“accessibility means options, not easy gameplay.”
April 9, 2019 8:25 AM Subscribe
'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice' Needs To Respect Its Players And Add An Easy Mode [Forbes] ““It's time, once again, to revisit an old saw. It was true of Dark Souls 3, it was true of Bloodborne, it was true of all the other From Software games and will keep being true until the only acceptable conclusion: one of these games finally puts in an easy mode. That hasn't happened yet, and so here we are. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice needs an easy mode. Hello, old saw. I'll be honest, it's not that nice to see you again.”
“There's a lot of talk about "respecting the player" when it comes to not including an easy mode, an idea that all players can and should play this game in this particular, punishing way. And yet I think the lack of an easy mode showcases the exact opposite. It shows an almost stunning lack of respect for players with the idea that they cannot be trusted with their own gameplay experience, that even those who want a challenging game would somehow be lured by the siren song of lower difficulties and destroy their own experience because they're too impatient or immature to know what they actually want.”• The Difficulty of "Easy" Modes in Games [The Hollywood Reporter]
“In Sekiro, players take control of a shinobi warrior in a fantastical reimagining of Sengoku period Japan. While the game has received positive reviews (it currently sits at 90 percent on review aggregate Metacritic), its gameplay presents a steep challenge. Players must be quick with button inputs and moves of the joystick, while enemies can bring upon death and "Game Over" screens with a single blow. "I think most of the conversation is being missed," says Arthur Daniel Gilbert, a contributing writer for disabled gaming publication Can I Play That? Gilbert is an avid gamer who has limited mobility caused by his muscular dystrophy. "One segment of the population is confusing accessibility with difficulty. We're not saying we want the game to be easy, which is subjective, we’re asking for options in games to make game mechanics more accessible to people, not to make it easy to beat. We like challenging games, too." Joshua Straub, found of DAGERSystem.com, a video game review website for disabled gamers, has a different opinion. "Accessibility should support a developer's vision, not override it. I have done consults where there were certain choices a developer made, and I gave them a heads up that their vision for the game is not as accessible as it could be if altered, but the bottom line is the developer has ultimate control over the title, and I think that's a good thing."”• An Easy Mode Has Never Ruined A Game [Kotaku]
“Sekiro and other From Software games aren’t necessarily about being “hard” in the first place—not specifically, at least. They are, as FromSoftware director Hidetaka Miyazaki said, about letting “players experience a sense of accomplishment through overcoming difficulties.” As accessibility expert Ian Hamilton noted on Twitter, there are many ways this could be accomplished. Would this mean that some players might miss whatever point the game is trying to make? Sure. Movies with closed captioning for the hearing impaired are making a concession, tacitly acknowledging that a fundamental part of the experience will not be appreciated. It’s also possible, as an able-bodied, neurotypical human being, to completely miss the point of a film and believe yourself to be right. Games, like just about every other art form, don’t always explain their creator’s intent. Not all of it. That’s for us to sort out. And there’s nothing wrong with letting more of us try.”• Sekiro, Baba Is You and the politics of video game difficulty [The Guardian]
“The scale of Sekiro’s challenge has ignited an oddly charged debate about difficulty in video games. In the medium’s formative, arcade-based years, a game’s challenge was an economic concern. Too easy and players would hog the machine without spending extra credits, making the game a poor earner; too difficult and no one would bother to play. When video games moved into our homes, the pay-per-play model disappeared; now designers could make a game as forgiving or brutal as they liked. Most tried to accommodate varying levels of player ability or physical capacity by offering multiple difficulty settings. In recent years, however, there has been a trend for games that, like Sekiro or Sudoku, demand players rise to an unmodifiable challenge. Some progressives believe that games should be accessible to allcomers, offering in-built concessions to those unable, for whatever reason, to progress. Difficulty, they argue, is a weapon used to exclude – an issue for an industry that has, in the past, harmfully cultivated an audience of near-fanatical young men. Others counter that the calibration of difficulty is, in essence, an artistic choice. To demand a designer “dumb down” their game is akin to asking for a monosyllabic edition of the works of Proust. You might gain readers in doing so, but at what cost?”• It’s not about easy mode: FromSoftware and the question of video game difficulty [The Spinoff]
“What one player finds to be just the right level of challenge, another player will find laughably easy, and still another player will find insurmountable. Some players will get never get past the first boss of a FromSoftware game; others are out there beating them using Rock Band instrument controllers or nothing but voice commands. It’s worth noting that accessibility often features heavily in these discussions, though “accessibility”, as the word is often used in the context of video games, often conflates two related but distinct issues. One is the question of whether games should, as much as possible, let players with disabilities access a game in the same way as abled players. Spider-Man, God of War, and Uncharted 4 all offer a variety of settings for things like how subtitles display and changing those “mash a button” commands to let you just hold the button down instead. The other interpretation of “accessibility”, and what I’m dealing with here, is how the level of challenge built into a game’s design can make it difficult for players, disabled and abled alike, to progress through it.”• God of War director: accessibility isn't at odds with creative vision [Gamasutra]
“From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice ignited the conversation about difficulty in video games, or, as the conversation went on, the relationship between accessibility and a developer’s creative vision. It’s a conversation that’s had accessibility advocates and developers alike chiming in about the accessibility options games can and often offer players to make them playable and enjoyable by a wider audience. Cory Barlog, director of Sony Santa Monica’s recent 2018 release God of War, weighed in on the issue on Twitter, offering a succinct: “Accessibility has never and will never be a compromise to my vision.” In God of War's case, the game offers four difficulty settings, named for the different ways players choose to experience the game (Give Me A Story, Give Me A Balanced Experience, Give Me A Challenge, Give Me God of War) rather than as ‘easy, normal, hard’.”“To me, accessibility does not exist in contradistinction to anyones creative vision but rather it is an essential aspect of any experience you wish to be enjoyed by the greatest number of humans as possible.” [via: @corybarlog]
We discussed the Game Maker's Toolkit previously here on Metafilter, but I think this video is the beginning and end of the discussion.
Difficulty is a part of the art and presentation, but an outright refusal to make the game accessible means that your art is exclusionary. If we're fortunate to not die, we all eventually age into disability. Gaming should be for everyone, not just a core of younger, able-bodied people.
As an artist, it's within your rights to do what you like. As a critic, it's within mine to opine that you're making the wrong choice, and that your "artistic vision" is flawed.
posted by explosion at 8:43 AM on April 9, 2019 [30 favorites]
Difficulty is a part of the art and presentation, but an outright refusal to make the game accessible means that your art is exclusionary. If we're fortunate to not die, we all eventually age into disability. Gaming should be for everyone, not just a core of younger, able-bodied people.
As an artist, it's within your rights to do what you like. As a critic, it's within mine to opine that you're making the wrong choice, and that your "artistic vision" is flawed.
posted by explosion at 8:43 AM on April 9, 2019 [30 favorites]
Yeah, easy mode is a no brainer. The only reason From's games have the long tail they do is because experienced players who find the shipped game now trivially easy because of their mastery of the skills will impose new challenges, like not levelling, or using absurd weapons (like soup ladles), or Guitar Hero controllers to give themselves a challenge.
Denying the desires of people who want an easy mode just makes the potential audience for the game smaller, which is on the face of it ... a stupid business decision.
And yeah I'm the guy who will play a game for the fifth on fiftieth time through on Nightmare mode or UltraViolence or whatever because I'm not done with being in the world yet but still want a physical challenge.
> What are its treasures?
Typically with games the treasure is the enjoyment of learning a new system, solving puzzles whether in game mechanics or in the game world itself, and experiencing a new world or story.
Basically, games are long-form fiction with a skill-testing question. And the question, imo, should be largely optional.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:45 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Denying the desires of people who want an easy mode just makes the potential audience for the game smaller, which is on the face of it ... a stupid business decision.
And yeah I'm the guy who will play a game for the fifth on fiftieth time through on Nightmare mode or UltraViolence or whatever because I'm not done with being in the world yet but still want a physical challenge.
> What are its treasures?
Typically with games the treasure is the enjoyment of learning a new system, solving puzzles whether in game mechanics or in the game world itself, and experiencing a new world or story.
Basically, games are long-form fiction with a skill-testing question. And the question, imo, should be largely optional.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:45 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
It does seem to me, mostly a videogame outsider insofar as playing goes but who reads a lot of Fizz's posts about videogames and who played videogames a lot for a lot of their very early (arcade through Sonic) years...
...that it seems like maybe these "this game is impossible for anyone other than those who really can play well games" are sort of the equivalent of abstract jazz or really brutal experimental theater or marathon-length art house movies, or those galleries where everything in them is sort of alienating and questionable. "Oh, this art can only be appreciated if you are willing to endure it enough to understand it."
Like, yeah, I get it, if you can play the same level 40 times you'll figure out the right mash of buttons (something I will never be able to do because modern controllers confuse me). But playing a level 40 times? Unless it's actually fun to play (Sonic was fun to play -- way too much fun), why would you try matching your twitchy impulses against a semi-processor more than 10 or 12 times? Like, if it's fun, yeah! I learned patterns for Pac-Man extending well into the gold keys. It was fun!
Anyway, I think Easy mode should be there for much more than just disabled people. It should be there for the truly casual gamer. Like, if you've created an AAA game, you've got a story worth telling through this medium, then if some people choose to go for the narrative shouldn't be discouraged, should they? Or is the point of your game to be that they play a game and you don't have a real narrative? Well, make that clear. But don't try to mix the two and then tell some people "Sorry, you don't get the narrative because you can't move your fingers in the right way" unless your narrative is actually shit and you know people playing your game only care about finger-twitching.
posted by hippybear at 8:45 AM on April 9, 2019 [20 favorites]
...that it seems like maybe these "this game is impossible for anyone other than those who really can play well games" are sort of the equivalent of abstract jazz or really brutal experimental theater or marathon-length art house movies, or those galleries where everything in them is sort of alienating and questionable. "Oh, this art can only be appreciated if you are willing to endure it enough to understand it."
Like, yeah, I get it, if you can play the same level 40 times you'll figure out the right mash of buttons (something I will never be able to do because modern controllers confuse me). But playing a level 40 times? Unless it's actually fun to play (Sonic was fun to play -- way too much fun), why would you try matching your twitchy impulses against a semi-processor more than 10 or 12 times? Like, if it's fun, yeah! I learned patterns for Pac-Man extending well into the gold keys. It was fun!
Anyway, I think Easy mode should be there for much more than just disabled people. It should be there for the truly casual gamer. Like, if you've created an AAA game, you've got a story worth telling through this medium, then if some people choose to go for the narrative shouldn't be discouraged, should they? Or is the point of your game to be that they play a game and you don't have a real narrative? Well, make that clear. But don't try to mix the two and then tell some people "Sorry, you don't get the narrative because you can't move your fingers in the right way" unless your narrative is actually shit and you know people playing your game only care about finger-twitching.
posted by hippybear at 8:45 AM on April 9, 2019 [20 favorites]
Extremely fast innate reflexes and pattern-recognition/memorization are shortcuts to progress. I'm having a blast playing Sekiro but insisting that all players have really strong natural capabilities is like saying that all basketball must be played against, at a minimum, strong amateur players in their early 20s. Getting too old to keep up? Too bad, stop playing. In the real world, middle-aged people play sports against other middle-aged people and it's a fair matchup and everybody has a good time and benefits. There's no insistence that the game is only valid at its "highest" level.
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:46 AM on April 9, 2019 [14 favorites]
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:46 AM on April 9, 2019 [14 favorites]
Also, shout out to Celeste which has one of the most accessible difficulty sliders/tool-sets in any game I've ever encountered.
posted by Fizz at 8:48 AM on April 9, 2019 [19 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 8:48 AM on April 9, 2019 [19 favorites]
(This is particularly painful for me on the Souls games because I really enjoy the process of moving through the game world, exploring, figuring out how to 'solve the puzzle' of beating each enemy... and then I hit a boss fight and it's just frustrating stress-hate for a few days while I die over and over and over and eventually get lucky and my finger never slips and my reflexes never fail and I finally pull it off. But I never really feel like I'm _that much better_ when I beat the boss, just lucky that last time. And then I'm back to the explore-and-experiment game I'm enjoying!)
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:49 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:49 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Which boss were you stuck at, Fizz?
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:50 AM on April 9, 2019
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:50 AM on April 9, 2019
A more classic and entirely different version of this problem was the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy text game which had a puzzle early on which a giant percentage of the people who bought and started the game could never get past and so the whole thing died on the vine right there. There was so much more beyond that one thing for people to explore and enjoy, but they mostly all crapped out right there.
posted by hippybear at 8:51 AM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 8:51 AM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
I finally beat Dungeon of the Endless last week, after 53 attempts and 80+ hours. Its difficulty settings are 'easy' and 'very easy.' (I won on easy.)
It's a strategy game with effectively zero plot,
and the reward for winning is a slightly animated still shot: who needs a cut scene? And like many rogue likes, it's Fermi Great Filters as game design... So winning is really a statement about figuring out a number of strategy puzzles, more than twitchiness. (But, of course, that's not an argument against including a lower difficulty setting, which they did.)
posted by kaibutsu at 8:51 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
It's a strategy game with effectively zero plot,
and the reward for winning is a slightly animated still shot: who needs a cut scene? And like many rogue likes, it's Fermi Great Filters as game design... So winning is really a statement about figuring out a number of strategy puzzles, more than twitchiness. (But, of course, that's not an argument against including a lower difficulty setting, which they did.)
posted by kaibutsu at 8:51 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
So - I have never been a "twitch response gamer" - even back in the days when I was young and we went to "arcades", I would find my quarters disappearing far too rapidly.
As well - I am a very casual gamer, I might only play solidly for a week or two per year (post-Christmas break when I have some time off, the weather is bad and, well... why not), other than that, I might play 2-3 hours per week.
Therefore, if a game doesn't have an "easy mode", I am not gonna play it. (And... heck, even on easy, I am typically hilariously bad the first run through (I am looking at you PS4 Spider-Man, amazingly beautiful game, way too many button combinations for me to remember and mash quickly)...).
posted by jkaczor at 8:53 AM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
As well - I am a very casual gamer, I might only play solidly for a week or two per year (post-Christmas break when I have some time off, the weather is bad and, well... why not), other than that, I might play 2-3 hours per week.
Therefore, if a game doesn't have an "easy mode", I am not gonna play it. (And... heck, even on easy, I am typically hilariously bad the first run through (I am looking at you PS4 Spider-Man, amazingly beautiful game, way too many button combinations for me to remember and mash quickly)...).
posted by jkaczor at 8:53 AM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
I saw a great tweet from a person with a disability that was something to the effect of "people who are living their lives in Easy Mode who want to prevent people who are living their lives in Difficult Mode from enjoying the same games they do." (Sorry I don't have a link to the actual tweet.)
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:54 AM on April 9, 2019 [33 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:54 AM on April 9, 2019 [33 favorites]
Which boss were you stuck at, Fizz?
Iudex Gundyr, that second half of the fight where he turns into a giant rat monster, he just gets so aggressive I have trouble keeping up. Maybe I should play another class, I always play as a knight.
posted by Fizz at 8:54 AM on April 9, 2019
Iudex Gundyr, that second half of the fight where he turns into a giant rat monster, he just gets so aggressive I have trouble keeping up. Maybe I should play another class, I always play as a knight.
posted by Fizz at 8:54 AM on April 9, 2019
If given accessibility options I think I would probably go for them pretty quickly. Mainly because challenge and frustration is not what I come to games for. I loved Super Meat Boy but never finished it. So I went to YouTube to see all the other levels that I knew I'd never get to see. Not entirely sure that was ideal for myself or for the developer. Maybe I didn't get the "full" or "real" experience but I got more of an experience by watching it on YouTube than I did from stopping playing the game entirely.
I feel a lot of the purists who oppose accessibility are the same type of people who have gone through shitty experiences, see those experiences as somehow positive or transformative and now want others to have to go through those same shitty experiences. As if though something earned by hardship is lessened when others earn it (whatever nebulous definition of "it" has) through less hardship.
They should just stick to playing Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy which is effectively a whole game about frustration and deliberate mechanical unfriendliness towards the player (with a pleasant voice over encouraging you to keep trying when you inevitably fail). No one was making a point of an easy mode for that game because it is so clearly and explicitly the intent of the game to be repellent. From games could be enjoyed without the difficulty; as per the first article, there is more there than just pure difficulty.
posted by slimepuppy at 8:55 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
I feel a lot of the purists who oppose accessibility are the same type of people who have gone through shitty experiences, see those experiences as somehow positive or transformative and now want others to have to go through those same shitty experiences. As if though something earned by hardship is lessened when others earn it (whatever nebulous definition of "it" has) through less hardship.
They should just stick to playing Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy which is effectively a whole game about frustration and deliberate mechanical unfriendliness towards the player (with a pleasant voice over encouraging you to keep trying when you inevitably fail). No one was making a point of an easy mode for that game because it is so clearly and explicitly the intent of the game to be repellent. From games could be enjoyed without the difficulty; as per the first article, there is more there than just pure difficulty.
posted by slimepuppy at 8:55 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
I mean, if you believe that games are art (is that still a debate that’s happening?) then calling for them to make it “easier”, whatever that means, isn’t really valid, is it? This is the game they wanted to make. It’s not like refusing to put closed captioning into a tv show.
At any rate, throwing accessibility into this isn’t correct. Has anyone tried playing Sekiro with the Xbox adaptive controller? I wonder how it works.
posted by Automocar at 8:59 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
At any rate, throwing accessibility into this isn’t correct. Has anyone tried playing Sekiro with the Xbox adaptive controller? I wonder how it works.
posted by Automocar at 8:59 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Basically, games are long-form fiction with a skill-testing question. And the question, imo, should be largely optional.
This is a popular viewpoint, that games are narrative fiction with a crank attached which you have to turn to get at the story, and it baffles me. Are there not better sources of narrative fiction? If you want to throw the crank away and just get at the story, wouldn't it make more sense to just read a book? Isn't the history of games best characterized as a series of lightly themed tests of skill instead? What is the plot of Tetris? Can you remove the skill testing from Tetris and just enjoy the narrative?
posted by IjonTichy at 9:01 AM on April 9, 2019 [17 favorites]
This is a popular viewpoint, that games are narrative fiction with a crank attached which you have to turn to get at the story, and it baffles me. Are there not better sources of narrative fiction? If you want to throw the crank away and just get at the story, wouldn't it make more sense to just read a book? Isn't the history of games best characterized as a series of lightly themed tests of skill instead? What is the plot of Tetris? Can you remove the skill testing from Tetris and just enjoy the narrative?
posted by IjonTichy at 9:01 AM on April 9, 2019 [17 favorites]
Gaming should be for everyone, not just a core of younger, able-bodied people.
Gaming should be accessible, yes. But should all games ?
I don't think that making a game harder or easier has any real bearing on it's value, per se. I don't think a game is better or worse because it's harder.
I mean, if we view the production of a game as similar to other works (novels, movies, etc.) then, I feel that the difficulty of the game is part of the artistic vision. It's more of a concern that the game is well served by that choice, and that the choice well executed.
This means that I miss out on some experiences, sure. But I also thought Mulholland Drive was a stupid movie.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:03 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Gaming should be accessible, yes. But should all games ?
I don't think that making a game harder or easier has any real bearing on it's value, per se. I don't think a game is better or worse because it's harder.
I mean, if we view the production of a game as similar to other works (novels, movies, etc.) then, I feel that the difficulty of the game is part of the artistic vision. It's more of a concern that the game is well served by that choice, and that the choice well executed.
This means that I miss out on some experiences, sure. But I also thought Mulholland Drive was a stupid movie.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 9:03 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
We've Always Made Our Own Easy Modes. 'Sekiro' Is No Exception. [Waypoint]
posted by The Bellman at 9:03 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by The Bellman at 9:03 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
I think the "Sekiro *must* have an easy mode" argument really misunderstands the reason why From's games are popular at all.
I remember when Demon's Souls came out, and people were talking about this mysterious, weird Japanese game that was really, unusually hard: no quicksaves! If you died, you had to start the level again in soul form with 50% of your health gone! Anything could kill you at any time! Every now and then other players would invade your world and try to steal your body so they could escape soul form themselves!
In 2009 that was amazing - there was nothing else like it!
Take away those things and it would have just been a kind of clunky, bizarrely complicated (world tendency?) action-RPG with an interesting but incomprehensible story, and 10 years later it would be as well known as King's Field (that is: almost totally unknown outside of a small band of enthusiasts).
From know what they're doing. Adding a straightforward easy mode to one of their games *might* sell a few more copies of that game, but they'd lose in the end.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 9:05 AM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
I remember when Demon's Souls came out, and people were talking about this mysterious, weird Japanese game that was really, unusually hard: no quicksaves! If you died, you had to start the level again in soul form with 50% of your health gone! Anything could kill you at any time! Every now and then other players would invade your world and try to steal your body so they could escape soul form themselves!
In 2009 that was amazing - there was nothing else like it!
Take away those things and it would have just been a kind of clunky, bizarrely complicated (world tendency?) action-RPG with an interesting but incomprehensible story, and 10 years later it would be as well known as King's Field (that is: almost totally unknown outside of a small band of enthusiasts).
From know what they're doing. Adding a straightforward easy mode to one of their games *might* sell a few more copies of that game, but they'd lose in the end.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 9:05 AM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
Isn't the history of games best characterized as a series of lightly themed tests of skill instead? What is the plot of Tetris?
Bad example. Tetris starts out very slowly, and builds up the challenge. In fact, if people want a challenge, they enter codes/options to start much faster to skip the "easy" part.
Tetris would have never gotten popular or even have become a cultural touchstone if the game *started* on ludicrous speed.
posted by explosion at 9:07 AM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
Bad example. Tetris starts out very slowly, and builds up the challenge. In fact, if people want a challenge, they enter codes/options to start much faster to skip the "easy" part.
Tetris would have never gotten popular or even have become a cultural touchstone if the game *started* on ludicrous speed.
posted by explosion at 9:07 AM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
Are there not better sources of narrative fiction?
Isn't the history of games best characterized as a series of lightly themed tests of skill instead?
Apples and oranges and in this particular conversation, I feel we're talking about the future of games, not the history. The story of Red Dead Redemption 2 is weaker than many(/most) other Western fiction. Spending 100+ hours in that world exploring at my own pace and direction is something that cannot be replicated by any other medium.
posted by slimepuppy at 9:09 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Isn't the history of games best characterized as a series of lightly themed tests of skill instead?
Apples and oranges and in this particular conversation, I feel we're talking about the future of games, not the history. The story of Red Dead Redemption 2 is weaker than many(/most) other Western fiction. Spending 100+ hours in that world exploring at my own pace and direction is something that cannot be replicated by any other medium.
posted by slimepuppy at 9:09 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
they mostly all crapped out right there
EAT analgesic
posted by jkaczor at 9:11 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
EAT analgesic
posted by jkaczor at 9:11 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
I was talking with a friend about Sekiro last night and he said it is basically ALL about learning to do counters. "Sounds like a fighting game," I said. And he agreed. I've never enjoyed fighters, no matter how gorgeous they are.
