Video games are more popular than they’ve ever been before. In general, they’re also easier than they’ve ever been, and one can assume that these two facts are closely related. Developers do not want to alienate gamers, and it’s probably good for the industry as a whole when a gamer can get through a relatively short campaign with ease so that they can go buy the next big, massively marketed, AAA title. But are video games becoming too easy?
A cursory glance at the shooter genre, which has largely stagnated over the last decade, suggests that challenge isn’t a key ingredient of the recipe; for challenge, you’ll have to go online and get destroyed by a twitchy fourteen year old.
In games like the Call of Duty franchise and its many clones, the flow of gameplay is largely similar. Players rush forward to the most sensible piece of cover the environment provides, clear out a wave of enemies, and then continue on to the next piece of cover. If they die, then the game often restarts them at the same hoard of enemies they were working on, effectively losing only a couple minutes of progress. The risk is minimal, and with patience, one can always butt their head against the wall until they wear it down. By the end of the game, a player has barely improved or grown in any measurable way. The problem is that this kind of design fails to fully engage the player; they hardly have to pay attention and are rarely tasked with solving any of the problems the game throws their way. It can get a bit mindless.
Of course, with the amount of money that goes into the development of stories and graphics, it’s understandable that a company will want a gamer to see all the work they put in. But often, these stories, which tend to be hackneyed and contrived, are only present because they’ve become industry standard. After all, wouldn’t it be weird at this point to play a shooter that doesn’t give you some lame excuse for killing whomever? It’s a design choice that creates shooters that feel less like games and more like artificially prolonged, poorly written movies.
Occasionally, there are games that appeal to the challenge seekers out there. The Dark Souls series and its success proves that there are a ton of gamers who want an experience that forces them to learn how to succeed. Unfortunately, even this series has started to do a bit too much hand holding. Better items drop earlier in the games now, allowing players to get stronger, sooner, so long as they know where to go. Another issue is in how enemies disappear from a player’s world once they’ve been killed too many times, even if the player dies and is forced to respawn. On one hand, this prevents exploitive farming techniques. On the other hand, if a player is unable to clear a section between checkpoints in its entirety and has to attempt it again and again, the section becomes easier as the hoard thins out. The monsters the player kills over and over on their way to the monsters that kill the player over and over just up and leave, allowing the player to reach deeper into the section with their health intact. But what if the player wanted to overcome that section? The challenge that brought them to the game just pandered to their temporary ineptitude before they had the chance to improve.
Nintendo solves this problem in an interesting way. Virtually everybody has enjoyed Super Mario Bros . in some form at some point. In its original form, players had to learn the game so that they could traverse its worlds successfully before they depleted all of their lives. Losing didn’t make the game less fun, and the design did everything it could to teach players how things worked while they were playing. It was, in essence, a giant puzzle with simple controls and a colorful, fun atmosphere. Nintendo understands that some players want this experience from their games. They also understand that others just want to see the game in its entirety. So what did they do?
For the last decade, Super Mario games have contained items that make the game easier for players if they consistently fail a level. These items have taken many different forms and have helped players in a variety of ways. They might warp a player to the goal. They might allow them to fly over obstacles. They might just control the character for them, showing the player how to complete the level. But what they don’t do is force themselves on the player. Unlike the Dark Souls example, if I’m doing poorly in a Super Mario title and one of these items appears, I have the ability to say “oh, screw that,” and ignore the patronizing thing.
Nintendo proves that there are solutions to this problem, and developers do not have to ignore their general audience in order to cater to those who crave more of a challenge. Too many games are a virtual tour through some scenery. That’s fine for some gamers. Others want games that require them to overcome obstacles. They want to be tasked with improving. Appealing to both of these groups is just a challenge developers are going to have to solve.