun nest wouldn't always be manned, and the guard who patrols a building would be patrolling elsewhere in that area.
Most adventure games, though, you can go through dieing only a few times. Like in Zelda you learn the boss a minute or two into the fight, so your only excuse for dieing is that you suck.
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/walkthroughs/earthwormjimwalk.htm#down
I think the problem you have spouts from the fact that early games, which were dominated by a structure of achieving a high score within a limited amount of attempts (pacman, galaga, centipede edt.) has transfered over onto a narrative model, where the goal is to FINISH and score really is just there to be a reprsentational form of skill.
I see where you are leaning with your article, but based on what you wrote I see no real alternative to the system, a system that I think works well right now. Think of the section in Half Life 2 where you are required to resist a combine onslaught by yourself, but you have 4 auto turrets to aid you. I died at least 10-20 times in that section alone *and loved every attempt*. I felt that the challenge was simple inhuman, and that each attempt did provide me with insight needed to be that one man army that manages to get'r done in all the movies. Games like Gaiden and Devil May cry simply pile this type of situation into as much of the game as possible, and those who do not enjoy trying to win a fight 15 times simply arent into that type of game. In these instances there is no simple memorization involved, but merely a reflection on the process, and a re-application of your attempt, hopefully informed by the attempts that came before. Games without the a game over screen would simply be movies - movies that you had more say in - but movies all the same (maybe you could call them 'Interacties')
There are genres in which there are only one game over screen per level - sports games. In these games every level is a single attempt, and the game over screen is also in many ways the endgame screen. Could this be the kind of answer you're looking for? I do not really think so. What about multiplayer, where failure merely means that another player now has a higher score, and that you have to perform better to catch up? In such instances, every moment is unique, and your failure is due to a complex network of human decisions and interactions, and the endgame is not a 'game over' but again like the sports game a representation of your performance, usually in a scoreboard.
I like the gameover screen, its something to surmount.
Failure conditions (like death) are there as proof of the player's conquest over the challenges placed before them. You can't really win if you can't fail. That said, the degree to which the designer wants to set the risk of setback is relative. Higher risk can mean greater enjoyment; too high of risk has an opposite effect. It's complicated by the fact that someone who likes the challenge in, say, Ninja Gaiden may not think much of the challenge in Super Paper Mario, and vice versa.
A lot of these designs come from original arcade games (as others have mentioned) which were designed to have failure as addicting as possible... keep victory in sight but have the player be a split-second away from needing to plug another quarter.
But then, a lot of it is lazy Do It Again Stupid design:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=336
encore.
@everyone,
No, it is not a picture of a penis. Although I now see exactly why you would think so. Ick. Sorry about that. :)
Cheers,
Bradley
It's one of a kind, and it doesn't mean that it's a easy game.
As for difficulty, I am a major proponent of Ninja Gaiden (xbox). The game is hard as fuck, and it's a challenging, fun kind of hard, at least for me. It killed me a hell of a lot, but whenever I won through to the next save point, I felt it was due to skill, rather than memorization. Maybe that's just me, though. I felt that Ninja Gaiden, in the end, rewarded skill over memorization or number of tries. You would be a god if you could beat it without dying, but it's certainly possible.
I don't really see video game death as the negative that you seem to, Chad. The only time I have a real problem with death is when one of two things occur: 1) surviving requires memorization i.e. repeated death, or 2) the game can 100% guaranteed kill you if it decides to. Notable examples of option 2 include certain fighter and RPG bosses. A game can be as hard as hell and kill me innumerable times, so long as I feel that it's rewarding skill first and foremost. Because in such a game, if I die, I think "well, I shouldn't have sucked so hard."
With the "rule of three" (name coined by me to inflate it's importance and sound impressive), gamers get a choice, and we're all about choices.
Overly easy games can be a turnoff, but so can the impossible games. When you have to work so hard at a game that it almost resembles work, then it starts getting out of the fun range for me.
I really don't mind dying in games, except in RPGs. While playing an RPG I tend to get a little OCD about my characters dying.
The answer is not so much how fun it is, but how well it sells. The mainstream will more often buy a game where you don't die, while the hardcore will demand a challenge and a thousand player deaths. This is really ust another thing developers need to consider on who they plan to market their products to.