Some games are not for everyone. I enjoyed my time with a couple of the Souls games and Bloodborne (especially BB, I spent one dreary Seattle winter escaping to Yharnam), but if From wants to go down this path then I will shrug and play games by other people that are willing to make games for filthy casuals like myself. There are plenty of companies making sprawling, beautiful games that are happy to hold my hand throughout the entire game. Like I could go play Bayonetta 2 or 3, I'm sure that has the easy mode the first one did despite being a game that owes a lot to fighters.
Games are art and part of that art is how much suffering and grind do you want the payer to experience. This is a game focused on a lot of a kind of suffering I don't think I'll enjoy.
(Not that it really matters for Sekiro anyway; I made a resolution long ago that I was done playing big-budget games that force me to be a dude.)
posted by egypturnash at 9:11 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Some games are not for everyone. I enjoyed my time with a couple of the Souls games and Bloodborne (especially BB, I spent one dreary Seattle winter escaping to Yharnam), but if From wants to go down this path then I will shrug and play games by other people that are willing to make games for filthy casuals like myself. There are plenty of companies making sprawling, beautiful games that are happy to hold my hand throughout the entire game. Like I could go play Bayonetta 2 or 3, I'm sure that has the easy mode the first one did despite being a game that owes a lot to fighters.
Games are art and part of that art is how much suffering and grind do you want the payer to experience. This is a game focused on a lot of a kind of suffering I don't think I'll enjoy.
(Not that it really matters for Sekiro anyway; I made a resolution long ago that I was done playing big-budget games that force me to be a dude.)
posted by egypturnash at 9:11 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Anyway, I'm just really disappointed that Sekiro, which is right in my wheelhouse (obviously, as a thousand-hour+ From games player) doesn't have a character creator. I will not play a game where I have to play as a dude. So, I'll be sitting this one out.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:12 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:12 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
I 100% view them as art and come to that conclusion, this is the game and experience they wanted us to experience or not. Like, it feels too much like a movie to tone down symbolism and explain itself explicitly, or to expect an art installation in a gallery to pare down to just a straightforward 2d painting.
"Like, if you've created an AAA game, you've got a story worth telling through this medium, then if some people choose to go for the narrative shouldn't be discouraged, should they? Or is the point of your game to be that they play a game and you don't have a real narrative? Well, make that clear. But don't try to mix the two and then tell some people "Sorry, you don't get the narrative because you can't move your fingers in the right way" unless your narrative is actually shit and you know people playing your game only care about finger-twitching."
Thing is with a game, these are not distinct things, or they are not always. Part of the narrative is you and your interaction. If you can't move your fingers in the right way, that's where the narrative ends. It's not reading a book, the point isn't to shepard you along word by word to the end. If videogames were a book, the pages would fight you, make you struggle, forge your own path, find some weird trick to advance a few pages, words would dance around and sometimes folks don't finish (which is true of regular books anyway).
A videogame that ends because the player cannot, will not, or does not want to advance is just another way to complete the game and experience, it's a strength of the medium.
Not everything is for everyone and nor should it be. Most things aren't for very many and never have or will be and it's not like a crime against humanity. The game itself is fairly accommodating, vastly more accommodating than the Souls titles. edit: Of course in the time of writing and posting this, the above two comments are outright dismissals of the entire work because of the PCs perceived gender, and I know there would be others who would refuse to play this is the character was depicted as a woman, and others who wouldn't if it was a third thing.
An interesting thing about videogame critique is how casually people will insist the artists and creators "should" do this or that, their critiques come with a prescription, an expectation and/or demand for change. That isn't something a lot of other mediums deal with in the same way. It would be weird to go up to a musician and tell them they should change their song to suit the requester.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:12 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
"Like, if you've created an AAA game, you've got a story worth telling through this medium, then if some people choose to go for the narrative shouldn't be discouraged, should they? Or is the point of your game to be that they play a game and you don't have a real narrative? Well, make that clear. But don't try to mix the two and then tell some people "Sorry, you don't get the narrative because you can't move your fingers in the right way" unless your narrative is actually shit and you know people playing your game only care about finger-twitching."
Thing is with a game, these are not distinct things, or they are not always. Part of the narrative is you and your interaction. If you can't move your fingers in the right way, that's where the narrative ends. It's not reading a book, the point isn't to shepard you along word by word to the end. If videogames were a book, the pages would fight you, make you struggle, forge your own path, find some weird trick to advance a few pages, words would dance around and sometimes folks don't finish (which is true of regular books anyway).
A videogame that ends because the player cannot, will not, or does not want to advance is just another way to complete the game and experience, it's a strength of the medium.
Not everything is for everyone and nor should it be. Most things aren't for very many and never have or will be and it's not like a crime against humanity. The game itself is fairly accommodating, vastly more accommodating than the Souls titles. edit: Of course in the time of writing and posting this, the above two comments are outright dismissals of the entire work because of the PCs perceived gender, and I know there would be others who would refuse to play this is the character was depicted as a woman, and others who wouldn't if it was a third thing.
An interesting thing about videogame critique is how casually people will insist the artists and creators "should" do this or that, their critiques come with a prescription, an expectation and/or demand for change. That isn't something a lot of other mediums deal with in the same way. It would be weird to go up to a musician and tell them they should change their song to suit the requester.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:12 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
The sheer joy I had last night in going from being utterly destroyed by a boss to being able to effortlessly dodge it's first phase attacks and beat it's butt so hard it *ran away from me* howling was sublime.
I often summoned NPCs or other players in Dark Souls, but I'm actually very, very happy I can't here. The sense of mastery I'm getting from learning patterns is really special. Anyway, that's all I've got. Thanks, From.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:15 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
I often summoned NPCs or other players in Dark Souls, but I'm actually very, very happy I can't here. The sense of mastery I'm getting from learning patterns is really special. Anyway, that's all I've got. Thanks, From.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:15 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
If you asked me how many of my own video games that I beat, as a kid, the percentage would be fairly low, probably right around half, or less than half. I still like video games. Sure, make an argument about difficulty in games, if you want, but don't equate it with respecting your customers. Sekiro and similar DO respect the people that play them; that's why they're popular. These games just happen to be a minority right now - it doesn't mean that they should have all their pointy bits sanded off so they'll match the AAA 'adventure' of the week.
posted by destructive cactus at 9:16 AM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by destructive cactus at 9:16 AM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
I also think it's interesting that this question of difficulty and whether it should be adapted for different audiences seems to come up more for games than for any other medium. My experience of reading Pynchon, for example, has largely (aside from Crying of Lot 49) been that I simply cannot follow them. I have since given up and concluded that his books are not for me. I have not, instead, insisted that he should have created several different versions of his books, each adapted for a different audience of people who are more vs. less familiar with the techniques of postmodernist fiction.
posted by IjonTichy at 9:18 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by IjonTichy at 9:18 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
The question I have for people who always talk about how a game is meant to be played a certain way (the hard or difficult way) is: "How is my playing differently (assuming I have this as an option) interfering with the way you play yours?"
posted by Fizz at 9:19 AM on April 9, 2019 [15 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 9:19 AM on April 9, 2019 [15 favorites]
This whole conversation takes on a tone of "your fun is wrong" so fast, it's amazing.
posted by nubs at 9:20 AM on April 9, 2019 [23 favorites]
posted by nubs at 9:20 AM on April 9, 2019 [23 favorites]
Difficulty is a part of the art and presentation, but an outright refusal to make the game accessible means that your art is exclusionary. If we're fortunate to not die, we all eventually age into disability. Gaming should be for everyone, not just a core of younger, able-bodied people.
As an artist, it's within your rights to do what you like. As a critic, it's within mine to opine that you're making the wrong choice, and that your "artistic vision" is flawed.
I'm not a gamer, but from the outside, this is an interesting question because it abuts two different ideas of art and access, neither exactly wrong, but difficult to combine in a popular format. Some art is exclusionary by necessity for requiring more from audience to understand it. Making it easier can directly contradict the experience/understanding being offered.
A Godard movie is as easy or difficult as Godard's methods and ideas allow, asking him to lessen that doesn't make sense because that is all that is on offer and the value being put forth, for better or worse. Everyone of course has the right to criticize Godard for what they take away from the work, but its artistic importance comes from the deeper engagement that isn't of interest to most other than those deeply invested in his particular examination of history/filmhistory/thought.
At the same time, art that relies on commercial appeal does tend to find ways of making itself both accessible and simultaneously complex in ways that can benefit both the casual enjoyment seeker and those interested in exploring some more involved thought process behind or around the works. Shakespeare, Hitchcock, Tolstoy, all work on both an "easy" and "hard" mode in that way, where Godard, Joyce, or Berg often work more to demanding more from the audience for to gain "enjoyment".
Video games as popular arts seem more in the latter position, but holding them to just that position seems to create a limit to the form which could potentially block some avenues for growth, again for better or worse.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:20 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
As an artist, it's within your rights to do what you like. As a critic, it's within mine to opine that you're making the wrong choice, and that your "artistic vision" is flawed.
I'm not a gamer, but from the outside, this is an interesting question because it abuts two different ideas of art and access, neither exactly wrong, but difficult to combine in a popular format. Some art is exclusionary by necessity for requiring more from audience to understand it. Making it easier can directly contradict the experience/understanding being offered.
A Godard movie is as easy or difficult as Godard's methods and ideas allow, asking him to lessen that doesn't make sense because that is all that is on offer and the value being put forth, for better or worse. Everyone of course has the right to criticize Godard for what they take away from the work, but its artistic importance comes from the deeper engagement that isn't of interest to most other than those deeply invested in his particular examination of history/filmhistory/thought.
At the same time, art that relies on commercial appeal does tend to find ways of making itself both accessible and simultaneously complex in ways that can benefit both the casual enjoyment seeker and those interested in exploring some more involved thought process behind or around the works. Shakespeare, Hitchcock, Tolstoy, all work on both an "easy" and "hard" mode in that way, where Godard, Joyce, or Berg often work more to demanding more from the audience for to gain "enjoyment".
Video games as popular arts seem more in the latter position, but holding them to just that position seems to create a limit to the form which could potentially block some avenues for growth, again for better or worse.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:20 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
I sort of thought this was a solved problem in videogames by now; in most video games the "masocore" gamers will always play on the hardest difficulty setting available and will completely ignore the existence of lower difficulty settings, I've never heard of that segment of gamers getting mad or upset that those lower difficulty settings exist. And then if that's not hard enough they'll add extra challenges to make it harder for themselves; look at the ridiculously-detailed rules for ghosting Thief (full disclosure, ghosting Thief 2 is probably the hardest video game achievement I've ever done). That's just been the way of things since, oh, the original Oregon Trail, if not before.
So, you're not necessarily making your game more appealing to the masocore gamers by making "extremely difficult" the only setting. You're certainly not making it more appealing to the filthy casuals who will never consider "is good at [Video Game X]" a worthwhile skill to have on their resume. And you're not even making it more appealing to the mid-range gamer who maybe likes the idea of a hard game but also likes to have options other than "get so frustrated you break your controller" when they hit a patch that's particularly difficult for them. So who is it for? If the game dev is doing it purely for themselves, their own artistic integrity, that's a perfectly valid choice, but they shouldn't pretend they're doing it for any other reason than that.
posted by mstokes650 at 9:21 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
So, you're not necessarily making your game more appealing to the masocore gamers by making "extremely difficult" the only setting. You're certainly not making it more appealing to the filthy casuals who will never consider "is good at [Video Game X]" a worthwhile skill to have on their resume. And you're not even making it more appealing to the mid-range gamer who maybe likes the idea of a hard game but also likes to have options other than "get so frustrated you break your controller" when they hit a patch that's particularly difficult for them. So who is it for? If the game dev is doing it purely for themselves, their own artistic integrity, that's a perfectly valid choice, but they shouldn't pretend they're doing it for any other reason than that.
posted by mstokes650 at 9:21 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
I think the "Sekiro *must* have an easy mode" argument really misunderstands the reason why From's games are popular at all.
I haven't played Sekiro yet, but I think you misunderstand why Demon's Souls became popular.
It wasn't its punishing difficulty. There are plenty of difficult games, and ramping up difficulty is arbitrarily easy. It was because the game subverted expectations, and when you did die, it was often because you had messed up.
You would die, that was part of the mechanics, but once you learned to curb your overconfidence, to tailor your attacks to the different monsters, to approach it like a tactical game instead of a hack-and-slash, it was challenging, but not mechanically punishing.
The games also have a lot of hidden lore. There's a complete story that is discovered only in the footnotes, that's one of the reasons why people keep playing Souls games.
The community also is more than willing to call out bullshit. Sen's Fortress in Dark Souls 1, or the final boss of Demon Souls stealing a level from you were roundly criticized as not being fair.
Souls games were not supposed to be brutal reflex tests, and invasions have always been optional. Dark Souls let you play in multiple effective ways, from a high-reflex parry machine, to a highly armored tank, to a cheesy ranged wizard. The beauty was in figuring out how to make your preferred style work, not in how to mold yourself into the game's definition of success.
posted by explosion at 9:23 AM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
I haven't played Sekiro yet, but I think you misunderstand why Demon's Souls became popular.
It wasn't its punishing difficulty. There are plenty of difficult games, and ramping up difficulty is arbitrarily easy. It was because the game subverted expectations, and when you did die, it was often because you had messed up.
You would die, that was part of the mechanics, but once you learned to curb your overconfidence, to tailor your attacks to the different monsters, to approach it like a tactical game instead of a hack-and-slash, it was challenging, but not mechanically punishing.
The games also have a lot of hidden lore. There's a complete story that is discovered only in the footnotes, that's one of the reasons why people keep playing Souls games.
The community also is more than willing to call out bullshit. Sen's Fortress in Dark Souls 1, or the final boss of Demon Souls stealing a level from you were roundly criticized as not being fair.
Souls games were not supposed to be brutal reflex tests, and invasions have always been optional. Dark Souls let you play in multiple effective ways, from a high-reflex parry machine, to a highly armored tank, to a cheesy ranged wizard. The beauty was in figuring out how to make your preferred style work, not in how to mold yourself into the game's definition of success.
posted by explosion at 9:23 AM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
Also: one of the problems that game designers have to deal with is the fact that, given a choice between a fun, high-risk/high-reward way to play and a tedious, low-risk/low-reward way, a lot of players choose the latter. And then get bored, and go online to complain about the game being dull and "grindy".
From knows exactly what would happen if they started adding truly easy modes: players would encounter the first real challenge (say, the bonfire in Central Yharnam), bash their heads against it a few times without thinking very hard about how to beat it (it's super easy with a little thought), restart on a lower difficulty, cruise through in a few hours without needing to engage with any of the game's depth and then go and complain about spending $60 on a short, boring game with a story that makes no sense.
They might lose a few players this way, but the ones who stay tend to *really* like these games. I've lost count of the number of times I've read a variation on "I gave up at Gascoigne, but a year later I tried again and it clicked and now all other games taste like ashes in my mouth".
That's why From keeps making these games, and why they sell millions of copies.
(Even then, all of the Souls games plus Bloodborne do have an easy mode: summoning other players to help (there are other easy modes too, like sorcery in Dark Souls 1). They just don't have the kind of "press button to overcome current challenge" easy mode that some people seem to want; you have to approach them on their own terms, and actually think about how they need to be played. Sekiro doesn't have summoning and is a bit trickier as a result, although it has other accommodations and is totally worth the effort.)
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 9:26 AM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
From knows exactly what would happen if they started adding truly easy modes: players would encounter the first real challenge (say, the bonfire in Central Yharnam), bash their heads against it a few times without thinking very hard about how to beat it (it's super easy with a little thought), restart on a lower difficulty, cruise through in a few hours without needing to engage with any of the game's depth and then go and complain about spending $60 on a short, boring game with a story that makes no sense.
They might lose a few players this way, but the ones who stay tend to *really* like these games. I've lost count of the number of times I've read a variation on "I gave up at Gascoigne, but a year later I tried again and it clicked and now all other games taste like ashes in my mouth".
That's why From keeps making these games, and why they sell millions of copies.
(Even then, all of the Souls games plus Bloodborne do have an easy mode: summoning other players to help (there are other easy modes too, like sorcery in Dark Souls 1). They just don't have the kind of "press button to overcome current challenge" easy mode that some people seem to want; you have to approach them on their own terms, and actually think about how they need to be played. Sekiro doesn't have summoning and is a bit trickier as a result, although it has other accommodations and is totally worth the effort.)
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 9:26 AM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
Before I got PSVR, the only games I played were Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Dark Souls II. I've done solo minimal level builds (took ~5 1-2 hour attempts of practice against the Four Kings), heavy/slow weapon builds, no armor builds. Generally sorcery/archery I've stayed away from. As a 40+ year old with a family, I don't really have (or make time) for gaming, so I want to min/max my gaming. Dark souls is a challenge for me while being nice looking, fun and just feels right to me.
Sadly, I only finally bought Dark Souls III right around the time that I got PSVR. I've played less than an hour on it. PSVR has killed flat gaming for me. While I think Dark Souls would be horrible (I'd be so sick) if it were done like Skyrim VR, I suspect Dark Souls would work pretty well in an astrobot/Thesus style 3rd person method. At least my youngest who still lives at home gets some good use out of DS3.
My current addiction is Beat Saber, which does have multiple difficulty levels. Easy, even when I first started playing was just boring. Normal "felt" right when I first started, but by the time I got the DLC, I played all of the levels (and won) my first time on Hard, and haven't bothered with Normal. There's currently only 2 songs I can't pass on Hard with faster song selected. I still can only beat about 6 levels on Expert; Expert+ is ridiculously hard to me. If this game only came with Expert, or Expert+ mode I don't think I could have gotten into it, and likely would have felt it to be a waste of money.
posted by nobeagle at 9:28 AM on April 9, 2019
Sadly, I only finally bought Dark Souls III right around the time that I got PSVR. I've played less than an hour on it. PSVR has killed flat gaming for me. While I think Dark Souls would be horrible (I'd be so sick) if it were done like Skyrim VR, I suspect Dark Souls would work pretty well in an astrobot/Thesus style 3rd person method. At least my youngest who still lives at home gets some good use out of DS3.
My current addiction is Beat Saber, which does have multiple difficulty levels. Easy, even when I first started playing was just boring. Normal "felt" right when I first started, but by the time I got the DLC, I played all of the levels (and won) my first time on Hard, and haven't bothered with Normal. There's currently only 2 songs I can't pass on Hard with faster song selected. I still can only beat about 6 levels on Expert; Expert+ is ridiculously hard to me. If this game only came with Expert, or Expert+ mode I don't think I could have gotten into it, and likely would have felt it to be a waste of money.
posted by nobeagle at 9:28 AM on April 9, 2019
"The question I have for people who always talk about how a game is meant to be played a certain way (the hard or difficult way) is: "How is my playing differently (assuming I have this as an option) interfering with the way you play yours?""
It doesn't affect how someone else plays, but in some circumstances joy is derived from the commiseration of experiences and corresponding triumphs and failures. If everyone is playing the same game on the same level, they can relate with one another and share similar catharsis or tips in a way that doesn't work if everyone is playing their own thing. "Hooray I just beat [really challenging section]" and someone else is "Pfft, you had trouble with that, I breezed through it [because this person is playing a fundamentally different work of art]." Like, someone who sees and movie and someone who just read the Wikipedia synopsis and some online essays might be able to talk about the same movie together but they absolutely did not have the same experience with it.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:28 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
It doesn't affect how someone else plays, but in some circumstances joy is derived from the commiseration of experiences and corresponding triumphs and failures. If everyone is playing the same game on the same level, they can relate with one another and share similar catharsis or tips in a way that doesn't work if everyone is playing their own thing. "Hooray I just beat [really challenging section]" and someone else is "Pfft, you had trouble with that, I breezed through it [because this person is playing a fundamentally different work of art]." Like, someone who sees and movie and someone who just read the Wikipedia synopsis and some online essays might be able to talk about the same movie together but they absolutely did not have the same experience with it.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:28 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
From know what they're doing. Adding a straightforward easy mode to one of their games *might* sell a few more copies of that game, but they'd lose in the end.
And to add another facet: the used market for games puts pressure on your retail new price, and thus demand from retailers. If you look at flagship games they all have some token 'don't put this disc back on the market yet' endgame content gimmick. Chrono Trigger had 13 endings and NewGame plus. Mario Odyssey has an online competitive speedrun mode. BoTW has Koroks and the DLC. Dark Souls has PvE/PvP multiplayer.
Sekiro doesn't have any multiplayer at all, so they're kind of left with a different strategy: delaying the endgame. This has a long tradition in console gaming. Some games were just arcade ports where the difficulty was directly part of the profit model: the more you lost, the more you paid. But that carried over into the NES, as well as an additional twist: the rental market. Battletoads was outright designed to be hard enough that you couldn't beat it in a single rental. And it's a highly well regarded title, despite how few people have seen anything beyond the Turbo Speeder level.
posted by pwnguin at 9:30 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
And to add another facet: the used market for games puts pressure on your retail new price, and thus demand from retailers. If you look at flagship games they all have some token 'don't put this disc back on the market yet' endgame content gimmick. Chrono Trigger had 13 endings and NewGame plus. Mario Odyssey has an online competitive speedrun mode. BoTW has Koroks and the DLC. Dark Souls has PvE/PvP multiplayer.
Sekiro doesn't have any multiplayer at all, so they're kind of left with a different strategy: delaying the endgame. This has a long tradition in console gaming. Some games were just arcade ports where the difficulty was directly part of the profit model: the more you lost, the more you paid. But that carried over into the NES, as well as an additional twist: the rental market. Battletoads was outright designed to be hard enough that you couldn't beat it in a single rental. And it's a highly well regarded title, despite how few people have seen anything beyond the Turbo Speeder level.
posted by pwnguin at 9:30 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Joyce's Finnegans Wake needs an easy mode. It's all in weird puns and allusions that you need to resort to the FAQ to sort out, and those Thunderwords are impossible to read.
posted by egypturnash at 9:32 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by egypturnash at 9:32 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Developers have absolutely no obligation to value my engagement, as a disabled person, with their games. Their artistic vision is theirs to pursue, as are their profits. But y'know what? I really don't think the world needs more art aimed at no audience broader than those with privilege. If you are really unable to make your work accessible without compromising your vision, I think you have to ask whether your vision is actually very compelling, or whether it simply relies upon eliciting comfortable responses in your peers.
Representing a lack of accessibility as an artistic necessity is not, I would suggest, a winning move. I think it opens a game to a much broader range of legitimate criticism than simply saying "it was too much work" would, and reflects worse upon the developers overall.
posted by howfar at 9:39 AM on April 9, 2019 [31 favorites]
Representing a lack of accessibility as an artistic necessity is not, I would suggest, a winning move. I think it opens a game to a much broader range of legitimate criticism than simply saying "it was too much work" would, and reflects worse upon the developers overall.
posted by howfar at 9:39 AM on April 9, 2019 [31 favorites]
Maybe not in all cases, certainly most videogames do not revolve around the stati difficulty and challenge in the same way Sekiro does. Accessibility for disabled gamers is important, but as a specific title, it's a weird one for the conversation to have crystalized around, considering the hundreds of games released between now and Sekiro's launch that have accessibility issues that would not fundamentally impact the games and/or artworks by changing or addressing the issues.
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:44 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 9:44 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
I haven't played Sekiro yet, but I think you misunderstand why Demon's Souls became popular.
It wasn't its punishing difficulty. There are plenty of difficult games, and ramping up difficulty is arbitrarily easy. It was because the game subverted expectations, and when you did die, it was often because you had messed up.
You would die, that was part of the mechanics, but once you learned to curb your overconfidence, to tailor your attacks to the different monsters, to approach it like a tactical game instead of a hack-and-slash, it was challenging, but not mechanically punishing.
That's all true - but it was the lack of an easy mode that forced players to engage with the game like that, even if it meant failing at the same boss 48 times before finally defeating it (because there was no other way).
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 9:47 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
It wasn't its punishing difficulty. There are plenty of difficult games, and ramping up difficulty is arbitrarily easy. It was because the game subverted expectations, and when you did die, it was often because you had messed up.
You would die, that was part of the mechanics, but once you learned to curb your overconfidence, to tailor your attacks to the different monsters, to approach it like a tactical game instead of a hack-and-slash, it was challenging, but not mechanically punishing.
That's all true - but it was the lack of an easy mode that forced players to engage with the game like that, even if it meant failing at the same boss 48 times before finally defeating it (because there was no other way).
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 9:47 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Accessibility for disabled gamers is important, but as a specific title, it's a weird one for the conversation to have crystalized around, considering the hundreds of games released between now and Sekiro's launch
It's the one that the gatekeepers chose to push back on. Most other games, people will amplify the voice and say, "oh I never thought of that. Yeah, they should fix that!"
This game, folks are intentionally saying, "no, they should not fix accessibility issues."
It's also the state of the medium/industry. After seeing robust, well-thought-out accessibility options in BRUTALLY HARD games like Celeste, people are realizing that difficulty and accessibility aren't at odds. Sometimes it's just a watershed moment.
posted by explosion at 9:52 AM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
It's the one that the gatekeepers chose to push back on. Most other games, people will amplify the voice and say, "oh I never thought of that. Yeah, they should fix that!"
This game, folks are intentionally saying, "no, they should not fix accessibility issues."
It's also the state of the medium/industry. After seeing robust, well-thought-out accessibility options in BRUTALLY HARD games like Celeste, people are realizing that difficulty and accessibility aren't at odds. Sometimes it's just a watershed moment.
posted by explosion at 9:52 AM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
Not having an easy mode is fine, not great but eh.
What irks me more are things like Cuphead's easy mode locking you out from the true ending. That really feels like a fuck you from the developers since they already did the work, already proved it was possible but they still thought it was a good idea to punish the player.
posted by Memo at 9:54 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
What irks me more are things like Cuphead's easy mode locking you out from the true ending. That really feels like a fuck you from the developers since they already did the work, already proved it was possible but they still thought it was a good idea to punish the player.
posted by Memo at 9:54 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
The question I have for people who always talk about how a game is meant to be played a certain way (the hard or difficult way) is: "How is my playing differently (assuming I have this as an option) interfering with the way you play yours?"
Yes! Every explanation I've seen, including the ones in this thread, have a distinct whiff of gatekeeping and entitlement about them. We don't make excuses for the whiny babies that get angry over FemShep or a black guy in Battlefield, and we shouldn't be making excuses for a fraction of a game's fans that are threatening to throw temper tantrums or not buy the game or harass subsets of gamers because someone else will be able to play it in a way they don't like.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:55 AM on April 9, 2019 [16 favorites]
Yes! Every explanation I've seen, including the ones in this thread, have a distinct whiff of gatekeeping and entitlement about them. We don't make excuses for the whiny babies that get angry over FemShep or a black guy in Battlefield, and we shouldn't be making excuses for a fraction of a game's fans that are threatening to throw temper tantrums or not buy the game or harass subsets of gamers because someone else will be able to play it in a way they don't like.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:55 AM on April 9, 2019 [16 favorites]
An artistic vision that hinges on excluding people based on their physical capabilities is a bad artistic vision. Nothing about including easier modes or accessibility options prevents developers from messaging what the intended core experience is. Adding features to slow down the game, replace repetitive button presses with holds, color blind modes, etc. are no different from including resolution settings or controller configuration options in this regard. I mean, playing with a $10 no-brand gamepad with weird button mappings or using low quality graphics cause you don't have a beast gaming rig is certainly different than what the developers envisioned, but every new PC game somehow manages to support those just fine without compromising the art. I think the developers could manage this too. Nintendo games shouldn't require motion controls.
posted by umrain at 9:55 AM on April 9, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by umrain at 9:55 AM on April 9, 2019 [17 favorites]
Every explanation I've seen, including the ones in this thread, have a distinct whiff of gatekeeping and entitlement about them.
I'll take the probably-quite-assailable position that demanding to 'be respected' with an easy mode is actually entitlement. I've bought books that I do not have the time or concentration to get through - do the authors owe me satisfaction? If I buy Infinite Jest do I get a Finite easy-to-diGest mode? If not, why are games treated separately from other works?
posted by destructive cactus at 10:09 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
I'll take the probably-quite-assailable position that demanding to 'be respected' with an easy mode is actually entitlement. I've bought books that I do not have the time or concentration to get through - do the authors owe me satisfaction? If I buy Infinite Jest do I get a Finite easy-to-diGest mode? If not, why are games treated separately from other works?
posted by destructive cactus at 10:09 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
"It's the one that the gatekeepers chose to push back on. Most other games, people will amplify the voice and say, "oh I never thought of that. Yeah, they should fix that!"
This game, folks are intentionally saying, "no, they should not fix accessibility issues.""
For this game, the creator made a deliberate choice on it's difficulty and hinges the game on it. It makes sense in context of the game and why this game in particular has that defense.
" We don't make excuses for the whiny babies that get angry over FemShep or a black guy in Battlefield, and we shouldn't be making excuses for a fraction of a game's fans that are threatening to throw temper tantrums or not buy the game or harass subsets of gamers because someone else will be able to play it in a way they don't like."
The aggrieved party in this are people who want an easier mode or other changes, and won't play or simply do play with their own third-party solutions (in my eyes the ideal solution to getting the changes a player wants without forcing the creators to compromise their work). I don't think anyone has an issue with someone else playing the game the way they like, nobody is mad at individuals for choosing to cheese fights or use tool--assistance. The friction comes from people who do not like something about the game and then assert their critique as something the creators SHOULD change the game about, as if it were the developers role to always change their work until everyone likes it.
"If not, why are games treated separately from other works?"
I think this is fundamental to the issue here, videogames are not widely seen as art in the same way most mediums are, not even the same tepid respect that film and television get as mediums. To be fair, the industry itself muddies the waters and many videogames are not meant to be works of art in any capacity, just addictive casino services or transaction generating skinner boxes. Beyond that, people also often see the primary utility of videogames to be games, which is understandable since the medium very unfortunately has the deeply misleading word "games" in itself. Videogames are also more malleable, Kanye's TloP was the only album I know of to receive multiple content patches post-release, most art mediums a work is published and never really touched again. In videogames, if enough people gripe about something, sometimes the thing itself gets changed and updated.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:09 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
This game, folks are intentionally saying, "no, they should not fix accessibility issues.""
For this game, the creator made a deliberate choice on it's difficulty and hinges the game on it. It makes sense in context of the game and why this game in particular has that defense.
" We don't make excuses for the whiny babies that get angry over FemShep or a black guy in Battlefield, and we shouldn't be making excuses for a fraction of a game's fans that are threatening to throw temper tantrums or not buy the game or harass subsets of gamers because someone else will be able to play it in a way they don't like."
The aggrieved party in this are people who want an easier mode or other changes, and won't play or simply do play with their own third-party solutions (in my eyes the ideal solution to getting the changes a player wants without forcing the creators to compromise their work). I don't think anyone has an issue with someone else playing the game the way they like, nobody is mad at individuals for choosing to cheese fights or use tool--assistance. The friction comes from people who do not like something about the game and then assert their critique as something the creators SHOULD change the game about, as if it were the developers role to always change their work until everyone likes it.
"If not, why are games treated separately from other works?"
I think this is fundamental to the issue here, videogames are not widely seen as art in the same way most mediums are, not even the same tepid respect that film and television get as mediums. To be fair, the industry itself muddies the waters and many videogames are not meant to be works of art in any capacity, just addictive casino services or transaction generating skinner boxes. Beyond that, people also often see the primary utility of videogames to be games, which is understandable since the medium very unfortunately has the deeply misleading word "games" in itself. Videogames are also more malleable, Kanye's TloP was the only album I know of to receive multiple content patches post-release, most art mediums a work is published and never really touched again. In videogames, if enough people gripe about something, sometimes the thing itself gets changed and updated.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:09 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
What I find kind of hilarious about this debate is that all it seems to take is one reasonably high-profile game to be a bit hard, when there are more games with actual easy modes coming out each month than anyone could play through in 10 years, and suddenly anyone who defends it is "gatekeeping". What? How many eyes on the inside do you need for this to make sense?
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 10:09 AM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 10:09 AM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
"A videogame that ends because the player cannot, will not, or does not want to advance is just another way to complete the game and experience, it's a strength of the medium."
Y'know, when I stopped playing "Beyond Good and Evil" because I couldn't beat a hovercraft racing sequence (BG&E is NOT a driving game, I wouldn't have purchased it if it was), my reaction was not "Ah joy! I have completed my game! What a strength of the medium that this one challenge I cannot surmount means that I cannot enjoy and participate in the entire rest of the game that I was very much enjoying up until this point!"
But then, I'm one of those people who gleefully employed the Corprus Cheat in Morrowind to up my Strength & Endurance attributes, because what I really cared about was exploring the world and experiencing the stories and DYING all the time just got in the way of that.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 10:10 AM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
Y'know, when I stopped playing "Beyond Good and Evil" because I couldn't beat a hovercraft racing sequence (BG&E is NOT a driving game, I wouldn't have purchased it if it was), my reaction was not "Ah joy! I have completed my game! What a strength of the medium that this one challenge I cannot surmount means that I cannot enjoy and participate in the entire rest of the game that I was very much enjoying up until this point!"
But then, I'm one of those people who gleefully employed the Corprus Cheat in Morrowind to up my Strength & Endurance attributes, because what I really cared about was exploring the world and experiencing the stories and DYING all the time just got in the way of that.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 10:10 AM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
I also think it's interesting that this question of difficulty and whether it should be adapted for different audiences seems to come up more for games than for any other medium.
This question comes up for this medium precisely because of the medium; video games can be created in such a way that the difficulty can be changed, scaled, and adapted in near real time, in a way that no other medium of art can be. It is one of the strengths of the medium, I would argue.
Now, it's entirely within the right of the game designer or any artist to do whatever they want in the interests of whatever they think makes their product better or helps the statement they want to make. But, just like when a book or a movie or whatever else as a piece of art is hard to access, there are going to be criticisms. And some of the responses to that criticism come across, to me, as the same type of gatekeeping snobbery as those other types of art suffer from as well. Which maybe means video games have made it to some level of cultural somethingness, I guess.
posted by nubs at 10:11 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
This question comes up for this medium precisely because of the medium; video games can be created in such a way that the difficulty can be changed, scaled, and adapted in near real time, in a way that no other medium of art can be. It is one of the strengths of the medium, I would argue.
Now, it's entirely within the right of the game designer or any artist to do whatever they want in the interests of whatever they think makes their product better or helps the statement they want to make. But, just like when a book or a movie or whatever else as a piece of art is hard to access, there are going to be criticisms. And some of the responses to that criticism come across, to me, as the same type of gatekeeping snobbery as those other types of art suffer from as well. Which maybe means video games have made it to some level of cultural somethingness, I guess.
posted by nubs at 10:11 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
It doesn't affect how someone else plays, but in some circumstances joy is derived from the commiseration of experiences and corresponding triumphs and failures. If everyone is playing the same game on the same level, they can relate with one another and share similar catharsis or tips in a way that doesn't work if everyone is playing their own thing.
Yup. A huge part of the pleasure I derived from Dark Souls was participating in a community devoted to helping other people progress, improve their skills, and make new discoveries in the game.
World of Warcraft raids look fun, but never in my life will I have the time to participate in one. That's okay.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:14 AM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
Yup. A huge part of the pleasure I derived from Dark Souls was participating in a community devoted to helping other people progress, improve their skills, and make new discoveries in the game.
World of Warcraft raids look fun, but never in my life will I have the time to participate in one. That's okay.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:14 AM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
"Y'know, when I stopped playing "Beyond Good and Evil" because I couldn't beat a hovercraft racing sequence (BG&E is NOT a driving game, I wouldn't have purchased it if it was), my reaction was not "Ah joy! I have completed my game! What a strength of the medium that this one challenge I cannot surmount means that I cannot enjoy and participate in the entire rest of the game that I was very much enjoying up until this point!"
Beyond Good & Evil wasn't about overcoming mechanical challenges that form the core of the game and it's narrative ties to struggle, death, failure, and eventually triumph. They're very different games and that section you mention would be an instance where the game can only stand to benefit by making that unimportant section of atypical gameplay be the roadblock to progress, particularly when the overall goal is to allow the player to explore the world and it's story in full.
"But then, I'm one of those people who gleefully employed the Corprus Cheat in Morrowind to up my Strength & Endurance attributes, because what I really cared about was exploring the world and experiencing the stories and DYING all the time just got in the way of that."
Morrowind is very much a game where you are meant to be doing whatever the hell you want, whenever and however you want. Beyond that, taking advantage of in-game exploits or using outside cheats are both not contentious behaviours. Nobody cares if you need a trainer to beat a boss in Sekiro, the issue arrives when someone can't beat a boss in Sekiro, and then demands that the game developers change the game to make it easier to beat that boss.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:17 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Beyond Good & Evil wasn't about overcoming mechanical challenges that form the core of the game and it's narrative ties to struggle, death, failure, and eventually triumph. They're very different games and that section you mention would be an instance where the game can only stand to benefit by making that unimportant section of atypical gameplay be the roadblock to progress, particularly when the overall goal is to allow the player to explore the world and it's story in full.
"But then, I'm one of those people who gleefully employed the Corprus Cheat in Morrowind to up my Strength & Endurance attributes, because what I really cared about was exploring the world and experiencing the stories and DYING all the time just got in the way of that."
Morrowind is very much a game where you are meant to be doing whatever the hell you want, whenever and however you want. Beyond that, taking advantage of in-game exploits or using outside cheats are both not contentious behaviours. Nobody cares if you need a trainer to beat a boss in Sekiro, the issue arrives when someone can't beat a boss in Sekiro, and then demands that the game developers change the game to make it easier to beat that boss.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:17 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Almost every aspect of the difficulty of Invisible Inc. could be customized right from the opening screens. It just means the game presents a sequential challenge. "Oh, you got through the level with a restart? Let's see if you can do it without one. Oh, you can handle it when the default number of KO turns is 2? Try one. Oh, you're fine as long as you can see the tiles visible to the guards, even if they aren't in your line of sight? Try it like you don't have telepathy, sucker!"
I find that aspect quite appealing, and I'm the kind of person whose honor demands playing the hardest level as quickly as possible. With one exception: if I find a challenge pointless or boring--not just hard, but actively unfun--I'm happy to skip past that. Allowing difficulty tweaks may actually allow players to save you from your own bad game design.
posted by praemunire at 10:22 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
I find that aspect quite appealing, and I'm the kind of person whose honor demands playing the hardest level as quickly as possible. With one exception: if I find a challenge pointless or boring--not just hard, but actively unfun--I'm happy to skip past that. Allowing difficulty tweaks may actually allow players to save you from your own bad game design.
posted by praemunire at 10:22 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
without forcing the creators to compromise their work
So - yeah, all I want as a consumer is some notification BEFORE I purchase the game that it does not have an "Easy Mode", because then I won't.
Not all things can be easily accessible to all people. However... Museums and galleries make an effort for vision impaired people to enjoy visual art through audio description assistance technologies. Concerts and comedians have sign-language interpreters on-stage. Maybe visionary designers should start thinking about "Easy Mode" as "Accessible Mode" instead. For those who have thrown out several literary examples of books in this thread... While the contents of a book might be difficult or not easily comprehensible, blind people can still read it in Braille if they choose to do so.
posted by jkaczor at 10:25 AM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
So - yeah, all I want as a consumer is some notification BEFORE I purchase the game that it does not have an "Easy Mode", because then I won't.
Not all things can be easily accessible to all people. However... Museums and galleries make an effort for vision impaired people to enjoy visual art through audio description assistance technologies. Concerts and comedians have sign-language interpreters on-stage. Maybe visionary designers should start thinking about "Easy Mode" as "Accessible Mode" instead. For those who have thrown out several literary examples of books in this thread... While the contents of a book might be difficult or not easily comprehensible, blind people can still read it in Braille if they choose to do so.
posted by jkaczor at 10:25 AM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
This thread, and a lot of other places on the Internet, seem to be chock full of a willful misunderstanding of the difference between "easy mode" and "accessibility."
People don't want easy games. They want the challenges. The folks who complain about the lack of options in Sekiro are exactly those folks who do want to play the latest From Software offering.
Easy is "press buttons 1, 2, and 3 in order." Hard is "press 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 1, 2, except it was a secret code in a codex found on a different level."
Accessible is "press those buttons as quickly or slowly as you need to." Inaccessible is "enter the sequence quickly, even if you're disabled or old."
If a game requires me to have 3 arms, I'll never be able to play it. Period. That's an accessibility problem. Some players? They have only 1 arm. Those one-armed players don't want an easy game, they want a game that they can play. That's it.
posted by explosion at 10:27 AM on April 9, 2019 [36 favorites]
People don't want easy games. They want the challenges. The folks who complain about the lack of options in Sekiro are exactly those folks who do want to play the latest From Software offering.
Easy is "press buttons 1, 2, and 3 in order." Hard is "press 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 1, 2, except it was a secret code in a codex found on a different level."
Accessible is "press those buttons as quickly or slowly as you need to." Inaccessible is "enter the sequence quickly, even if you're disabled or old."
If a game requires me to have 3 arms, I'll never be able to play it. Period. That's an accessibility problem. Some players? They have only 1 arm. Those one-armed players don't want an easy game, they want a game that they can play. That's it.
posted by explosion at 10:27 AM on April 9, 2019 [36 favorites]
Almost every aspect of the difficulty of Invisible Inc. could be customized right from the opening screens. It just means the game presents a sequential challenge.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 'Classic Mode' does just this.
It's so brilliant and I imagine it's mostly there for children but I'm more than happy to take advantage of this myself as someone who is not the greatest at fighting games.
posted by Fizz at 10:28 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 'Classic Mode' does just this.
Similar to the Classic Modes for the previous entries, players can select an intensity level, indicated by the position of the lengthy mural. The highest allowed starting intensity is 5.0, and it will increase slightly, depending on how well the player does, after each victory, to a maximum of 9.9. Winning in fast times or with great dominance awards a "Nice Play!" label for the stage, and an intensity boost ranging from 0.6 to 1.2, depending also on how far along the player is in the game. Otherwise, the game's default intensity boost goes between 0.2 and 0.6, lower scores being awarded to longer battles with more damage taken. The layout consists of seven stages plus a bonus stage. [wiki]You're presented with a giant tapestry that has a slider/scale which represents the potential difficulty for the matches you're about to face. You can slide higher or lower to set your difficulty. If you lose at too high a difficulty, you're presented the option to reduce the difficulty and slide down (after you pay some in game currency that is super easy to earn in other areas of the game).
It's so brilliant and I imagine it's mostly there for children but I'm more than happy to take advantage of this myself as someone who is not the greatest at fighting games.
posted by Fizz at 10:28 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
What's easy for one person can still be harder for someone else. Challenge isn't a static one-size-fits all thing. Different people can have different physical capabilities, reflexes, etc. and they can have these differences to degrees that can't simply be overcome with more practice. Someone playing on an 'easier mode' or with 'easier options' can still face more of a challenge and more of a struggle than someone else playing on the default settings, and they can still feel the triumph of overcoming that challenge.
Even if a game's experience is centered around overcoming difficulty, allowing people to adjust the game to challenge their own capabilities is better than requiring them to fit within a certain specific range of human ability.
posted by umrain at 10:33 AM on April 9, 2019 [14 favorites]
Even if a game's experience is centered around overcoming difficulty, allowing people to adjust the game to challenge their own capabilities is better than requiring them to fit within a certain specific range of human ability.
posted by umrain at 10:33 AM on April 9, 2019 [14 favorites]
"Not all things can be easily accessible to all people. However... Museums and galleries make an effort for vision impaired people to enjoy visual art through audio description assistance technologies."
Museums and galleries in this analogy are more like the console hardware or storefront software used to distribute the games. The artists make the work they make and the gallery/museum does what they can to facilitate viewers. Likewise I think Steam and other platforms do have some degree on increased accessibility options or tools. And there are additionally on PC trainers and cheat engine scripts that may be helpful to those with accessibility issues as well as folks who just don't/won't/can't/shan't beat it as was originally designed.
"This thread, and a lot of other places on the Internet, seem to be chock full of a willful misunderstanding of the difference between "easy mode" and "accessibility.""
Another reason why this is kind of a bad game to catalyze this discussion around, the easy mode and accessibility concerns are technically distinct, but they bleed into one another, and the two groups can have different motivations with similar sounding demands or solution proposals. Accessibility issues are important, but are a minority issue, and gamers as a collective are not partially progressive or empathetic to the plight of... anyone but themselves and what they want in that moment - but for someone who is just frustrated there's no easier mode, it's easy to latch onto the accessibility issue since that has more merit and is harder to argue against since it's obviously kind of shitty to deliberately try to exclude an audience for that reason.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:34 AM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
Museums and galleries in this analogy are more like the console hardware or storefront software used to distribute the games. The artists make the work they make and the gallery/museum does what they can to facilitate viewers. Likewise I think Steam and other platforms do have some degree on increased accessibility options or tools. And there are additionally on PC trainers and cheat engine scripts that may be helpful to those with accessibility issues as well as folks who just don't/won't/can't/shan't beat it as was originally designed.
"This thread, and a lot of other places on the Internet, seem to be chock full of a willful misunderstanding of the difference between "easy mode" and "accessibility.""
Another reason why this is kind of a bad game to catalyze this discussion around, the easy mode and accessibility concerns are technically distinct, but they bleed into one another, and the two groups can have different motivations with similar sounding demands or solution proposals. Accessibility issues are important, but are a minority issue, and gamers as a collective are not partially progressive or empathetic to the plight of... anyone but themselves and what they want in that moment - but for someone who is just frustrated there's no easier mode, it's easy to latch onto the accessibility issue since that has more merit and is harder to argue against since it's obviously kind of shitty to deliberately try to exclude an audience for that reason.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:34 AM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
If a game requires me to have 3 arms, I'll never be able to play it. Period. That's an accessibility problem. Some players? They have only 1 arm. Those one-armed players don't want an easy game, they want a game that they can play. That's it.