I enjoy hard ass games like Megaman and Ninja Gaiden but at the same time I think certain genres need to be kept to a certain challenge.
I beat some SRPG's the first time through without blowing a battle; Shining Force II and FM4, maybe some others. I beat Sonic 3 the first time through without seeing a continue screen. ... But there are a lot of games out there that just punish you for buying them. I don't like that.
I like a sense of accomplishment when I'm playing a game. It's really the reason I play. But it shouldn't be because its just hard.
I'm not saying there should be a Potsmoker difficulty where you can't lose and the music never stops, (except in some games... Oh, yeah - that's a feature, there) but I believe strongly that Easy difficulty should be easy enough that the average ten-year-old can beat it without suffering like the book of Job.
Fortunately, some RPGs have gotten the difficulty feature down pretty well. Skies of Arcadia, for example. The boss fights are long enough so that winning is the real reward, but they aren't so tedious that you just want to get it over with and continue with the story. And losing is just a slap on the wrist (I think), but you DO have to start the fight over. IIRC. So that's punishment enough. Unlike a complete game over or a "Har har, time to go through those 3 tedious and impossible stages again, Luigi! KILL YOURSELF NOW"
I think RE4 is pretty good with this too. It's hard, and chances are you'll die a few times, but the deaths aren't too easy on you or too hard. And if you beat the game once, you can probably beat the entire game without dying if you're careful and skilled enough. To me, the chainsaw-guy intro isn't even hard anymore. Not to brag..
Back near christmas, I decided to take a break from the 3d consoles and I borrowed a NES and a duffel bag full of games from a friend of my brother's. I popped in MM4. I got in the first stage and felt nostalgia when I heard the stage introduction. Then I got into the stage. I must have died near 20 times before I got to the boss and even then he laid down an unholy rampage of destruction on my ass. But even though I was losing, I was having fun! This was a game that would be like "Fuck you, you suck. Start over till you get it right" whenever you made a mistake. It would get a little easier once you used common sense (boss weaknesses), but even when you had the uber weapon against a boss it wouldn't let you walk away with one hell of a fight. The sense of accomplishment that came with fighting all those bosses, going to Wily's place, fighting those bosses again, and defeating Wily was astounding. Even then, it wouldn't come easy getting there (I forget which MM this was in, but I do remember this crazy segment at Wily's place where you had to use Time Man's time freeze to fall while avoiding all these beams that would oneshot you. Just getting past that was a damn good accomplishment.
Gaming industry, I beg of you, please give us more games like this.
And if you can, make a new MM game that is actually worth a shit or two.
And that's a bad thing, as far as I can tell. Without the challenge, you might as well read a book or watch a movie. The game will all but continue without you, so what's the point in playing? Mashing the attack button for victory is not a strategy, it's a placebo. It makes it feel like you're winning, but you're not. You're pressing a single button. It's nothing more than turning the page to continue the story as far as I'm concerned.
A game that makes you earn victory fairly is a game to be appreciated. Ninja Gaiden was hard, yes, but it was fair. The enemies could be beaten if you took the time to master the weapons and learn how to defend yourself, not rushing blindly in mashing a single button (although rushing certainly does work against some enemies when you've got the skills down).
A game that poses no challenge is not fair. Fairness implies that all parties are equal, therefore, only games in which the player is matched with opponents of equal skill are fair. Games in which the player is an overpowered killing machine that cannot be stopped by anything short of a scripted death or capture sequence are not fair, they are wholly biased toward the gamer.
No one could brag about finishing an easy game and yet, even years later, you can say "I finished Ninja Gaiden" and people will say "Really? I couldn't get passed the purple chick on level 7! That's awesome!"
A game that comes to mind that involved character death to being permanent unless a certain course of action was taken before hand is an old DOS game that's abandonware now. I can't remember the title but it was set in feudal Japan and the goal was for your character to climb the ranks of the Japanese feudal system. In that game you could get married if you had enough honor or influence or whatever and have an heir. The only way you could continue if your character died was if you had an heir.
Anyway, I liked some of the ideas you brought up in your article. I would love to see some more games like Shadow of the Colossus where you can figure out what you're doing wrong without dieing so easily.