Do From Software games have accessibility issues other than the difficulty level?
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:36 AM on April 9, 2019
Do From Software games have accessibility issues other than the difficulty level?
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:36 AM on April 9, 2019
I've been following this conversation as it bubbles up through the various gaming sites and I've been debating pretty strongly whether or not to chime in now that it's here on Metafilter. But I have thoughts, so here they are.
First, here's me: I'm many hours into Sekiro, and enjoying it more than any game since Dead Cells which became my go-to after the Souls series dried up. The enjoyment I get from Sekiro is intimately tied up with its difficulty, and the Aha! moment of eventual triumph. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that. I do not care about the story. I don't mind that there are people who do.
My main point of entry to this conversation is actually through mathematics. I recently had a chat with a student about Sekiro, because he had come to ask me for the solution to a problem. Not for help with it, but simply for the solution, or at least a list of steps to follow to obtain the solution. Now, to be a good mathematician you have to get very comfortable with not knowing how to do something for a long time, before you finally figure it out. I would say one of our defining characteristics is that we're willing (even eager) to put in those hours, days, weeks, whatever, of being lost before that moment of crystallization and understanding. I told this student, you are a mathematics major, this is a skill you need to develop in order to succeed. Are you familiar with the Dark Souls series?... and I think it was effective since I knew already he was a gamer.
Based on my description above, it seems totally reasonable that being a mathematician is not for everyone. It's extremely rewarding for those of us who do it. I've been thinking about what 'easy mode' would be for studying math, and I think it's basically: you read all the material but a complete solution is always provided for every exercise, even on tests and homework. When you get done, you've seen all the same material as someone playing on normal mode, but you've had a very different experience. And emphatically, you are not doing mathematics any more. You're doing something different that looks superficially similar.
Easy mode is not the same as accessibility mode, and academia has actually done a pretty good job of figuring that out! We make all sorts of accommodations for students, including large print tests, extra time, quiet environments, extended due dates, etc. There is grumbling from some old-timers about accommodations but not much, really. We basically all understand that the thing that students with disabilities are doing is mathematics; i.e. the same thing the rest of our students are doing.
Nobody is clamoring for 'easy mode' in mathematics because doing mathematics is fundamentally difficult. I would argue that playing Sekiro is fundamentally difficult, and if you're doing something that isn't difficult then you're not playing Sekiro. But accessibility is totally different! It's possible to have a difficult time playing Sekiro even while enemy speed is, say, slowed down by 10% to accommodate slower physical reflexes. So it's completely understandable that when some people see 'Developers need to include an easy mode' what they actually comprehend is 'This fundamentally difficult thing should be rendered non-difficult', even if that wasn't the author's intentions.
But I think nearly everyone would agree with: 'Developers need to design for accessibility whenever possible'. Luckily, in the meantime software trainers exist that will modify your gameplay experience in countless ways, including ways that make the game more accessible, which to my mind almost renders this a non-issue.
And on preview, explosion and others are making a similar point but much more concisely.
posted by dbx at 10:39 AM on April 9, 2019 [16 favorites]
First, here's me: I'm many hours into Sekiro, and enjoying it more than any game since Dead Cells which became my go-to after the Souls series dried up. The enjoyment I get from Sekiro is intimately tied up with its difficulty, and the Aha! moment of eventual triumph. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that. I do not care about the story. I don't mind that there are people who do.
My main point of entry to this conversation is actually through mathematics. I recently had a chat with a student about Sekiro, because he had come to ask me for the solution to a problem. Not for help with it, but simply for the solution, or at least a list of steps to follow to obtain the solution. Now, to be a good mathematician you have to get very comfortable with not knowing how to do something for a long time, before you finally figure it out. I would say one of our defining characteristics is that we're willing (even eager) to put in those hours, days, weeks, whatever, of being lost before that moment of crystallization and understanding. I told this student, you are a mathematics major, this is a skill you need to develop in order to succeed. Are you familiar with the Dark Souls series?... and I think it was effective since I knew already he was a gamer.
Based on my description above, it seems totally reasonable that being a mathematician is not for everyone. It's extremely rewarding for those of us who do it. I've been thinking about what 'easy mode' would be for studying math, and I think it's basically: you read all the material but a complete solution is always provided for every exercise, even on tests and homework. When you get done, you've seen all the same material as someone playing on normal mode, but you've had a very different experience. And emphatically, you are not doing mathematics any more. You're doing something different that looks superficially similar.
Easy mode is not the same as accessibility mode, and academia has actually done a pretty good job of figuring that out! We make all sorts of accommodations for students, including large print tests, extra time, quiet environments, extended due dates, etc. There is grumbling from some old-timers about accommodations but not much, really. We basically all understand that the thing that students with disabilities are doing is mathematics; i.e. the same thing the rest of our students are doing.
Nobody is clamoring for 'easy mode' in mathematics because doing mathematics is fundamentally difficult. I would argue that playing Sekiro is fundamentally difficult, and if you're doing something that isn't difficult then you're not playing Sekiro. But accessibility is totally different! It's possible to have a difficult time playing Sekiro even while enemy speed is, say, slowed down by 10% to accommodate slower physical reflexes. So it's completely understandable that when some people see 'Developers need to include an easy mode' what they actually comprehend is 'This fundamentally difficult thing should be rendered non-difficult', even if that wasn't the author's intentions.
But I think nearly everyone would agree with: 'Developers need to design for accessibility whenever possible'. Luckily, in the meantime software trainers exist that will modify your gameplay experience in countless ways, including ways that make the game more accessible, which to my mind almost renders this a non-issue.
And on preview, explosion and others are making a similar point but much more concisely.
posted by dbx at 10:39 AM on April 9, 2019 [16 favorites]
This thread, and a lot of other places on the Internet, seem to be chock full of a willful misunderstanding of the difference between "easy mode" and "accessibility."
People don't want easy games. They want the challenges. The folks who complain about the lack of options in Sekiro are exactly those folks who do want to play the latest From Software offering.
I get a ... different impression. As far as I can tell, 90% of the "Sekiro must have an easy mode" demands really are from people who probably could play the game as it is, but would prefer to be guided inexorably towards victory without having to, say, spend 2 or 3 hours being repeatedly smashed to pieces and showered with excrement by a giant ape while they slowly learn its attack patterns, like I did earlier today (and it was great!).
Colourblind mode would be good, although I'm not sure how many problems colourblindness would actually cause for this game (maybe the stealth indicators?). Remappable controls are really important and I'm glad From finally decided to add them to the console versions of Sekiro after failing to do so for too many of its other games. It has subtitles; maybe it could do with more visual cues for people who can't hear the audio ones.
Nobody is disagreeing with those kinds of accessibility options. But things like game speed are not the same thing. Every complex action game is going to exclude someone, or demand a certain minimum level of ability. That's unavoidable without a setting that amounts to "the game plays itself while you watch". Some games do have that, and that's great! But it's not a travesty that some games don't.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 10:50 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
People don't want easy games. They want the challenges. The folks who complain about the lack of options in Sekiro are exactly those folks who do want to play the latest From Software offering.
I get a ... different impression. As far as I can tell, 90% of the "Sekiro must have an easy mode" demands really are from people who probably could play the game as it is, but would prefer to be guided inexorably towards victory without having to, say, spend 2 or 3 hours being repeatedly smashed to pieces and showered with excrement by a giant ape while they slowly learn its attack patterns, like I did earlier today (and it was great!).
Colourblind mode would be good, although I'm not sure how many problems colourblindness would actually cause for this game (maybe the stealth indicators?). Remappable controls are really important and I'm glad From finally decided to add them to the console versions of Sekiro after failing to do so for too many of its other games. It has subtitles; maybe it could do with more visual cues for people who can't hear the audio ones.
Nobody is disagreeing with those kinds of accessibility options. But things like game speed are not the same thing. Every complex action game is going to exclude someone, or demand a certain minimum level of ability. That's unavoidable without a setting that amounts to "the game plays itself while you watch". Some games do have that, and that's great! But it's not a travesty that some games don't.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 10:50 AM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
This thread, and a lot of other places on the Internet, seem to be chock full of a willful misunderstanding of the difference between "easy mode" and "accessibility."
All options are accessibility options.
Invert Mouse: accessibility option
Disable motion blur: accessibility option
Easy Mode: accessibility option
Music Volume: accessibility option
HUD Customization: accessibility option
Infinite Posture: accessibility option
Adjust Brightness: accessibility option
Mute Team Chat: accessibility option
"Easy mode" is one type of accessibility option. Of course it's not the only way, and it's certainly more of a blunt tool than a more fine-grained set of options (which could be better), but it is one of many tools that people who need it can use to make a game more playable.
posted by umrain at 10:55 AM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
All options are accessibility options.
Invert Mouse: accessibility option
Disable motion blur: accessibility option
Easy Mode: accessibility option
Music Volume: accessibility option
HUD Customization: accessibility option
Infinite Posture: accessibility option
Adjust Brightness: accessibility option
Mute Team Chat: accessibility option
"Easy mode" is one type of accessibility option. Of course it's not the only way, and it's certainly more of a blunt tool than a more fine-grained set of options (which could be better), but it is one of many tools that people who need it can use to make a game more playable.
posted by umrain at 10:55 AM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
Yeah, I mean, other than the fact that I'm about one eye doctor visit away from needing glasses, I have no physical disabilities and there are a shit ton of games I've never been able to finish because they were too hard for me (even on easy mode!).
I was able to git gud at Dark Souls because I loved it so much I wanted to keep practicing and failing and dying and learning. That's not a gaming experience that comes along frequently, at this point in my life.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:57 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
I was able to git gud at Dark Souls because I loved it so much I wanted to keep practicing and failing and dying and learning. That's not a gaming experience that comes along frequently, at this point in my life.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:57 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
I have a complicated perspective on this as a fan of roguelikes. I mean, most of those games absolutely do not work without the brutal learning curve and permadeath. I can't imagine even wanting to play them if you aren't into that, and everyone in the community would agree it wouldn't "count." But it's usually possible, and the issue of what "counts" is generally sorted out by offering online play with a leaderboard if they want their accomplishments to be recognized. So the mere existence of a cheat mode definitely doesn't affect the integrity of the game experience. But since difficulty is so integral to the game experience it does make me sympathize with the developers' interest in making an uncompromising game.
(But with roguelikes you also don't have the issue of physical accessibility so much because they are turn-based. And hell, I assume you can play ASCII-mode games with a screen reader, though that seems like it could be tedious given the importance of precise tile positioning in many such games.)
posted by atoxyl at 11:03 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
(But with roguelikes you also don't have the issue of physical accessibility so much because they are turn-based. And hell, I assume you can play ASCII-mode games with a screen reader, though that seems like it could be tedious given the importance of precise tile positioning in many such games.)
posted by atoxyl at 11:03 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
it seems like maybe these "this game is impossible for anyone other than those who really can play well games" are sort of the equivalent of abstract jazz or really brutal experimental theater or marathon-length art house movies, or those galleries where everything in them is sort of alienating and questionable.
I make music that some people probably find challenging. (My spouse, who once claimed to be my #1 fan, says my music often makes her feel itchy.) I don't compromise for the sake of the listener, I create what I want to hear while knowing full well that my tastes are unusual.
I'm totally okay if people say they don't like what I'm doing and would prefer something more mainstream. I'm not going to make something more mainstream for them because there's plenty already there and it's not what I do.
But there's nothing in my music that requires listeners to be a neurotypical 20 year old with sharp reflexes and fine motor control. Nor do you have to be able to have perfect absolute pitch (it's probably better if you don't) or hear 21kHz test tones or understand serialism.
And at the one minute mark, my music doesn't restart at the beginning if you fail some kind of aesthetics test, after you've already paid for a full album.
...
Maybe a better metaphor for difficult games would be a movie that was a combination color blindness test and Magic Eye poster. If you can't see a difference between red and green and you can't make the dots merge into a 3D image you don't get to watch the film.
posted by Foosnark at 11:06 AM on April 9, 2019 [17 favorites]
I make music that some people probably find challenging. (My spouse, who once claimed to be my #1 fan, says my music often makes her feel itchy.) I don't compromise for the sake of the listener, I create what I want to hear while knowing full well that my tastes are unusual.
I'm totally okay if people say they don't like what I'm doing and would prefer something more mainstream. I'm not going to make something more mainstream for them because there's plenty already there and it's not what I do.
But there's nothing in my music that requires listeners to be a neurotypical 20 year old with sharp reflexes and fine motor control. Nor do you have to be able to have perfect absolute pitch (it's probably better if you don't) or hear 21kHz test tones or understand serialism.
And at the one minute mark, my music doesn't restart at the beginning if you fail some kind of aesthetics test, after you've already paid for a full album.
...
Maybe a better metaphor for difficult games would be a movie that was a combination color blindness test and Magic Eye poster. If you can't see a difference between red and green and you can't make the dots merge into a 3D image you don't get to watch the film.
posted by Foosnark at 11:06 AM on April 9, 2019 [17 favorites]
So much of this comes from individual opinions on what games "should" be.
I love platformers. I've played a bunch of 20XX, and even more Dead Cells. Their increasing difficulty was a fun challenge. I loved Celeste, and after playing it through, I started going back for the strawberries and secrets I missed. But I've passed on others because they were too twitchy, even from the get-go.
I play fighting games a lot less, not because I love them less, but because my reflexes aren't what they used to be.
I tried giving Apex Legends a try, and it's just not for me. Not because I wouldn't enjoy it, but because it's tuned against me. The game's mechanics reward twitchy micro much more than any sort of tactical advantage. On the other hand, impatient teenagers would probably decry the game as bullshit if they got repeatedly owned by old men like me who played it slow and careful, and got them with a headshot.
But that's a multi-player game, where my fun might come at the expense of others'. "Should" does a lot of heavy lifting. It can mean it'd be "right" for social reasons. It can mean it'd be right for sales reasons. It can mean it'd be right for my personal preference.
I strongly believe that if a game has a vision, you can set that as the default, and just warn people that changing the settings departs from that vision. If you don't want to let anyone depart at all, that's an option, just as an author might refuse to let their book be translated. That certainly is a decision. But "it's my artistic vision" is not exactly an unassailable bulwark to uphold bad decisions.
posted by explosion at 11:11 AM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
I love platformers. I've played a bunch of 20XX, and even more Dead Cells. Their increasing difficulty was a fun challenge. I loved Celeste, and after playing it through, I started going back for the strawberries and secrets I missed. But I've passed on others because they were too twitchy, even from the get-go.
I play fighting games a lot less, not because I love them less, but because my reflexes aren't what they used to be.
I tried giving Apex Legends a try, and it's just not for me. Not because I wouldn't enjoy it, but because it's tuned against me. The game's mechanics reward twitchy micro much more than any sort of tactical advantage. On the other hand, impatient teenagers would probably decry the game as bullshit if they got repeatedly owned by old men like me who played it slow and careful, and got them with a headshot.
But that's a multi-player game, where my fun might come at the expense of others'. "Should" does a lot of heavy lifting. It can mean it'd be "right" for social reasons. It can mean it'd be right for sales reasons. It can mean it'd be right for my personal preference.
I strongly believe that if a game has a vision, you can set that as the default, and just warn people that changing the settings departs from that vision. If you don't want to let anyone depart at all, that's an option, just as an author might refuse to let their book be translated. That certainly is a decision. But "it's my artistic vision" is not exactly an unassailable bulwark to uphold bad decisions.
posted by explosion at 11:11 AM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
If it is not a difficult challenge that can only be done by skillful people, it is not worth playing?
So - children should never learn to play sports? Older people should just give up the sports they used to play, because they can no longer compete with elite athletes? When visually impaired people can play baseball, don't you think they still find it challenging and a bit difficult - yet enjoyable and rewarding, even with the accommodations made?
I have heard the same arguments made about disabled people playing sports decades ago - they cannot possibly enjoy this activity that requires a certain "skill level" - I remember the days when people made fun of para-athletes.
Gamers gonna gatekeep.
But that's ok - eventually time will catch-up to everyone. However quickly you mash buttons now, it won't last...
posted by jkaczor at 11:17 AM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
So - children should never learn to play sports? Older people should just give up the sports they used to play, because they can no longer compete with elite athletes? When visually impaired people can play baseball, don't you think they still find it challenging and a bit difficult - yet enjoyable and rewarding, even with the accommodations made?
I have heard the same arguments made about disabled people playing sports decades ago - they cannot possibly enjoy this activity that requires a certain "skill level" - I remember the days when people made fun of para-athletes.
Gamers gonna gatekeep.
But that's ok - eventually time will catch-up to everyone. However quickly you mash buttons now, it won't last...
posted by jkaczor at 11:17 AM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
And hell, I assume you can play ASCII-mode games with a screen reader
There's a great episode of the Roguelike Radio podcast where they have a guest talk about their experiences playing roguelikes with a screen reader.
posted by umrain at 11:18 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
There's a great episode of the Roguelike Radio podcast where they have a guest talk about their experiences playing roguelikes with a screen reader.
posted by umrain at 11:18 AM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Also, shout out to Celeste which has one of the most accessible difficulty sliders/tool-sets in any game I've ever encountered.
The other genius thing about Celeste, I think is that it uses the term "Assist Mode" instead of difficulty levels. Giving a granular series of toggles for various "assist" features is always going to be an easier sell to pretty much everybody than opaque "difficulty" settings where "Normal" could mean anything from "challenging for the majority of players" to "this is basically training wheels for your to GIT GUD and play the REAL game".
To say nothing of the modes with "cute" names that insult the players who choose them. Looking at you, Wolf 2. I know "Don't Hurt Me, Daddy" is, like, "tradition" or whatever, but in a game where your character's literal father shows up as the personification of "it's for your own good" toxic masculinity, it comes off just a little tone deaf.
I have not, instead, insisted that he should have created several different versions of his books, each adapted for a different audience of people who are more vs. less familiar with the techniques of postmodernist fiction.
And yet, and yet. While, for some reason, nobody's selling Pynchon novels with concordances built in, you sure as fuck can buy a book that explains The Crying of Lot 49 for you that is even meant to be read alongside the main text. And there are plenty of public domain books that come with concordances and explanatory notes. Bibles with concordances and copious footnotes. Shakespeare plays where you can read a "modern language" version of the text alongside the original. The Aeneid with both Latin and English text and translation notes packed in. Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin that comes in a four volume set where volumes two and three are entirely devoted to helping the reader understand the translation contained in the first. Or just the fact that translations of literature exist at all.
That "assist modes" for print literature are uncommon for works still covered by copyright is more a condemnation of copyright and the economics of the publishing industry than a divine proscription that books must be unsullied take-them-as-they-are experiences.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:31 AM on April 9, 2019 [13 favorites]
The other genius thing about Celeste, I think is that it uses the term "Assist Mode" instead of difficulty levels. Giving a granular series of toggles for various "assist" features is always going to be an easier sell to pretty much everybody than opaque "difficulty" settings where "Normal" could mean anything from "challenging for the majority of players" to "this is basically training wheels for your to GIT GUD and play the REAL game".
To say nothing of the modes with "cute" names that insult the players who choose them. Looking at you, Wolf 2. I know "Don't Hurt Me, Daddy" is, like, "tradition" or whatever, but in a game where your character's literal father shows up as the personification of "it's for your own good" toxic masculinity, it comes off just a little tone deaf.
I have not, instead, insisted that he should have created several different versions of his books, each adapted for a different audience of people who are more vs. less familiar with the techniques of postmodernist fiction.
And yet, and yet. While, for some reason, nobody's selling Pynchon novels with concordances built in, you sure as fuck can buy a book that explains The Crying of Lot 49 for you that is even meant to be read alongside the main text. And there are plenty of public domain books that come with concordances and explanatory notes. Bibles with concordances and copious footnotes. Shakespeare plays where you can read a "modern language" version of the text alongside the original. The Aeneid with both Latin and English text and translation notes packed in. Nabokov's translation of Eugene Onegin that comes in a four volume set where volumes two and three are entirely devoted to helping the reader understand the translation contained in the first. Or just the fact that translations of literature exist at all.
That "assist modes" for print literature are uncommon for works still covered by copyright is more a condemnation of copyright and the economics of the publishing industry than a divine proscription that books must be unsullied take-them-as-they-are experiences.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:31 AM on April 9, 2019 [13 favorites]
After reading this thread, I have no idea what the word Accessible means. That seems important if we are going to debate accessibility.
Eric and the Dread Gazebo
posted by BeeDo at 11:34 AM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
Eric and the Dread Gazebo
posted by BeeDo at 11:34 AM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
But "it's my artistic vision" is not exactly an unassailable bulwark to uphold bad decisions.
In the art world, there's a fairly long history of people using "I'm an artiste" as cover for just being a misogynist and sadist.
I think if we look at the longest-lived games such as chess, go, backgammon, and some card games, there's definitely a sense that there are levels of play for anyone who wishes to pick it up to have fun with it. In my opinion, I'm happy to concede that people who design highly twitchy mechanics are entitled to do so. I'm not obliged to concede that your blinged-out Skinner boxes operating at the threshold of human reaction time are the pinnacle of game systems design. (As is claimed by some advocates.)
And on the other side of the story in this broader discussion, having a museum mode for level and set artists to show off an Assassins Creed game isn't destroying gaming in the same way that character diversity from Bioware isn't destroying gaming. It's suspicious to me that a lot of the anti-accessibility (usually voluntary accessibility by studios) and anti-diversity rants are coming from the same spaces.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 11:39 AM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
In the art world, there's a fairly long history of people using "I'm an artiste" as cover for just being a misogynist and sadist.
I think if we look at the longest-lived games such as chess, go, backgammon, and some card games, there's definitely a sense that there are levels of play for anyone who wishes to pick it up to have fun with it. In my opinion, I'm happy to concede that people who design highly twitchy mechanics are entitled to do so. I'm not obliged to concede that your blinged-out Skinner boxes operating at the threshold of human reaction time are the pinnacle of game systems design. (As is claimed by some advocates.)
And on the other side of the story in this broader discussion, having a museum mode for level and set artists to show off an Assassins Creed game isn't destroying gaming in the same way that character diversity from Bioware isn't destroying gaming. It's suspicious to me that a lot of the anti-accessibility (usually voluntary accessibility by studios) and anti-diversity rants are coming from the same spaces.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 11:39 AM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
Mod note: Couple comments deleted; folks please don't jump into this putting words into other people's mouths. Just go ahead and make your own points.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:47 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:47 AM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
I have a complicated perspective on this as a fan of roguelikes. I mean, most of those games absolutely do not work without the brutal learning curve and permadeath. ... But since difficulty is so integral to the game experience it does make me sympathize with the developers' interest in making an uncompromising game.
The thing with RLs in particular is that many of the most popular modern ones (nethack, ToME, Sil) come with a variety of character creation options that serve as de facto difficulty modes. A Knight is going to have a much easier time than a Tourist, even if you have the game knowledge required to exploit the Tourist's unique starting position.
And the same is true of Dark Souls, you just don't hear about it much because the GIT GUD crowd doesn't value the "safe" playstyles.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:50 AM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
The thing with RLs in particular is that many of the most popular modern ones (nethack, ToME, Sil) come with a variety of character creation options that serve as de facto difficulty modes. A Knight is going to have a much easier time than a Tourist, even if you have the game knowledge required to exploit the Tourist's unique starting position.
And the same is true of Dark Souls, you just don't hear about it much because the GIT GUD crowd doesn't value the "safe" playstyles.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:50 AM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
I mean, if you believe that games are art (is that still a debate that’s happening?) then calling for them to make it “easier”, whatever that means, isn’t really valid, is it?
Art galleries still have to have wheelchair accessibility ramps. Also, what kind of asshole only makes art for people without disabilities?
posted by axiom at 11:50 AM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
Art galleries still have to have wheelchair accessibility ramps. Also, what kind of asshole only makes art for people without disabilities?
posted by axiom at 11:50 AM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
dbx: I would argue that it's not efficient to expect every team of developers to need to consider accomodation on consoles. I think that button remapping features/interface/capability should be provided by the console system software.
Xbox has released an accessible (or at least better) controller. And really, it seems like poorly thought out to have every single developer provide button remapping, when this is something that should be handled within the console's system libraries. It's not like any console networked game needs to write their own tcp stack. Nor, are they interfacing directly with the console hardware to read in the buttons. They're using system libs to get the button - there's no reason that there can't be one system menu to provide key remapping saving every developer from needing to do what should be a very basic thing.
Really, there's no excuse for the consoles not supporting controller remapping. Possibly in the PS1 and earlier days consoles might have been too limited. But from the point of Xbox / PS2 , consoles already had full featured menus and provided assistance to the devs.
Similar, for the example of a one handed player, there should be one-handed controllers - probably using a chording system to make it feasible to readily get all of the available inputs. Sure, this will sell at a premium (unless there's subsidies!) but it should be available. But the dev's for each game shouldn't be expected to make their own controller to support one handed play.
Possibly the console libraries might be able to handle some color remapping for color blind people, but I suspect that way gets tricky quickly where the hardware (depending upon the game) might already be getting pretty stressed.
When it gets to the point of needing to slow down time in order to make things workable, maybe that should be an OS thing again. But consider then that everything would likely need to be slowed globally. 25% slower movement for everything might make some of the fast twitch parts more easily something that can be handled, but may make some sections unplayably boring. At this point, I think one needs to consider if this is maybe just not the right game for them.
There are plenty of widely well regarded games that don't have the same unforgiving-ness of a souls game, so it's not like there's a large exclusion. It's kind of like running a marathon. I have no issues with wheelchairs in marathons, or para athletes who might have accessories that I don't. But I would have a problem with someone using an electric scooter/bike in a marathon - at that point, it's just no longer a marathon (which is it's own art/performance IMHO).
Or hey, maybe consider youtube/twitch/let's play. I've never tried a DS speed run, but I enjoyed watching one on youtube. Back in my Nintendo days when I and a friend spent a lot of time taking turns playing games, we each had our strengths, and I know I enjoyed watching him play through some things that I just couldn't do, and I suspect he enjoyed watching me play at my strengths.
posted by nobeagle at 11:51 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Xbox has released an accessible (or at least better) controller. And really, it seems like poorly thought out to have every single developer provide button remapping, when this is something that should be handled within the console's system libraries. It's not like any console networked game needs to write their own tcp stack. Nor, are they interfacing directly with the console hardware to read in the buttons. They're using system libs to get the button - there's no reason that there can't be one system menu to provide key remapping saving every developer from needing to do what should be a very basic thing.
Really, there's no excuse for the consoles not supporting controller remapping. Possibly in the PS1 and earlier days consoles might have been too limited. But from the point of Xbox / PS2 , consoles already had full featured menus and provided assistance to the devs.
Similar, for the example of a one handed player, there should be one-handed controllers - probably using a chording system to make it feasible to readily get all of the available inputs. Sure, this will sell at a premium (unless there's subsidies!) but it should be available. But the dev's for each game shouldn't be expected to make their own controller to support one handed play.
Possibly the console libraries might be able to handle some color remapping for color blind people, but I suspect that way gets tricky quickly where the hardware (depending upon the game) might already be getting pretty stressed.
When it gets to the point of needing to slow down time in order to make things workable, maybe that should be an OS thing again. But consider then that everything would likely need to be slowed globally. 25% slower movement for everything might make some of the fast twitch parts more easily something that can be handled, but may make some sections unplayably boring. At this point, I think one needs to consider if this is maybe just not the right game for them.
There are plenty of widely well regarded games that don't have the same unforgiving-ness of a souls game, so it's not like there's a large exclusion. It's kind of like running a marathon. I have no issues with wheelchairs in marathons, or para athletes who might have accessories that I don't. But I would have a problem with someone using an electric scooter/bike in a marathon - at that point, it's just no longer a marathon (which is it's own art/performance IMHO).
Or hey, maybe consider youtube/twitch/let's play. I've never tried a DS speed run, but I enjoyed watching one on youtube. Back in my Nintendo days when I and a friend spent a lot of time taking turns playing games, we each had our strengths, and I know I enjoyed watching him play through some things that I just couldn't do, and I suspect he enjoyed watching me play at my strengths.
posted by nobeagle at 11:51 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
"Sekiro must have an easy mode" demands really are from people who probably could play the game as it is, but would prefer to be guided inexorably towards victory without having to, say, spend 2 or 3 hours being repeatedly smashed to pieces and showered with excrement by a giant ape while they slowly learn its attack patterns, like I did earlier today (and it was great!).
I mean, this is not me at all, but...God forbid people want their games to be fun for them? I understand the argument of just not having resources to devote to creating "easy mode" (not maximum-feasible-accessibility) way better than the argument of U R Doing Fun Rong.
posted by praemunire at 11:53 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
I mean, this is not me at all, but...God forbid people want their games to be fun for them? I understand the argument of just not having resources to devote to creating "easy mode" (not maximum-feasible-accessibility) way better than the argument of U R Doing Fun Rong.
posted by praemunire at 11:53 AM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
One usage of accessibility is the ability to understand/enjoy the content/meaning - so, we could read the Romeo & Juliet, in the original verbiage, understanding the historical context/culture/etc - versus watching a re-interpretation like "Warm Bodies" or even "Romeo+Juliet".
Either of these movies are arguably more "accessible" to more people than the original play. Myself, I know I will never enjoy the original - I have tried to "access" Shakespeare's worked repeatedly and find I only like re-interpretations. Does this mar the artistes original intentions? Is it a violation of their vision? Is it the same fundamental "art"? Maybe yes, maybe no. But frankly, I like to think that old Bill would be tickled to find the ways in which his work has been re-interpreted over the centuries...
Another usage is the means to access/enjoy the content in the physical realm - if the theater where you want to watch the play cannot accommodate your wheelchair, you simply cannot ever enjoy it in that venue - in the original "Globe Theatre" where you might watch "Romeo & Juliet", you had to stand for the duration of a play - so, sitting down to watch something is an accommodation we all enjoy now...
posted by jkaczor at 11:56 AM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
Either of these movies are arguably more "accessible" to more people than the original play. Myself, I know I will never enjoy the original - I have tried to "access" Shakespeare's worked repeatedly and find I only like re-interpretations. Does this mar the artistes original intentions? Is it a violation of their vision? Is it the same fundamental "art"? Maybe yes, maybe no. But frankly, I like to think that old Bill would be tickled to find the ways in which his work has been re-interpreted over the centuries...
Another usage is the means to access/enjoy the content in the physical realm - if the theater where you want to watch the play cannot accommodate your wheelchair, you simply cannot ever enjoy it in that venue - in the original "Globe Theatre" where you might watch "Romeo & Juliet", you had to stand for the duration of a play - so, sitting down to watch something is an accommodation we all enjoy now...
posted by jkaczor at 11:56 AM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
Question for praemunire - must every game be fun for everybody?
Because if so, then the dev's for MLB 2020 really have their work cut out for them, because I think that game would be really fun if it had orcs and skavin, more like blood bowl. Oh, and allowed me to just use my neighbors and friends for the players. And wasn't about baseball. But hey, I paid $80 CDN for it, so the game should do exactly what I want, right? Surely they can just add a few options...
posted by nobeagle at 12:04 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Because if so, then the dev's for MLB 2020 really have their work cut out for them, because I think that game would be really fun if it had orcs and skavin, more like blood bowl. Oh, and allowed me to just use my neighbors and friends for the players. And wasn't about baseball. But hey, I paid $80 CDN for it, so the game should do exactly what I want, right? Surely they can just add a few options...
posted by nobeagle at 12:04 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
I like how people are all “Moby Dick doesn’t have an easy mode, gotcha!” as if though there aren’t books and books written about how to make sense of that book and make it “easier”. If read you a book with a reference guide or use a thesaurus, that is not cheating. That is taking something that you found difficult or inaccessible and got help to make it less so so that you could enjoy the same thing as everyone else.
If a key part of your message and authorial intent is “this isn’t for you and any attempts for you to enjoy this or have this experience should be denied”, then I don’t think I much care for anything else you have to say. It is easier being exclusionary and hiding behind “it is art!” than it is to try to provide the same experience through different means to different people.
posted by slimepuppy at 12:04 PM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
If a key part of your message and authorial intent is “this isn’t for you and any attempts for you to enjoy this or have this experience should be denied”, then I don’t think I much care for anything else you have to say. It is easier being exclusionary and hiding behind “it is art!” than it is to try to provide the same experience through different means to different people.
posted by slimepuppy at 12:04 PM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
"Art galleries still have to have wheelchair accessibility ramps. Also, what kind of asshole only makes art for people without disabilities?"
Art galleries are not artists. Also, anyone who has ever made visual art of any kind would be an asshole by that metric as long as vision-impaired people exist. To be fair, equating art and artists with assholery and assholes is a tradition as old as civilization.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Art galleries are not artists. Also, anyone who has ever made visual art of any kind would be an asshole by that metric as long as vision-impaired people exist. To be fair, equating art and artists with assholery and assholes is a tradition as old as civilization.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
I'm just going to repeat what I said last time on difficulty levels and "cheating" in single-player games because my opinion hasn't really changed:
The thing is, no one is discussing taking the hard difficulty levels away from anyone. So the argument really boils down to “there is actual harm when someone cheats in a single player game”.
If you believe a person harms themselves when they cheat, keep in mind that you have no idea what their circumstances might be, and that its pretty gross to be policing other peoples’ personal sense of enjoyment.
If you believe it harms you when someone else cheats, frankly, you are an asshole. Video games are virtual experiences made of ones and zeros, which have always and will forever be hackable, if not always by design. Seeing the last level has never been, and will never be, a “privilege of the honest”. It’s grrat if finishing a difficult personal challenge has meaning to you, and it ought to, but stop telling other people how to live their goddamned lives “correctly”.
posted by Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
The thing is, no one is discussing taking the hard difficulty levels away from anyone. So the argument really boils down to “there is actual harm when someone cheats in a single player game”.
If you believe a person harms themselves when they cheat, keep in mind that you have no idea what their circumstances might be, and that its pretty gross to be policing other peoples’ personal sense of enjoyment.
If you believe it harms you when someone else cheats, frankly, you are an asshole. Video games are virtual experiences made of ones and zeros, which have always and will forever be hackable, if not always by design. Seeing the last level has never been, and will never be, a “privilege of the honest”. It’s grrat if finishing a difficult personal challenge has meaning to you, and it ought to, but stop telling other people how to live their goddamned lives “correctly”.
posted by Nutri-Matic Drinks Synthesizer at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
Difficult Literature : Cliffs Notes :: Difficult Video Games : Let's Play Videos
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
Also: one of the problems that game designers have to deal with is the fact that, given a choice between a fun, high-risk/high-reward way to play and a tedious, low-risk/low-reward way, a lot of players choose the latter. And then get bored, and go online to complain about the game being dull and "grindy".
What you call fun and high-reward someone else might call frustrating and not fun. The idea that game designers should dictate the terms of play for a wide swath of people has always been a non-starter; it's why cheats (built-in or hacked-in) are a thing. It doesn't track to me that the motivator is "but then the players will play it wrong and leave bad reviews" when the exact same thing can (and does!) happen with respect to accessibility and difficulty gradation (hint: it's happening here in this thread, this one right here).
must every game be fun for everybody?
I realize this was explicitly not addressed to me, but no, of course not every game must be fun for everybody. Steam is full of shit that's probably fun for nobody. Though, I don't think that means we should have "games for disabled people" and "games for normal people" for similar reasons we don't have lunch counters for whites only.
posted by axiom at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
What you call fun and high-reward someone else might call frustrating and not fun. The idea that game designers should dictate the terms of play for a wide swath of people has always been a non-starter; it's why cheats (built-in or hacked-in) are a thing. It doesn't track to me that the motivator is "but then the players will play it wrong and leave bad reviews" when the exact same thing can (and does!) happen with respect to accessibility and difficulty gradation (hint: it's happening here in this thread, this one right here).
must every game be fun for everybody?
I realize this was explicitly not addressed to me, but no, of course not every game must be fun for everybody. Steam is full of shit that's probably fun for nobody. Though, I don't think that means we should have "games for disabled people" and "games for normal people" for similar reasons we don't have lunch counters for whites only.
posted by axiom at 12:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Difficult Literature : Cliffs Notes :: Difficult Video Games : Let's Play Videos
Kind of works - but also kinda doesn't. Because, I can take as long as I want to read a page, a chapter or an entire book - I can highlight a phrase, I can stop and look something up, I can take notes.
Unfortunately, with many video games I might have to mash a series of buttons in a time-limited capacity, that my physical body just might not be capable of doing - ever. Don't get me wrong - I think videos they are useful, but I also think having the ability to change difficulty-level or controls or play mechanics is also useful.
Now... To all the folks who are saying "museums/galleries/venue's" are providing the accommodations, not the original artists....
True... But... We are talking about COMPUTER VIDEO GAMES, we are not talking about non-interactive, non-programmable mediums.
Computers and consoles are sophisticated platforms that can be fully controlled when creating their content - unlike a painting.
Historically the vast majority of video games ever made that were playable on computers/home-consoles have included the ability to choose different difficulty levels - to not do so in 2018/2019 is to be deliberately obtuse.
Yes, it is a "choice" - one made to deliberately appeal to a specific audience and demographic. To me that is not "art".
posted by jkaczor at 12:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Kind of works - but also kinda doesn't. Because, I can take as long as I want to read a page, a chapter or an entire book - I can highlight a phrase, I can stop and look something up, I can take notes.
Unfortunately, with many video games I might have to mash a series of buttons in a time-limited capacity, that my physical body just might not be capable of doing - ever. Don't get me wrong - I think videos they are useful, but I also think having the ability to change difficulty-level or controls or play mechanics is also useful.
Now... To all the folks who are saying "museums/galleries/venue's" are providing the accommodations, not the original artists....
True... But... We are talking about COMPUTER VIDEO GAMES, we are not talking about non-interactive, non-programmable mediums.
Computers and consoles are sophisticated platforms that can be fully controlled when creating their content - unlike a painting.
Historically the vast majority of video games ever made that were playable on computers/home-consoles have included the ability to choose different difficulty levels - to not do so in 2018/2019 is to be deliberately obtuse.
Yes, it is a "choice" - one made to deliberately appeal to a specific audience and demographic. To me that is not "art".
posted by jkaczor at 12:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Because if so, then the dev's for MLB 2020 really have their work cut out for them, because I think that game would be really fun if it had orcs and skavin, more like blood bowl. Oh, and allowed me to just use my neighbors and friends for the players. And wasn't about baseball.
Sports sims are one of the ultimate examples of letting the player customize their own experience and I wouldn't be surprised if you could get pretty close to a lot of this, I mean just look at Breaking Madden.
posted by umrain at 12:24 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Sports sims are one of the ultimate examples of letting the player customize their own experience and I wouldn't be surprised if you could get pretty close to a lot of this, I mean just look at Breaking Madden.
posted by umrain at 12:24 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
"Historically the vast majority of video games ever made that were playable on computers/home-consoles have included the ability to choose different difficulty levels - to not do so in 2018/2019 is to be deliberately obtuse."
I'm sorry but I'll really need to see a citation for that one.
posted by destructive cactus at 12:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
I'm sorry but I'll really need to see a citation for that one.
posted by destructive cactus at 12:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Mod note: Couple deleted; probably the discussion will go better if we don't do it by means of competing examples of how stupid the other guy's position is.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:34 PM on April 9, 2019
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:34 PM on April 9, 2019
I'm sorry but I'll really need to see a citation for that one.
posted by jkaczor at 12:34 PM on April 9, 2019
posted by jkaczor at 12:34 PM on April 9, 2019
Apologies; I didn't mean 'please cite one game with selectable difficulty', I meant 'please provide proof that the vast majority of games released have selectable difficulty'.
posted by destructive cactus at 12:38 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by destructive cactus at 12:38 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Apologies; I didn't mean 'please cite one game with selectable difficulty', I meant 'please provide proof that the vast majority of games released have selectable difficulty'.
How about you provide a list of games that don't?
Adventure was released 40 years ago, fairly certain it established precedents later followed by hundreds, if not thousands of games. But, please prove to me otherwise.
posted by jkaczor at 12:42 PM on April 9, 2019
How about you provide a list of games that don't?
Adventure was released 40 years ago, fairly certain it established precedents later followed by hundreds, if not thousands of games. But, please prove to me otherwise.
posted by jkaczor at 12:42 PM on April 9, 2019
I like how people are all “Moby Dick doesn’t have an easy mode, gotcha!” as if though there aren’t books and books written about how to make sense of that book and make it “easier”.
Not only that, but there is a zero percent chance that any major modern publishing house would publish a novel like the original Moby Dick now. Why? Because it won't sell. (Even at the time it was published, Moby Dick did not sell well. It didn't even earn out its advance!) Now maybe, the novel that exists in your heart of hearts is every bit as dense and over-laden with irrelevant details as Moby Dick, and in that case, god bless you, go pour it out onto the page...but also fully expect you will have to self-publish it. If you get an actual editor from an actual publishing company looking at your book someday, I promise, they are going to force you to make it more readable than that, unless you've got at least a half-dozen bestsellers under your belt already. All your artistic integrity be damned. Because the publishing houses know that "Nintendo hard" books have a very small potential audience and are going to be much harder to make money from.
Now, it seems FromSoftware is doing okay publishing these games, and even if they weren't, if they want to continue to publish niche games for a niche audience they have every right to do so. But that niche audience has a lot of Venn-diagram overlap with the same "niche audience" that games have always primarily catered to: young able-bodied men with good reflexes, lots of spare time, and few enough other sources of difficulty in their life that they're eager to artificially acquire some more. It's pretty reasonable to ask, if a game can be made to appeal to a wider audience than that and still remain basically the same game, shouldn't it be?
posted by mstokes650 at 12:43 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Not only that, but there is a zero percent chance that any major modern publishing house would publish a novel like the original Moby Dick now. Why? Because it won't sell. (Even at the time it was published, Moby Dick did not sell well. It didn't even earn out its advance!) Now maybe, the novel that exists in your heart of hearts is every bit as dense and over-laden with irrelevant details as Moby Dick, and in that case, god bless you, go pour it out onto the page...but also fully expect you will have to self-publish it. If you get an actual editor from an actual publishing company looking at your book someday, I promise, they are going to force you to make it more readable than that, unless you've got at least a half-dozen bestsellers under your belt already. All your artistic integrity be damned. Because the publishing houses know that "Nintendo hard" books have a very small potential audience and are going to be much harder to make money from.
Now, it seems FromSoftware is doing okay publishing these games, and even if they weren't, if they want to continue to publish niche games for a niche audience they have every right to do so. But that niche audience has a lot of Venn-diagram overlap with the same "niche audience" that games have always primarily catered to: young able-bodied men with good reflexes, lots of spare time, and few enough other sources of difficulty in their life that they're eager to artificially acquire some more. It's pretty reasonable to ask, if a game can be made to appeal to a wider audience than that and still remain basically the same game, shouldn't it be?
posted by mstokes650 at 12:43 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Yeah, the 2600 had difficulty switches that worked with most games. Probably a holdover from arcade game dip switches, which were there to help the machine owners optimize quarter extraction from their particular clientele.
Hardly any of the early-gen Nintendo and Sega games had adjustable difficulty. That mostly came back with the 16-bit consoles.
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:46 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Hardly any of the early-gen Nintendo and Sega games had adjustable difficulty. That mostly came back with the 16-bit consoles.
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:46 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
I'm too lazy to find the precise video (it might be this one regarding overreactions to critique of Cuphead), but youtuber Shaun made a point that resonated with me that amounts to: when faced with the reality that you're not supposed to be openly "proud" about your white identity, many white dudes latch onto the nearest other unifying thing in their life they see as being "for" people like them, which is gamer culture. Consequently, they end up approaching any kind of critique of or attempts to diversify games or gamer culture as an attempt to somehow take away their identity.
And I mean ... I'm ... I don't know. I don't want to say totally sympathetic? But like, it's a kinda understandable human reaction? However, left un-reflected upon, it leads to really bad places, which is why despite being someone who is a lifelong player of games (including ludicrously hard ones), I don't really identify as a "gamer".
It's also why -- and I'm honestly not thrilled to have to point this out -- nearly every time we go through one of these moral panic cycles where Serious Gamers are Very Serious about how [something that would broaden the playerbase of games] is going to Ruin Gaming, cursory digging into the primary influencers pushing the controversy reveals it to be something like "Six Degrees of White Nationalism" -- but often at a distance much smaller than six degrees.
posted by tocts at 12:53 PM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
And I mean ... I'm ... I don't know. I don't want to say totally sympathetic? But like, it's a kinda understandable human reaction? However, left un-reflected upon, it leads to really bad places, which is why despite being someone who is a lifelong player of games (including ludicrously hard ones), I don't really identify as a "gamer".
It's also why -- and I'm honestly not thrilled to have to point this out -- nearly every time we go through one of these moral panic cycles where Serious Gamers are Very Serious about how [something that would broaden the playerbase of games] is going to Ruin Gaming, cursory digging into the primary influencers pushing the controversy reveals it to be something like "Six Degrees of White Nationalism" -- but often at a distance much smaller than six degrees.
posted by tocts at 12:53 PM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
Accessibility is really important to strive for wherever possible within the constraints of a game's design, I agree. The problem with games like those from From Software, though, is that a large part of the game design is that they are a test of the speed of the player's thinking and reflexes. I'm not sure how this could be altered without re-designing the entire game from the ground up.
To take a simpler example, Super Hexagon is a game entirely about very very rapidly navigating a constantly changing maze. It is about having fast reaction times; there is nothing else interesting about it. You could allow people to slow it down until they could complete it, but... would anything of the game be left?
Since some games are cognitive or perceptual tests of a particular sort, everyone has games they can't play because they don't fit one's particular profile of strengths and weaknesses. I was very excited to play Return of the Obra Dinn, but found I simply could not progress because I'm too bad at tracking complicated relationships between people. In fact, I would say this game is probably completely unplayable for people who have difficulty with social cognition. I suppose this makes it unaccessible, but I don't see how that could be fixed. The game hinges on tracking complicated relationships between people. Take that away, and it's a mediocre pulp novel, a visual style that quickly gets old, and a set of music tracks I regretted having to listen to more than once.
posted by IjonTichy at 12:54 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
To take a simpler example, Super Hexagon is a game entirely about very very rapidly navigating a constantly changing maze. It is about having fast reaction times; there is nothing else interesting about it. You could allow people to slow it down until they could complete it, but... would anything of the game be left?
Since some games are cognitive or perceptual tests of a particular sort, everyone has games they can't play because they don't fit one's particular profile of strengths and weaknesses. I was very excited to play Return of the Obra Dinn, but found I simply could not progress because I'm too bad at tracking complicated relationships between people. In fact, I would say this game is probably completely unplayable for people who have difficulty with social cognition. I suppose this makes it unaccessible, but I don't see how that could be fixed. The game hinges on tracking complicated relationships between people. Take that away, and it's a mediocre pulp novel, a visual style that quickly gets old, and a set of music tracks I regretted having to listen to more than once.
posted by IjonTichy at 12:54 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
You could allow people to slow it down until they could complete it, but... would anything of the game be left?
Who is harmed by letting individuals answer that question for themselves?
posted by tocts at 12:55 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
Who is harmed by letting individuals answer that question for themselves?
posted by tocts at 12:55 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
The thing with RLs in particular is that many of the most popular modern ones (nethack, ToME, Sil) come with a variety of character creation options that serve as de facto difficulty modes. A Knight is going to have a much easier time than a Tourist, even if you have the game knowledge required to exploit the Tourist's unique starting position.
This is true but in all the major RLs I'm familiar with it's pretty much "hard mode" and "harder modes." I'm not too familiar with the From games, but the thread made it sound fairly similar.
posted by atoxyl at 12:58 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is true but in all the major RLs I'm familiar with it's pretty much "hard mode" and "harder modes." I'm not too familiar with the From games, but the thread made it sound fairly similar.
posted by atoxyl at 12:58 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
Who is harmed by letting individuals answer that question for themselves?
The game developer, if they spend resources designing and bug-testing and play-testing features that no-one ends up using?
posted by IjonTichy at 1:06 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
The game developer, if they spend resources designing and bug-testing and play-testing features that no-one ends up using?
posted by IjonTichy at 1:06 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'm not too familiar with the From games, but the thread made it sound fairly similar.
Yep. Barring Sekiro, the other Fromsoft Souls/Borne games have full character creators that allow various builds that serve as at the very least conditional difficulty selections. Sekiro whittles that down to just a skill tree as seen in many other games where you otherwise play as a set character.
In Demon's Souls, the 'easy' class is Royalty, because you start with access to a ranged magic attack, and you have jewelry to help with using it. In Dark Souls, the reverse is true: there's a Deprived starting class that essentially begins the game with caveman gear. Of course, throughout your journey you can develop the character any way you'd like and eventually the circumstances of your beginning don't matter.
posted by destructive cactus at 1:06 PM on April 9, 2019
Yep. Barring Sekiro, the other Fromsoft Souls/Borne games have full character creators that allow various builds that serve as at the very least conditional difficulty selections. Sekiro whittles that down to just a skill tree as seen in many other games where you otherwise play as a set character.
In Demon's Souls, the 'easy' class is Royalty, because you start with access to a ranged magic attack, and you have jewelry to help with using it. In Dark Souls, the reverse is true: there's a Deprived starting class that essentially begins the game with caveman gear. Of course, throughout your journey you can develop the character any way you'd like and eventually the circumstances of your beginning don't matter.
posted by destructive cactus at 1:06 PM on April 9, 2019
Who is harmed by letting individuals answer that question for themselves?
The game devs who have to program that capability into the game. That is, I think, something that's missing from this conversation. I agree that it's silly to pretend that an easy mode is somehow taking anything away from the experience of players who don't use it. But an easy mode doesn't just happen magically - what's being asked for is that a bunch of people do a whole bunch of extra labor to make one. You can decide that it's necessary to ask for that labor, but we shouldn't pretend that something like this is trivial to do.
posted by Ragged Richard at 1:08 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Accessibility is really important to strive for wherever possible within the constraints of a game's design, I agree. The problem with games like those from From Software, though, is that a large part of the game design is that they are a test of the speed of the player's thinking and reflexes. I'm not sure how this could be altered without re-designing the entire game from the ground up.
[..]
I was very excited to play Return of the Obra Dinn, but found I simply could not progress because I'm too bad at tracking complicated relationships between people. In fact, I would say this game is probably completely unplayable for people who have difficulty with social cognition.
"There exist games which would not be amenable to play by certain groups of people, therefore we should not broach the subject of even considering integrating accessibility into this other class of games, where we totally know how to do it" is maybe not the argument you thought you were making but it's what some of us are hearing. Like, Obra Dinn is not inaccessible because it goes too fast, sure, but I don't see what that has to do with Souls-types games being equipped with a slower/take less damage mode, which probably isn't even all that hard to implement because look there's a ton of games littered through history that have cracked this particular nut.
posted by axiom at 1:08 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
[..]
I was very excited to play Return of the Obra Dinn, but found I simply could not progress because I'm too bad at tracking complicated relationships between people. In fact, I would say this game is probably completely unplayable for people who have difficulty with social cognition.
"There exist games which would not be amenable to play by certain groups of people, therefore we should not broach the subject of even considering integrating accessibility into this other class of games, where we totally know how to do it" is maybe not the argument you thought you were making but it's what some of us are hearing. Like, Obra Dinn is not inaccessible because it goes too fast, sure, but I don't see what that has to do with Souls-types games being equipped with a slower/take less damage mode, which probably isn't even all that hard to implement because look there's a ton of games littered through history that have cracked this particular nut.
posted by axiom at 1:08 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
I've never attempted to play a game by From Software, because I'm not a particularly skilled video game player and while I'm sure I could probably "get gud" enough to complete the game given enough time I'm a grown ass man with a wife and kids and a thousand other responsibilities. The thought of spending the time learning the lessons of Sekiro the way Sekiro wants to teach them just makes me feel tired. Maybe I would play Sekiro if it had "Easy mode" or "Accessibility Mode" or whatever. But it doesn't, and I won't. According to a very vocal group of gamers it's good that I won't ever play it because apparently I don't deserve to. Ok.
My wife loves the Mass Effect series so much that she played Andromeda and enjoyed it. She's even less of a video game player than I am, and probably would have given up in disgust if they didn't provide options for people more interested in the story than the challenge. According to a very vocal group of gamers she ought to not have gotten the chance to enjoy this game because she couldn't play it the way the developers intended.
I played Soma and enjoyed it quite a bit, but I have bad anxiety and couldn't handle playing it the "right" way. I didn't mind because being able to turn off the monsters allowed me to engage with the interesting story scattered across the various computers. According to a very vocal group of gamers I ought to have not gotten the change to enjoy this game because I couldn't play it the way the developers intended.
I played Nier: Automata in its "easy mode" with a couple of the "cheat" chips installed, because again I don't really have the time to master the combat systems they put in place. I can't say this was playing the game in a way the developers didn't intend since after all this was a game where they let you buy all the achievements whether you earned them or not (Reader: I did). Nier is especially unique in that the final sequence of the game is specifically about an insurmountable challenge and paying a price to receive assistance for that challenge. I think that says more about the role of accessibility and difficulty in games than Sekiro's refusal to provide any options for players. Anyway, I enjoyed playing Nier quite a bit and I'm glad I got the chance to play it even if I wasn't playing it the way a very vocal group of gamers think I ought to have played it.
Maybe I would enjoy Sekiro too, but I'll never know, and I find it difficult to wrap my head around the idea that people that think Sekiro is a good game also think it's good that I'll never play it.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
My wife loves the Mass Effect series so much that she played Andromeda and enjoyed it. She's even less of a video game player than I am, and probably would have given up in disgust if they didn't provide options for people more interested in the story than the challenge. According to a very vocal group of gamers she ought to not have gotten the chance to enjoy this game because she couldn't play it the way the developers intended.
I played Soma and enjoyed it quite a bit, but I have bad anxiety and couldn't handle playing it the "right" way. I didn't mind because being able to turn off the monsters allowed me to engage with the interesting story scattered across the various computers. According to a very vocal group of gamers I ought to have not gotten the change to enjoy this game because I couldn't play it the way the developers intended.
I played Nier: Automata in its "easy mode" with a couple of the "cheat" chips installed, because again I don't really have the time to master the combat systems they put in place. I can't say this was playing the game in a way the developers didn't intend since after all this was a game where they let you buy all the achievements whether you earned them or not (Reader: I did). Nier is especially unique in that the final sequence of the game is specifically about an insurmountable challenge and paying a price to receive assistance for that challenge. I think that says more about the role of accessibility and difficulty in games than Sekiro's refusal to provide any options for players. Anyway, I enjoyed playing Nier quite a bit and I'm glad I got the chance to play it even if I wasn't playing it the way a very vocal group of gamers think I ought to have played it.
Maybe I would enjoy Sekiro too, but I'll never know, and I find it difficult to wrap my head around the idea that people that think Sekiro is a good game also think it's good that I'll never play it.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:09 PM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
Mod note: Couple deleted; again, please just skip putting words in other people's mouths, skip "you're not commenting in good faith"; just make your own points.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:14 PM on April 9, 2019
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:14 PM on April 9, 2019
The game developer, if they spend resources designing and bug-testing and play-testing features that no-one ends up using?
Your specific example was Super Hexagon, a game where the primary escalation is that the starting speed changes over time. Do you honestly believe it would be an imposition to have a toggle for a slower initial speed, a slower scaling factor, and/or a slower maximum speed? So much so that, to use your own response, you believe the developers would be harmed by having to add it?
posted by tocts at 1:18 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
Your specific example was Super Hexagon, a game where the primary escalation is that the starting speed changes over time. Do you honestly believe it would be an imposition to have a toggle for a slower initial speed, a slower scaling factor, and/or a slower maximum speed? So much so that, to use your own response, you believe the developers would be harmed by having to add it?
posted by tocts at 1:18 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
The game developer, if they spend resources designing and bug-testing and play-testing features that no-one ends up using?
This presupposes that no one will use accessibility features which... I don't think is supportable. There are lots of people who are clamoring for accessibility features. We're in this thread right here. Unless you didn't literally mean no-one in which case what did you mean?
posted by axiom at 1:19 PM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
This presupposes that no one will use accessibility features which... I don't think is supportable. There are lots of people who are clamoring for accessibility features. We're in this thread right here. Unless you didn't literally mean no-one in which case what did you mean?
posted by axiom at 1:19 PM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
The problem with "the game has to be hard to be fun! That's the point!" is that, well, hard is different for different people. Hard that becomes rapidly impossible because of disability or age or whatever reason isn't fun. Difficulty sliders allow people to set a game to the hard but doable with practice level for them that is, presumably, the actual developers intention! What you're saying if you want to exclude that option is that the game is only for people who are at exactly the pre-determined level of skill and ability that makes the current setting the appropriate level of hard, which.... why? Because otherwise people may "cheat" and make the game too easy and not enjoy it? (Is this a thing? More fool those people then I guess? I haven't met any in all the games I've played that have an easy mode)
posted by stillnocturnal at 1:20 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by stillnocturnal at 1:20 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
As a developer of sort-of-games, I feel it’s perfectly reasonable for players to ask devs to add in more difficulty options, not least because I’m not very good at playing most videogames. I certainly believe that successful and profitable game devs have a responsibility to do this, if they feel they are making something worthwhile.
That said, for smaller game devs whose success is far from assured, I can understand why they might not add in a wide range of difficulties. You can’t simply change a speed multiplier as it could have all sorts of unintended consequences - doing it properly would take a reasonable amount of dev and QA time, time that they might worry would be better spent making more content or features or spending more time in QA and marketing so they can eat. If they are successful though, I would hope they return to the game and add in more options.
As for myself, I have long concluded that certain game devs and genres are not interested in my custom and so I’ve chosen to avoid them in turn, for there are so many other good games to play. If I really need to learn from them for research or judging purposes, there’s always Let’s Plays.
posted by adrianhon at 1:20 PM on April 9, 2019
That said, for smaller game devs whose success is far from assured, I can understand why they might not add in a wide range of difficulties. You can’t simply change a speed multiplier as it could have all sorts of unintended consequences - doing it properly would take a reasonable amount of dev and QA time, time that they might worry would be better spent making more content or features or spending more time in QA and marketing so they can eat. If they are successful though, I would hope they return to the game and add in more options.
As for myself, I have long concluded that certain game devs and genres are not interested in my custom and so I’ve chosen to avoid them in turn, for there are so many other good games to play. If I really need to learn from them for research or judging purposes, there’s always Let’s Plays.
posted by adrianhon at 1:20 PM on April 9, 2019
From Software is a Japanese development studio. Presumably, they developed the game in Japanese. Then, either they or their publisher translated the game into English.
That's accessibility.
They also made the choice to publish it for PC, XOne and PS4, instead of limiting the release to one or two platforms.
That's also accessibility.
Changes to the actual gameplay, ("difficulty" essentially) are also an accessibility consideration. This can butt up against the intended experience, and it does take work to implement, so it's at the developers' discretion (just like the previous two examples of accessibility), but it is certainly accessibility. Whether or not a specific game "should" have gameplay accessibility options seems kind of academic, but when I see that developers have made an effort to be as accessible as is reasonably possible, it really improves my opinion of the game and the studio that made it.
posted by subocoyne at 1:22 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
That's accessibility.
They also made the choice to publish it for PC, XOne and PS4, instead of limiting the release to one or two platforms.
That's also accessibility.
Changes to the actual gameplay, ("difficulty" essentially) are also an accessibility consideration. This can butt up against the intended experience, and it does take work to implement, so it's at the developers' discretion (just like the previous two examples of accessibility), but it is certainly accessibility. Whether or not a specific game "should" have gameplay accessibility options seems kind of academic, but when I see that developers have made an effort to be as accessible as is reasonably possible, it really improves my opinion of the game and the studio that made it.
posted by subocoyne at 1:22 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
I've bought books that I do not have the time or concentration to get through - do the authors owe me satisfaction? If I buy Infinite Jest do I get a Finite easy-to-diGest mode? If not, why are games treated separately from other works?
I did see a Twitter thread this week that said obtuse narratives were a privileged request for emotional labor from the reader. For real. But this is not that.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:27 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
I did see a Twitter thread this week that said obtuse narratives were a privileged request for emotional labor from the reader. For real. But this is not that.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:27 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
The "art" metaphor that comes to mind for me would be if the art required a physical attribute to engage with it, like say a visual illusion where the sweet spot is at like 6"6, and standing on your tiptoes to see it is part of the art! But then not, you know, providing a stool for those of us who are short arses and can't even come close. And maybe some artists are poor and can't afford a series of correctly sized stools, but that's really the only argument that feels valid to me.
posted by stillnocturnal at 1:29 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by stillnocturnal at 1:29 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
In terms of the comparison between mediums, it feels like games are in a unique position where, while it's clear they can and should be made accessible, it's seen as something relatively trivial that is the creators' responsibility, whereas other accessibility features have traditionally been produced for extra cost by third parties. Microsoft's system level efforts are fantastic on that front, but the nature of games mean it does have to be a shared responsibility - every engine will involve a different way to add subtitles, for example.
posted by lucidium at 1:37 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by lucidium at 1:37 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
So what I keep coming back to is that the idea that nobody tells artists of other types of media what they should or should not do is just wrong. Part of how the public, scholars, and other artists engage with art is through criticism. An art form being criticized isn't it being singled out, that's just what happens when folks start taking something seriously. Since being interactive is a huge part of what makes games unique as an art form, of course that's going to get a lot of discussion about it, discussion that by definition can't be had about other forms of art. I mean the people who make movies and plays can and do get criticized about their casting choices, the fact that a woman who's composing for a string quartet doesn't face the same criticism doesn't mean that the complaints aren't valid, just that they're not applicable to instrumental composers.
Criticism of art isn't censorship, silencing, or even not respecting the artistic vision behind the work, it's just another form of engagement.
posted by Gygesringtone at 1:50 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
Criticism of art isn't censorship, silencing, or even not respecting the artistic vision behind the work, it's just another form of engagement.
posted by Gygesringtone at 1:50 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
Television is art, but there are laws about closed captioning. This is not strictly analogous to wanting an easy mode on a video game, but it does mean that any kind of general argument about the inviolability of an artist's original vision vs. the needs of the artwork's audience are frankly nonsense. Art doesn't exist in a vacuum, it must be perceived, which requires an audience, which should be (and in some cases is required to be) afforded the right to experience it as fully as possible.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:03 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:03 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
stillnocturnal - I'm not trying to put words in your (and others) mouth(s), but it seems like one side is hearing "all games must be hard to be good." when one side is saying "some games are good, because they are hard." Yes, you said "the game" , but after you switched into generic statements, so that's how I heard it. I apologize in advance if that's not how you meant it.
"Hard that becomes rapidly impossible because of disability or age or whatever reason isn't fun." So essentially some games, are not fun for some people. Games that revolve too much around sports aren't for for those who dislike sports. Some games aren't for everyone.
Think of it like a genre of game. There's shooters, there's twitch shooters, there's RPG's, there's puzzles, there's turn based strat and real time strat. And there's just plain difficult games. Yes, for some (I don't mean "all," nor "most" nor "real" nor "the best" or anything else like that. Just some.) games, the difficulty is the point.
If I don't like shooter games, I shouldn't be annoyed at the devs for not adding a melee weapon mode, which also disables enemies from having ranged weapons, and appropriately balancing game play. Puzzle games shouldn't be required to have Souls/Borne quality bosses (with or without difficulty levels). Many people enjoy social or collector style games. There's an extremely large variety of games.
Yes, it's not necessarily too hard for the devs if one only wanted to balance "difficulty" level by the amount of damage one takes/dishes out. However, if I were talking with someone about a game from the "hard game" genre, and I talked about spending 10 hours to do X, and someone said that they found X quite easy, the first thing I'm asking is where their damage slider was. And if they didn't play it at 100% (or 500% or whatever the max is) we're no longer talking about the same game experience.
That's one of the things that I know that I like, and suspect other Souls fans do. That when we talk about doing X, or here someone's idea for a new build/difficulty idea, we're all talking about the same thing.
posted by nobeagle at 2:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
"Hard that becomes rapidly impossible because of disability or age or whatever reason isn't fun." So essentially some games, are not fun for some people. Games that revolve too much around sports aren't for for those who dislike sports. Some games aren't for everyone.
Think of it like a genre of game. There's shooters, there's twitch shooters, there's RPG's, there's puzzles, there's turn based strat and real time strat. And there's just plain difficult games. Yes, for some (I don't mean "all," nor "most" nor "real" nor "the best" or anything else like that. Just some.) games, the difficulty is the point.
If I don't like shooter games, I shouldn't be annoyed at the devs for not adding a melee weapon mode, which also disables enemies from having ranged weapons, and appropriately balancing game play. Puzzle games shouldn't be required to have Souls/Borne quality bosses (with or without difficulty levels). Many people enjoy social or collector style games. There's an extremely large variety of games.
Yes, it's not necessarily too hard for the devs if one only wanted to balance "difficulty" level by the amount of damage one takes/dishes out. However, if I were talking with someone about a game from the "hard game" genre, and I talked about spending 10 hours to do X, and someone said that they found X quite easy, the first thing I'm asking is where their damage slider was. And if they didn't play it at 100% (or 500% or whatever the max is) we're no longer talking about the same game experience.
That's one of the things that I know that I like, and suspect other Souls fans do. That when we talk about doing X, or here someone's idea for a new build/difficulty idea, we're all talking about the same thing.
posted by nobeagle at 2:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
A lot of people seem to be claiming that the whole appeal of From Software games is their difficulty, and to take that away would make the game boring or pointless, and... I don't think that's true at all. I consider the Dark Souls games and Bloodborne probably my favorite games of all time. And sure, the challenge is part of that, but not at all the whole of it. Honestly, the reputation for difficulty is what initially kept me away from Dark Souls. It was the world building and unique, dreamlike storytelling through environmental clues and item descriptions that fascinated me. Eventually I picked up Dark Souls 2 and have never looked back.
And yeah, I enjoyed the challenge of beating my head against a boss for awhile until I figured out their move sets and managed to defeat them on my own. It happened a lot. But not always! Some bosses were just too much for me, and the game stopped being fun. At those points? I turned on the Dark Souls easy mode. I summoned help. And after I defeated the boss with the help of a friendly player, wordlessly celebrating the victory with them through silly emotes before they waved and disappeared from my world, I would pay it forward by throwing down my summoning sign to help some other struggling soul. Jolly Cooperation is hands down my favorite aspect of those games.
And Sekiro doesn't have that, and it really bums me out. But I picked it up anyway, because I love so many other aspects of From's games. And I've enjoyed the 20 or so hours I've put into it so far... but I've hit a wall. I'm on a boss I've gone against for at least 3 hours of play time, and I can't beat it, and it's just... not fun. And if that means Sekiro isn't "for" me, so be it, but that sucks. Because I'm enjoying the story, and exploring the environments, and even the slightly less challenging encounters that took me many tries to beat, but were still fun. And if I could summon help or temporarily drop the difficulty to beat this one roadblock, I know I would get back to thoroughly enjoying the game, and doing so would not impact anyone else's play experience *at all*. Why is it wrong to ask for that?
And it's not like From has finely tuned this perfect level of difficulty, and altering it would break the game... it already has varying difficulty levels! Beat it, and you get a harder "New Game Plus". Even before that, there's an in-game action you can take that increases both the difficulty and the rewards - which you can subsequently turn off and on at whim. I don't believe it would take months of development effort to flip those switches in the other direction.
posted by Roommate at 2:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
And yeah, I enjoyed the challenge of beating my head against a boss for awhile until I figured out their move sets and managed to defeat them on my own. It happened a lot. But not always! Some bosses were just too much for me, and the game stopped being fun. At those points? I turned on the Dark Souls easy mode. I summoned help. And after I defeated the boss with the help of a friendly player, wordlessly celebrating the victory with them through silly emotes before they waved and disappeared from my world, I would pay it forward by throwing down my summoning sign to help some other struggling soul. Jolly Cooperation is hands down my favorite aspect of those games.
And Sekiro doesn't have that, and it really bums me out. But I picked it up anyway, because I love so many other aspects of From's games. And I've enjoyed the 20 or so hours I've put into it so far... but I've hit a wall. I'm on a boss I've gone against for at least 3 hours of play time, and I can't beat it, and it's just... not fun. And if that means Sekiro isn't "for" me, so be it, but that sucks. Because I'm enjoying the story, and exploring the environments, and even the slightly less challenging encounters that took me many tries to beat, but were still fun. And if I could summon help or temporarily drop the difficulty to beat this one roadblock, I know I would get back to thoroughly enjoying the game, and doing so would not impact anyone else's play experience *at all*. Why is it wrong to ask for that?
And it's not like From has finely tuned this perfect level of difficulty, and altering it would break the game... it already has varying difficulty levels! Beat it, and you get a harder "New Game Plus". Even before that, there's an in-game action you can take that increases both the difficulty and the rewards - which you can subsequently turn off and on at whim. I don't believe it would take months of development effort to flip those switches in the other direction.
posted by Roommate at 2:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
Hardly any of the early-gen Nintendo and Sega games had adjustable difficulty. That mostly came back with the 16-bit consoles.
Megaman 2 has an easy mode (I think added to the U.S. version as "normal" mode) but they dropped that later. That was the generation of games where there was only an hour of content so they had to kill you a lot to stretch it out, of course
Difficulty sliders allow people to set a game to the hard but doable with practice level for them that is, presumably, the actual developers intention!
Once you get into the realm of ultra-hard/hardcore/permadeath games, it's definitely not just about allowing players to set the right level of challenge for themselves anymore. It becomes about presenting players with some kind of objectively high bar to clear to be able to say they did it. Like running an ultramarathon, or something. I don't think one can or should pretend there's not an intentional aspect of exclusivity to that. I think one can debate to what extent there's harm in that kind of very niche exclusivity, or whether anything is actually lost by making it more inclusive.
posted by atoxyl at 2:32 PM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Megaman 2 has an easy mode (I think added to the U.S. version as "normal" mode) but they dropped that later. That was the generation of games where there was only an hour of content so they had to kill you a lot to stretch it out, of course
Difficulty sliders allow people to set a game to the hard but doable with practice level for them that is, presumably, the actual developers intention!
Once you get into the realm of ultra-hard/hardcore/permadeath games, it's definitely not just about allowing players to set the right level of challenge for themselves anymore. It becomes about presenting players with some kind of objectively high bar to clear to be able to say they did it. Like running an ultramarathon, or something. I don't think one can or should pretend there's not an intentional aspect of exclusivity to that. I think one can debate to what extent there's harm in that kind of very niche exclusivity, or whether anything is actually lost by making it more inclusive.
posted by atoxyl at 2:32 PM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
Man, this thread is depressing. I have 3 things to add:
1) For gamers like me, Easy mode is often more than enough challenge. I die plenty on Easy. Having the option isn't ruining my experience, it's giving me a fighting chance (literally).
2) It boggles my mind that developers/fans of a game would rather limit its audience than share its joy by adding a totally optional difficulty.
3) I love RPGs but hate MMOs. Instead of a new Mass Effect or Fallout or Elder Scrolls, we got Anthem, Fallout 76, and ES Online. I've had a hard time finding new titles to play lately. If I thought I had a fighting chance to finish Dark Souls, I'd buy it today.
posted by frogstar42 at 2:34 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
1) For gamers like me, Easy mode is often more than enough challenge. I die plenty on Easy. Having the option isn't ruining my experience, it's giving me a fighting chance (literally).
2) It boggles my mind that developers/fans of a game would rather limit its audience than share its joy by adding a totally optional difficulty.
3) I love RPGs but hate MMOs. Instead of a new Mass Effect or Fallout or Elder Scrolls, we got Anthem, Fallout 76, and ES Online. I've had a hard time finding new titles to play lately. If I thought I had a fighting chance to finish Dark Souls, I'd buy it today.
posted by frogstar42 at 2:34 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
It's a mystery to me how what one game does becomes an issue of what all games should/should-not do.
There are hundreds of games; why is it a problem if one or a handful don't have an easy mode?
posted by lastobelus at 2:38 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
There are hundreds of games; why is it a problem if one or a handful don't have an easy mode?
posted by lastobelus at 2:38 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
To take a simpler example, Super Hexagon is a game entirely about very very rapidly navigating a constantly changing maze. It is about having fast reaction times; there is nothing else interesting about it. You could allow people to slow it down until they could complete it, but... would anything of the game be left?
well, let's see what the dev says:
"When Super Hexagon came along years later, I thought about accessibility options again, and decided not to implement them.
This whole game, I figured, is about mastery of challenge, and is probably not even going to be of interest to people who would use accessibility options. Making the game easier would ruin it, I thought. But I was wrong!
I've had people throughout the years tell me that, once you've mastered Super Hexagon, it becomes this kind of zen, meditative thing. I've had people tell me they use it to focus, and deal with stress.
I could have made that accessible to more people, but I didn't, and I regret it now."
this is just part of a really great thread by @terrycavanagh about this whole debate, mostly framed around his amazing 2010 platformer VVVVVV, which had detailed accessibility options literally almost a decade ago
posted by JimBennett at 2:44 PM on April 9, 2019 [18 favorites]
well, let's see what the dev says:
"When Super Hexagon came along years later, I thought about accessibility options again, and decided not to implement them.
This whole game, I figured, is about mastery of challenge, and is probably not even going to be of interest to people who would use accessibility options. Making the game easier would ruin it, I thought. But I was wrong!
I've had people throughout the years tell me that, once you've mastered Super Hexagon, it becomes this kind of zen, meditative thing. I've had people tell me they use it to focus, and deal with stress.
I could have made that accessible to more people, but I didn't, and I regret it now."
this is just part of a really great thread by @terrycavanagh about this whole debate, mostly framed around his amazing 2010 platformer VVVVVV, which had detailed accessibility options literally almost a decade ago
posted by JimBennett at 2:44 PM on April 9, 2019 [18 favorites]
And it's not like From has finely tuned this perfect level of difficulty, and altering it would break the game... it already has varying difficulty levels! Beat it, and you get a harder "New Game Plus". Even before that, there's an in-game action you can take that increases both the difficulty and the rewards - which you can subsequently turn off and on at whim. I don't believe it would take months of development effort to flip those switches in the other direction.
You know, you're right, this has convinced me that I was wrong in thinking that it would be prohibitively difficult to rebalance the game, since they've already done that but in the other direction, which IS exclusionary. And thanks JimBennett, I'm surprised, but I guess Super Hexagon does have something to offer some people once the challenge is gone. (It's possible to master that game?)
posted by IjonTichy at 2:52 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
You know, you're right, this has convinced me that I was wrong in thinking that it would be prohibitively difficult to rebalance the game, since they've already done that but in the other direction, which IS exclusionary. And thanks JimBennett, I'm surprised, but I guess Super Hexagon does have something to offer some people once the challenge is gone. (It's possible to master that game?)
posted by IjonTichy at 2:52 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
(It's possible to master that game?)
yes, and believe it not, super hexagon has an ending. the fact that more people haven't seen it probably bums terry out a bit.
i would also like to quote for truth this bit by Roomate above:
A lot of people seem to be claiming that the whole appeal of From Software games is their difficulty, and to take that away would make the game boring or pointless, and... I don't think that's true at all. I consider the Dark Souls games and Bloodborne probably my favorite games of all time. And sure, the challenge is part of that, but not at all the whole of it. Honestly, the reputation for difficulty is what initially kept me away from Dark Souls. It was the world building and unique, dreamlike storytelling through environmental clues and item descriptions that fascinated me. Eventually I picked up Dark Souls 2 and have never looked back.
people are really doing a massive disservice to these games by saying literally the only point is that they're difficult. for one thing Dark Souls 1, especially, has insanely intricate level design and world design. i think about how beautiful Ash Lake is all the time, and that's a level i've only ever experienced through let's plays. i also adore the way these games drop their story entirely through little breadcrumbs in item descriptions and one off voice lines. there is just SO MUCH more going on in these games besides "get good," but because that is the primary ethos behind the series the other really interesting and cool stuff they do is locked away for people. there is nothing anyone here can say that can convince me that doesn't suck. everyone should be able to wander ash lake for themselves.
posted by JimBennett at 2:57 PM on April 9, 2019 [13 favorites]
yes, and believe it not, super hexagon has an ending. the fact that more people haven't seen it probably bums terry out a bit.
i would also like to quote for truth this bit by Roomate above:
A lot of people seem to be claiming that the whole appeal of From Software games is their difficulty, and to take that away would make the game boring or pointless, and... I don't think that's true at all. I consider the Dark Souls games and Bloodborne probably my favorite games of all time. And sure, the challenge is part of that, but not at all the whole of it. Honestly, the reputation for difficulty is what initially kept me away from Dark Souls. It was the world building and unique, dreamlike storytelling through environmental clues and item descriptions that fascinated me. Eventually I picked up Dark Souls 2 and have never looked back.
people are really doing a massive disservice to these games by saying literally the only point is that they're difficult. for one thing Dark Souls 1, especially, has insanely intricate level design and world design. i think about how beautiful Ash Lake is all the time, and that's a level i've only ever experienced through let's plays. i also adore the way these games drop their story entirely through little breadcrumbs in item descriptions and one off voice lines. there is just SO MUCH more going on in these games besides "get good," but because that is the primary ethos behind the series the other really interesting and cool stuff they do is locked away for people. there is nothing anyone here can say that can convince me that doesn't suck. everyone should be able to wander ash lake for themselves.
posted by JimBennett at 2:57 PM on April 9, 2019 [13 favorites]
I don't think anyone has come out and said this, but the entire point of games like this is gatekeeping. They are intentionally made to be unplayable by the majority of people so that the few that can play them can feel superior.
Now we can argue whether or not this is a good thing (I personally don't think it is) but the reality of the situation is that by removing the gatekeeping you have in fact changed the game to an extent that is no longer the same game. It is very possible it might be a better game that is enjoyable for more people. But that is not the game the designers or the target audience want.
posted by iamnotangry at 3:14 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Now we can argue whether or not this is a good thing (I personally don't think it is) but the reality of the situation is that by removing the gatekeeping you have in fact changed the game to an extent that is no longer the same game. It is very possible it might be a better game that is enjoyable for more people. But that is not the game the designers or the target audience want.
posted by iamnotangry at 3:14 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
They are intentionally made to be unplayable by the majority of people so that the few that can play them can feel superior.
No, this is not correct. It is an uncharitable assumption about what is going on in the heads of people who derive enjoyment from challenging themselves to accomplish difficult things.
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [17 favorites]
No, this is not correct. It is an uncharitable assumption about what is going on in the heads of people who derive enjoyment from challenging themselves to accomplish difficult things.
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [17 favorites]
They are intentionally made to be unplayable by the majority of people so that the few that can play them can feel superior.
I understand the point you're trying to make but I think you've gone a bit too far here. Do you really think that the game is intentionally made to exclude people? And that this exclusion is what makes people that do succeed at it enjoy themselves, by feeling superior to those that are 'left out'?
posted by destructive cactus at 3:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
I understand the point you're trying to make but I think you've gone a bit too far here. Do you really think that the game is intentionally made to exclude people? And that this exclusion is what makes people that do succeed at it enjoy themselves, by feeling superior to those that are 'left out'?
posted by destructive cactus at 3:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
I swear to god, with some patience and a sorcery catalyst every single one of you could make your way to Ash Lake.
(No promises about getting back out again tho)
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:27 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
(No promises about getting back out again tho)
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:27 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
> I don't think anyone has come out and said this, but the entire point of games like this is gatekeeping.
They're really not for me, It's like practicing with a weird, abstract instrument. You play the same bar, over and over and over, getting it wrong in different ways but always refocusing, then the release and exhilaration when you play it just right for the first time. Then you practice until you can get through it every time and make it to the next bar. I'd show friends the Super Hexagon ending (after they'd hit a wall and wanted to see it) and it felt exactly like performing a piece.
posted by lucidium at 3:32 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
They're really not for me, It's like practicing with a weird, abstract instrument. You play the same bar, over and over and over, getting it wrong in different ways but always refocusing, then the release and exhilaration when you play it just right for the first time. Then you practice until you can get through it every time and make it to the next bar. I'd show friends the Super Hexagon ending (after they'd hit a wall and wanted to see it) and it felt exactly like performing a piece.
posted by lucidium at 3:32 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
It's easy to make a game hard. It's hard to make a game genuinely challenging.
My current game of choice is The Division 2. Essentially, there are five difficulty levels: Story, Normal, Hard, Challenging, Heroic.
"Hard" is just about the sweet spot for me: enemies are fairly numerous, fairly strong, fairly smart, fairly deadly. A player will be forgiven one mistake, maybe even two, but if they play smart, play tactically, they will overcome. But I wouldn't mind a bit more challenge. Maybe I'll try the next difficulty level?
"Challenging" is where it starts to get problematic. No matter how you build you character, or what level-ups you have or what equipment you use, pretty much everything, even the trash mobs, can kill you in a second or two. And there are lots of enemies, and they take a lot of damage. And they appear magically from every angle, and rush right up to you because they know they are pretty much invulnerable, and they don't respond to anything the player does. Machine-gun them in the face for 100 rounds straight and they just keep trotting towards you.
"Heroic" is just...stupid. A buddy and I tried it last night. We are both pretty good at The Division games and games in general, and have pretty good gear and work pretty well together as a team, but just...no. It was ridiculous. A ridiculous joke.
If you've played any of these games, you'll probably know about the mysterious bad guys called Hunters. Those are exactly the sort of thing I would consider a "challenge". A guy who takes a billion HP damage without flinching, runs up to you in cover, then instantly destroys you with a police baton is not a challenge.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:36 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
My current game of choice is The Division 2. Essentially, there are five difficulty levels: Story, Normal, Hard, Challenging, Heroic.
"Hard" is just about the sweet spot for me: enemies are fairly numerous, fairly strong, fairly smart, fairly deadly. A player will be forgiven one mistake, maybe even two, but if they play smart, play tactically, they will overcome. But I wouldn't mind a bit more challenge. Maybe I'll try the next difficulty level?
"Challenging" is where it starts to get problematic. No matter how you build you character, or what level-ups you have or what equipment you use, pretty much everything, even the trash mobs, can kill you in a second or two. And there are lots of enemies, and they take a lot of damage. And they appear magically from every angle, and rush right up to you because they know they are pretty much invulnerable, and they don't respond to anything the player does. Machine-gun them in the face for 100 rounds straight and they just keep trotting towards you.
"Heroic" is just...stupid. A buddy and I tried it last night. We are both pretty good at The Division games and games in general, and have pretty good gear and work pretty well together as a team, but just...no. It was ridiculous. A ridiculous joke.
If you've played any of these games, you'll probably know about the mysterious bad guys called Hunters. Those are exactly the sort of thing I would consider a "challenge". A guy who takes a billion HP damage without flinching, runs up to you in cover, then instantly destroys you with a police baton is not a challenge.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:36 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
Cory Barlog comes off as a bit of a dick, too. "Compromise my vision"? God of War was good and everything, but dude, don't disappear up your own fundament: your previous game was Mad Max.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:47 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:47 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
"Easy mode" is not an accessibility feature. It's a whole category of gameplay modifications that developers are free to choose from, some of which resemble accessibility features, some of which don't, each of which modifies the nature of the game in complex ways that are unique to that game's combination of mechanics and sources of difficulty. Some games, like Tetris, it's pretty straightforward to see what choices you'd have to make it easier. Others, such as those with more strategic depth, it gets substantially more complicated and difficult to design and implement a "difficulty" slider without it fundamentally changing the nature of the game, or even breaking the carefully balanced game design in various unfortunate ways depending where it's set.
I haven't played Sekiro, but if it's anything like Dark Souls I suppose the straightforward way to make it easier would be to have the speed at which everything runs adjustable down to 50% or something. That way you wouldn't have to re-balance and re-design and re-play-test every damn thing in the game that would need to be modified if you did anything more complicated like give the player more health or something crazy like that. Think of Bethesda games and you can come up with plenty of examples where they tried to make "easy mode" work by gunshots doing more damage or the like and it just made for badly unbalanced nonsense if you picked the wrong setting.
So, letting people run it at half-speed to make things easier shouldn't directly break the game balance too much and would be easy to do. It probably still wouldn't be enough for some of us to find playing it as easy as it is for people who are actually good at this kind of game. It would encourage people to experiment with however many different settings to find out which one they seem to like at the beginning, then probably pick one that's way too easy since they haven't played enough to reach their ultimate ability, abandon the game half-way through because it thus became too easy, never get around to starting again. It would also make the gameplay itself slower, meaning perhaps relatively more tedious and unenjoyable to the marginal player for whom it would be made more accessible.
Slowing down the combat by 30% is exactly what I did myself when I got hold of the open source version of Star Control II to play with a few years ago, and that made it much more fun for me, but I had the benefit of having played through it before and knowing that this was a game design choice I would've done differently. The effects of having an "easy mode" are not going to be immediately obvious no matter which method of making one is chosen, and if the developers choose not do it I can't really blame them without a lot more analysis of exactly how it would work in the context of the game in question.
posted by sfenders at 3:56 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
I haven't played Sekiro, but if it's anything like Dark Souls I suppose the straightforward way to make it easier would be to have the speed at which everything runs adjustable down to 50% or something. That way you wouldn't have to re-balance and re-design and re-play-test every damn thing in the game that would need to be modified if you did anything more complicated like give the player more health or something crazy like that. Think of Bethesda games and you can come up with plenty of examples where they tried to make "easy mode" work by gunshots doing more damage or the like and it just made for badly unbalanced nonsense if you picked the wrong setting.
So, letting people run it at half-speed to make things easier shouldn't directly break the game balance too much and would be easy to do. It probably still wouldn't be enough for some of us to find playing it as easy as it is for people who are actually good at this kind of game. It would encourage people to experiment with however many different settings to find out which one they seem to like at the beginning, then probably pick one that's way too easy since they haven't played enough to reach their ultimate ability, abandon the game half-way through because it thus became too easy, never get around to starting again. It would also make the gameplay itself slower, meaning perhaps relatively more tedious and unenjoyable to the marginal player for whom it would be made more accessible.
Slowing down the combat by 30% is exactly what I did myself when I got hold of the open source version of Star Control II to play with a few years ago, and that made it much more fun for me, but I had the benefit of having played through it before and knowing that this was a game design choice I would've done differently. The effects of having an "easy mode" are not going to be immediately obvious no matter which method of making one is chosen, and if the developers choose not do it I can't really blame them without a lot more analysis of exactly how it would work in the context of the game in question.
posted by sfenders at 3:56 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
And yeah I'm the guy who will play a game for the fifth on fiftieth time through on Nightmare mode or UltraViolence or whatever because I'm not done with being in the world yet but still want a physical challenge.
Oh, yeah. Going through Doom again with Brutal Doom, about 10 or whatever years back, on UltraViolence mode is easily one of my favourite gaming experiences ever. As a kid, playing it obsessively, I never went beyond Hard mode.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:57 PM on April 9, 2019
Oh, yeah. Going through Doom again with Brutal Doom, about 10 or whatever years back, on UltraViolence mode is easily one of my favourite gaming experiences ever. As a kid, playing it obsessively, I never went beyond Hard mode.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:57 PM on April 9, 2019
That's one of the things that I know that I like, and suspect other Souls fans do. That when we talk about doing X, or here someone's idea for a new build/difficulty idea, we're all talking about the same thing.
I disagree with this.
It's a different thing when someone with nerve damage that causes them to have slower reaction times does X.
It's another different thing when someone can only do X after looking up tips in a wiki.
It's a different thing still when someone who has motor control issues that make it hard for them hold down or rapidly press buttons is doing X.
And it's a different thing when someone does X with bongo controllers.
Different difficulty levels already exists. Even among people in the ability range that the game assumes, some will find different parts of the game more challenging than others. And I think these differences make the game more interesting to talk about. But I also think it's good thing when people who didn't choose to opt in to their specific extrinsic 'difficulty modes' have the choice to to set assist options or choose game modes that bring the game's intrinsic difficulty down to a level playing field with others who are playing the game.
posted by umrain at 4:18 PM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
I disagree with this.
It's a different thing when someone with nerve damage that causes them to have slower reaction times does X.
It's another different thing when someone can only do X after looking up tips in a wiki.
It's a different thing still when someone who has motor control issues that make it hard for them hold down or rapidly press buttons is doing X.
And it's a different thing when someone does X with bongo controllers.
Different difficulty levels already exists. Even among people in the ability range that the game assumes, some will find different parts of the game more challenging than others. And I think these differences make the game more interesting to talk about. But I also think it's good thing when people who didn't choose to opt in to their specific extrinsic 'difficulty modes' have the choice to to set assist options or choose game modes that bring the game's intrinsic difficulty down to a level playing field with others who are playing the game.
posted by umrain at 4:18 PM on April 9, 2019 [10 favorites]
then probably pick one that's way too easy since they haven't played enough to reach their ultimate ability, abandon the game half-way through because it thus became too easy
Rest assured, in 30+ years of gaming, I have never, ever, ever quit a game because it was too easy.
posted by frogstar42 at 4:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [16 favorites]
Rest assured, in 30+ years of gaming, I have never, ever, ever quit a game because it was too easy.
posted by frogstar42 at 4:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [16 favorites]
Iudex Gundyr, that second half of the fight where he turns into a giant rat monster, he just gets so aggressive I have trouble keeping up. Maybe I should play another class, I always play as a knight.
Yeah, no. Other than "git gud" (ugh), one of the things you'll hear a lot of, if you're having particular difficulties with some particular aspect of particular types of games, is stuff along the lines of "yeah obviously you died, you're playing as an X, you should be playing as a Y" or "you should be focusing your level-ups on Thing A, not Thing B".
Great. So to beat the game I need to be a Y with Thing A, not an X with Thing B. Why is X with Thing B even an option then?
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:43 PM on April 9, 2019
Yeah, no. Other than "git gud" (ugh), one of the things you'll hear a lot of, if you're having particular difficulties with some particular aspect of particular types of games, is stuff along the lines of "yeah obviously you died, you're playing as an X, you should be playing as a Y" or "you should be focusing your level-ups on Thing A, not Thing B".
Great. So to beat the game I need to be a Y with Thing A, not an X with Thing B. Why is X with Thing B even an option then?
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:43 PM on April 9, 2019
Rest assured, in 30+ years of gaming, I have never, ever, ever quit a game because it was too easy.
I've quit countless in my 30+ Most recent being shadow of Mordor. Though in my experience it's easier to make hard game easy and still be fun than the reverse.
Great. So to beat the game I need to be a Y with Thing A, not an X with Thing B. Why is X with Thing B even an option then?
So people who have played the game a lot an want a new challenge have one.
posted by avalonian at 4:48 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
I've quit countless in my 30+ Most recent being shadow of Mordor. Though in my experience it's easier to make hard game easy and still be fun than the reverse.
Great. So to beat the game I need to be a Y with Thing A, not an X with Thing B. Why is X with Thing B even an option then?
So people who have played the game a lot an want a new challenge have one.
posted by avalonian at 4:48 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
This topic is one that is rather close to my heart...
Difficulty forces players to engage with the mechanics of the game - if it's too easy, players simply don't engage, and subsequently find the game boring. You can't say that you should "give the players the option" because given the option, human nature will always choose easy, boring and risk free, then blame you for a bland product.
In XCOM2 for example, the missions are made difficult, and players have the option of calling for an emergency evacuation, saving the lives of their team but failing the mission. Playing on "easy" mode, usually meaning allowing a player to save / reload, means this interesting dilemma is never encountered - if you're doing badly in the mission, why evacuate and fail, permanently penalizing the rest of your future missions, when you could just reload the game from an earlier point and try to succeed instead? It's supposed to be a risk / reward decision, where you are supposed to make an interesting choice of whether to prioritize the lives of your soldiers rather than the success of the mission. Instead, it's just a mechanic that barely anyone uses, unless you were playing on Ironman mode (no saves). So you can see how making a game easier just completely subverts core game mechanics.
In fact, there is an entire genre of game based on the idea of "no saves" - the roguelike. No one would argue that roguelike games need an "easy mode" setting that allows saves - that destroys the whole concept of the game.
A more topical game where this happened was with Anthem. Before you hit the max level, the hardest difficult was "hard" and it was boring because the tuning didn't allow players to engage with the core mechanics of the game. The entire combat was based around "combos" - using a primer and a detonator allowed you to deal massive damage to the enemy target, with differing effects based on the element used and the javelin type detonating the combo. But on Hard difficulty, the regular enemies died in one hit without needing to use combos on them. The game got significantly more interesting when you hit level 30 and you could bump up the difficulty to Grand Master, and enemies had more HP and now you "had" to use combos to kill enemies efficiently, regular hits didn't do it anymore. Finally it felt like the game made sense! You actually had to think about what skills and weapons you equipped, and what synergy you had with each other. So that is another example where the "game" effectively ceased to exist once you lowered enemy difficulty below a certain threshold.
People underestimate the sheer quantity of developer labor required to tune multiple difficulty levels correctly. Most developers can't even tune ONE difficulty level correctly, much less multiple ones. Compare Anthem to Monster Hunter - Monster Hunter had no difficulty setting and delivered a far superior game (88 metascore) compared to Anthem (58 metascore), you can see the difficulty tuning of Monster Hunter World was done in a very thoughtful and interesting manner.
posted by xdvesper at 4:57 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
Difficulty forces players to engage with the mechanics of the game - if it's too easy, players simply don't engage, and subsequently find the game boring. You can't say that you should "give the players the option" because given the option, human nature will always choose easy, boring and risk free, then blame you for a bland product.
In XCOM2 for example, the missions are made difficult, and players have the option of calling for an emergency evacuation, saving the lives of their team but failing the mission. Playing on "easy" mode, usually meaning allowing a player to save / reload, means this interesting dilemma is never encountered - if you're doing badly in the mission, why evacuate and fail, permanently penalizing the rest of your future missions, when you could just reload the game from an earlier point and try to succeed instead? It's supposed to be a risk / reward decision, where you are supposed to make an interesting choice of whether to prioritize the lives of your soldiers rather than the success of the mission. Instead, it's just a mechanic that barely anyone uses, unless you were playing on Ironman mode (no saves). So you can see how making a game easier just completely subverts core game mechanics.
In fact, there is an entire genre of game based on the idea of "no saves" - the roguelike. No one would argue that roguelike games need an "easy mode" setting that allows saves - that destroys the whole concept of the game.
A more topical game where this happened was with Anthem. Before you hit the max level, the hardest difficult was "hard" and it was boring because the tuning didn't allow players to engage with the core mechanics of the game. The entire combat was based around "combos" - using a primer and a detonator allowed you to deal massive damage to the enemy target, with differing effects based on the element used and the javelin type detonating the combo. But on Hard difficulty, the regular enemies died in one hit without needing to use combos on them. The game got significantly more interesting when you hit level 30 and you could bump up the difficulty to Grand Master, and enemies had more HP and now you "had" to use combos to kill enemies efficiently, regular hits didn't do it anymore. Finally it felt like the game made sense! You actually had to think about what skills and weapons you equipped, and what synergy you had with each other. So that is another example where the "game" effectively ceased to exist once you lowered enemy difficulty below a certain threshold.
People underestimate the sheer quantity of developer labor required to tune multiple difficulty levels correctly. Most developers can't even tune ONE difficulty level correctly, much less multiple ones. Compare Anthem to Monster Hunter - Monster Hunter had no difficulty setting and delivered a far superior game (88 metascore) compared to Anthem (58 metascore), you can see the difficulty tuning of Monster Hunter World was done in a very thoughtful and interesting manner.
posted by xdvesper at 4:57 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
I 100% view them as art and come to that conclusion, this is the game and experience they wanted us to experience or not. Like, it feels too much like a movie to tone down symbolism and explain itself explicitly, or to expect an art installation in a gallery to pare down to just a straightforward 2d painting.
So you mean I can't skip the shitty tracks on otherwise good records, or fast-forward past that cringy four-hundred-minute-long underground rave scene in The Matrix Whatever-one-it-was?
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:02 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
So you mean I can't skip the shitty tracks on otherwise good records, or fast-forward past that cringy four-hundred-minute-long underground rave scene in The Matrix Whatever-one-it-was?
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:02 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
At this point I bet that even if Hidetaka Miyazaki wanted to start adding explicit easy modes his accountants would tell him not to, because the free publicity they get out of this controversy every time is basically priceless.
"Please", they'd say in breathless tones, "please hurt them even more this time". And he would chuckle quietly to himself then go back to working out how to make parasite-based body horror even creepier.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:02 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
"Please", they'd say in breathless tones, "please hurt them even more this time". And he would chuckle quietly to himself then go back to working out how to make parasite-based body horror even creepier.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:02 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Great. So to beat the game I need to be a Y with Thing A, not an X with Thing B. Why is X with Thing B even an option then?
So people who have played the game a lot an want a new challenge have one.
That's fair enough, giving people choices - I like having choices myself - but it also feels like sub-optimal game design to me. Imagine if the only way to complete Skyrim the first time was as a magic user, even though you have the option at the beginning to not be a magic user.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:07 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
So people who have played the game a lot an want a new challenge have one.
That's fair enough, giving people choices - I like having choices myself - but it also feels like sub-optimal game design to me. Imagine if the only way to complete Skyrim the first time was as a magic user, even though you have the option at the beginning to not be a magic user.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:07 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
I have never, ever, ever quit a game because it was too easy.
Personally I got bored of being an invincible invisible assassin in Oblivion and quit long before I completed the main quest for example, but it's easier to think of the ones I *haven't* quit in large part specifically because they're difficult. Nethack, and Go. Both of which have easy mode of a sort, but not the kind people are generally asking for here. In Nethack you can do "wizard mode" where the game is the same, except you don't die if you don't want to and you can instantly get whatever equipment and such you want. Which means it's not much like actually playing the game. In Go you can take handicap stones and play against weaker players, easily done if you want to, but the meta-game of getting good at Go remains irreducibly difficult.
posted by sfenders at 5:10 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Personally I got bored of being an invincible invisible assassin in Oblivion and quit long before I completed the main quest for example, but it's easier to think of the ones I *haven't* quit in large part specifically because they're difficult. Nethack, and Go. Both of which have easy mode of a sort, but not the kind people are generally asking for here. In Nethack you can do "wizard mode" where the game is the same, except you don't die if you don't want to and you can instantly get whatever equipment and such you want. Which means it's not much like actually playing the game. In Go you can take handicap stones and play against weaker players, easily done if you want to, but the meta-game of getting good at Go remains irreducibly difficult.
posted by sfenders at 5:10 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
thoroughburro: I had about 20 minutes while waiting for a costco rotisserie chicken. I honestly think that if Dark Souls had difficulty levels, that at after one of my game plays where I spent my entire 1-2 hour session that I get about once a week on one boss run, and *still* didn't get the boss by the end, that I'd have switched down difficulty levels, probably to a "normal" level. Beaten the game on normal, maybe restarted again on a harder difficulty, waffle at that, try a normal difficulty, but harder build and probably got bored.
Instead, I got punished and beaten by this game until I learned (in xdvesper's parlance, I engaged with the game), and having learned, instead of just lucking my way through made the game so much more rewarding for me. That, or it's like the psychological effect that getting hazed makes one appreciate the membership more.
I don't consider myself a hard core gamer. I've never beat NewGame+ . I'm stubborn, but if given the choice, I think I would have made the choice for less difficulty, and ruined total enjoyment.
I have never, ever, ever quit a game because it was too easy
I ruined simcity for myself. A friend taught me the cheat code to get $10k (or whatever amount it was) that one could use endlessly... and I would. And couldn't stop myself. And sure, endless money opened up some possibilities in the game, but I couldn't force myself back then to not use the cheat code and the game grew boring.
posted by nobeagle at 5:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Instead, I got punished and beaten by this game until I learned (in xdvesper's parlance, I engaged with the game), and having learned, instead of just lucking my way through made the game so much more rewarding for me. That, or it's like the psychological effect that getting hazed makes one appreciate the membership more.
I don't consider myself a hard core gamer. I've never beat NewGame+ . I'm stubborn, but if given the choice, I think I would have made the choice for less difficulty, and ruined total enjoyment.
I have never, ever, ever quit a game because it was too easy
I ruined simcity for myself. A friend taught me the cheat code to get $10k (or whatever amount it was) that one could use endlessly... and I would. And couldn't stop myself. And sure, endless money opened up some possibilities in the game, but I couldn't force myself back then to not use the cheat code and the game grew boring.
posted by nobeagle at 5:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
That's fair enough, giving people choices - I like having choices myself - but it also feels like sub-optimal game design to me.
I think it's an important and valuable design decision that has been integral to the success of the Souls series. Some classes are strong straight away. Some are weak for 90% of a first playthrough and others still only come into their own with gear from obscure locations. Part of the fun is the challenge, another part is how few people play certain ways. There are pages innumerable on how to spec and play the various classes. People love becoming experts and writing guides, others just like the challenge and following someone's guide because they'd never take the time to figure it out on their own.
posted by avalonian at 5:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think it's an important and valuable design decision that has been integral to the success of the Souls series. Some classes are strong straight away. Some are weak for 90% of a first playthrough and others still only come into their own with gear from obscure locations. Part of the fun is the challenge, another part is how few people play certain ways. There are pages innumerable on how to spec and play the various classes. People love becoming experts and writing guides, others just like the challenge and following someone's guide because they'd never take the time to figure it out on their own.
posted by avalonian at 5:25 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
An Easy Mode Has Never Ruined A Game
I don't think this is right at all. Lots of games have been ruined by not balancing the difficulty right or by letting players stumble into strategies that are easy but tedious so that they miss out on the challenging and engaging way that the game was designed to be played.
For instance, in the game Bioshock, the easiest way to get through the game is to ignore enemy attacks and just run up to enemies and bash them in the face with your wrench. When you drop to zero hit points, respawn in the nearest regeneration chamber and then run back to where you left off to resume the bashing.
This is also an extremely boring way to play the game. But some players fell into some version of that and did not enjoy the game. If you don't care about dying, the tension and horror of the game loses its power. If wrench-bashing always works, you don't feel the need to experiment with all the nifty weapons and traps and plasmids.
You might say that playing a game in a boring way is the player's fault. But to me that assumes a very dull view of video games, where the developer has nothing new to show or teach the player. The player already knows what they want, what fun there is to be had, and simply demands it from the developer.
To me, the best games are ones that draw me into playing in a new way that I've never tried before. And it's very difficult for a game to do that if I can just adjust a slider whenever I think the game is too hard and isn't letting me play the way I think I want to play.
The problem is that a lot of games don't have anything new to show me. Higher difficulty levels are just a slider that adds more hit-points to the enemies and if I switch to easy mode, I lose nothing but tedium. But it's hard to know ahead of time which kind of game you are playing.
Before I played Dark Souls, I thought I knew what I wanted. I was sure that I hated grinding. I hated repeating sections of a game over and over just to get back to the tricky part that killed me. If Dark Souls had an Easy Mode, I would have used it and missed one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.
Because in Dark Souls, the difficulty is not just a matter of giving the enemies more hit points. The difficulty is a qualitative thing about how the combat works. Dying and clawing your way back to the place you died is a key thrilling part of the experience. The combat is so deep that repeatedly fighting the same enemies (either to grind for souls or to get back to the boss that killed you) is continually rewarding as there's always an opportunity to fight a little better or try a different combination of weapon and armor or take a risk to fight more quickly or more efficiently. I would have missed all of that if Dark Souls had a difficulty slider that allowed me to avoid dying and repeating sections of the game like I thought I wanted.
posted by straight at 5:30 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
I don't think this is right at all. Lots of games have been ruined by not balancing the difficulty right or by letting players stumble into strategies that are easy but tedious so that they miss out on the challenging and engaging way that the game was designed to be played.
For instance, in the game Bioshock, the easiest way to get through the game is to ignore enemy attacks and just run up to enemies and bash them in the face with your wrench. When you drop to zero hit points, respawn in the nearest regeneration chamber and then run back to where you left off to resume the bashing.
This is also an extremely boring way to play the game. But some players fell into some version of that and did not enjoy the game. If you don't care about dying, the tension and horror of the game loses its power. If wrench-bashing always works, you don't feel the need to experiment with all the nifty weapons and traps and plasmids.
You might say that playing a game in a boring way is the player's fault. But to me that assumes a very dull view of video games, where the developer has nothing new to show or teach the player. The player already knows what they want, what fun there is to be had, and simply demands it from the developer.
To me, the best games are ones that draw me into playing in a new way that I've never tried before. And it's very difficult for a game to do that if I can just adjust a slider whenever I think the game is too hard and isn't letting me play the way I think I want to play.
The problem is that a lot of games don't have anything new to show me. Higher difficulty levels are just a slider that adds more hit-points to the enemies and if I switch to easy mode, I lose nothing but tedium. But it's hard to know ahead of time which kind of game you are playing.
Before I played Dark Souls, I thought I knew what I wanted. I was sure that I hated grinding. I hated repeating sections of a game over and over just to get back to the tricky part that killed me. If Dark Souls had an Easy Mode, I would have used it and missed one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.
Because in Dark Souls, the difficulty is not just a matter of giving the enemies more hit points. The difficulty is a qualitative thing about how the combat works. Dying and clawing your way back to the place you died is a key thrilling part of the experience. The combat is so deep that repeatedly fighting the same enemies (either to grind for souls or to get back to the boss that killed you) is continually rewarding as there's always an opportunity to fight a little better or try a different combination of weapon and armor or take a risk to fight more quickly or more efficiently. I would have missed all of that if Dark Souls had a difficulty slider that allowed me to avoid dying and repeating sections of the game like I thought I wanted.
posted by straight at 5:30 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
I ruined simcity for myself. A friend taught me the cheat code to get $10k (or whatever amount it was) that one could use endlessly... and I would. And couldn't stop myself. And sure, endless money opened up some possibilities in the game, but I couldn't force myself back then to not use the cheat code and the game grew boring.
I wouldn't be so sure it was the cheat codes that made that one boring.
posted by umrain at 5:44 PM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
I wouldn't be so sure it was the cheat codes that made that one boring.
posted by umrain at 5:44 PM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
The developers know what they're making and know the guides and niche builds are part of it.
Regarding the accessibility I'm all for adding many of the features proposed. I'm mainly responding to comments that reflect never playing the series (that's fine!) while questioning the efficacy of design choices by the developers (but you don't know why the game is good?). The design is good. The games are arguably masterpieces. The question is how to layer on accessibility to said masterpieces.
I think it can definitely be done without harming the core game experience.
posted by avalonian at 5:51 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Regarding the accessibility I'm all for adding many of the features proposed. I'm mainly responding to comments that reflect never playing the series (that's fine!) while questioning the efficacy of design choices by the developers (but you don't know why the game is good?). The design is good. The games are arguably masterpieces. The question is how to layer on accessibility to said masterpieces.
I think it can definitely be done without harming the core game experience.
posted by avalonian at 5:51 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Presenting players with a difficulty selection right at the start is a questionable design decision-- it's like asking someone who's never had steak how well they want theirs done. What I think would work better is if the beginning of the game, in addition to serving as a tutorial, also functioned as a difficulty calibration: the game would look at how you're playing and then make a difficulty recommendation.
An interesting corollary is whether it would be OK for a game to force you into a higher difficulty if it determined you were playing well enough.
posted by Pyry at 5:54 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
An interesting corollary is whether it would be OK for a game to force you into a higher difficulty if it determined you were playing well enough.
posted by Pyry at 5:54 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
if you're doing badly in the mission, why evacuate and fail, permanently penalizing the rest of your future missions, when you could just reload the game from an earlier point and try to succeed instead?
XCOM2 is a bad example here for a couple of reasons.
Most importantly, the strategic layer is really, really poorly tuned. Enemies continue to get tougher after every mission, success or failure. So the escape hatch of emergency evac -- for the missions it's actually available on, which isn't all of them -- is a total lie. Taking it means you lose supplies that you needed for gear upgrades and research to keep on par with the escalating enemy toughness, so generally if you evac without completing the objective you're just postponing the failure spiral.
But also because optimal play means not letting the enemy take a turn, ever, which means that playing well on Hard engages with less of the game's enemy mechanics than playing poorly on Easy. Iron Man runs in particular are entirely about cheesing the "pod" activation mechanics to ensure that your squad never sees more units than it can eliminate on a single turn rather than doing anything close to realistic small unit tactics.
(The right way to play XCOM 2 is to turn the difficulty all the way down and use the "Bronze Man" mod that lets you restart a mission from the beginning but not reload individual turns within the mission. Then you just roleplay your favourite movies about guerrilla fighters or make all your squad members into X-Men characters or whatever.)
posted by tobascodagama at 6:00 PM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
XCOM2 is a bad example here for a couple of reasons.
Most importantly, the strategic layer is really, really poorly tuned. Enemies continue to get tougher after every mission, success or failure. So the escape hatch of emergency evac -- for the missions it's actually available on, which isn't all of them -- is a total lie. Taking it means you lose supplies that you needed for gear upgrades and research to keep on par with the escalating enemy toughness, so generally if you evac without completing the objective you're just postponing the failure spiral.
But also because optimal play means not letting the enemy take a turn, ever, which means that playing well on Hard engages with less of the game's enemy mechanics than playing poorly on Easy. Iron Man runs in particular are entirely about cheesing the "pod" activation mechanics to ensure that your squad never sees more units than it can eliminate on a single turn rather than doing anything close to realistic small unit tactics.
(The right way to play XCOM 2 is to turn the difficulty all the way down and use the "Bronze Man" mod that lets you restart a mission from the beginning but not reload individual turns within the mission. Then you just roleplay your favourite movies about guerrilla fighters or make all your squad members into X-Men characters or whatever.)
posted by tobascodagama at 6:00 PM on April 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
In fact, there is an entire genre of game based on the idea of "no saves" - the roguelike. No one would argue that roguelike games need an "easy mode" setting that allows saves - that destroys the whole concept of the game.
Hi, I've been playing roguelikes for literally 25+ years, and I would argue that an easy mode that allows saves is totally fine. The historical disdain for "savescumming" in roguelike communities is bullshit that amounts to, "people are enjoying a game differently from me and that makes my own achievements less valuable!". No thanks.
posted by tocts at 6:07 PM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
Hi, I've been playing roguelikes for literally 25+ years, and I would argue that an easy mode that allows saves is totally fine. The historical disdain for "savescumming" in roguelike communities is bullshit that amounts to, "people are enjoying a game differently from me and that makes my own achievements less valuable!". No thanks.
posted by tocts at 6:07 PM on April 9, 2019 [12 favorites]
Hi, I've been playing roguelikes for literally 25+ years, and I would argue that an easy mode that allows saves is totally fine. The historical disdain for "savescumming" in roguelike communities is bullshit that amounts to, "people are enjoying a game differently from me and that makes my own achievements less valuable!". No thanks.
Love roguelikes. Have ascended in Nethack and DCSS. Totally agree.
posted by umrain at 6:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Love roguelikes. Have ascended in Nethack and DCSS. Totally agree.
posted by umrain at 6:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Question for praemunire - must every game be fun for everybody?
No, but isn't it kind of weird that you are treating the idea of fun as suspect, or something to be strictly rationed out only to the worthy, in connection with a game?
Rimworld currently has "save" and "commitment" modes. People who want to build intricate settlements and not have them wiped out by a few bad random number rolls can choose the former; people who like death-defying drama and suspense, the latter. Neither takes anything away from the other. More people can have fun with the game, and the same person can have fun with it when they're in different moods. I'm going to call that generally a good thing. (I'm trying to think of some kind of pun on Pareto-optimal, but failing.)
posted by praemunire at 6:33 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
No, but isn't it kind of weird that you are treating the idea of fun as suspect, or something to be strictly rationed out only to the worthy, in connection with a game?
Rimworld currently has "save" and "commitment" modes. People who want to build intricate settlements and not have them wiped out by a few bad random number rolls can choose the former; people who like death-defying drama and suspense, the latter. Neither takes anything away from the other. More people can have fun with the game, and the same person can have fun with it when they're in different moods. I'm going to call that generally a good thing. (I'm trying to think of some kind of pun on Pareto-optimal, but failing.)
posted by praemunire at 6:33 PM on April 9, 2019 [8 favorites]
People underestimate the sheer quantity of developer labor required to tune multiple difficulty levels correctly.
And: are the developers getting paid for that, or just being asked to take on more labor because it’s an important thing? And if they’re getting paid for it, the question you’re asking is either “what part of the game do you want to be made shittier” or “how much do you want the games to cost?” And they’re already pretty expensive.
posted by corb at 6:41 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
And: are the developers getting paid for that, or just being asked to take on more labor because it’s an important thing? And if they’re getting paid for it, the question you’re asking is either “what part of the game do you want to be made shittier” or “how much do you want the games to cost?” And they’re already pretty expensive.
posted by corb at 6:41 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
Celeste was made by a small indie studio. From Software is orders of magnitude bigger than MattMakesGames and has budgets that scale up accordingly.
But Celeste has "Assist Mode" while Sekiro does not. It's not a budget issue, it's a giving-a-fuck issue.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:15 PM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
But Celeste has "Assist Mode" while Sekiro does not. It's not a budget issue, it's a giving-a-fuck issue.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:15 PM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
I do have to wonder why colorblindness options have become so much more widely accepted than any other form of accessibility option (except for maybe aim/look sensitivity), given that a game's lack of support for colorblindness can block people from playing it just as much as a game's reliance on fast/accurate inputs can block others.
Why does that disability get so much more support? Why have I never heard anyone get upset at a game adding colorblindness modes or tweaking colors, despite it being completely against the creators' original ideas? Why don't able-bodied people complain about how expensive it is to be accessible that way and accuse supporters of wanting the games to be shittier because of it?
posted by flatluigi at 7:19 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Why does that disability get so much more support? Why have I never heard anyone get upset at a game adding colorblindness modes or tweaking colors, despite it being completely against the creators' original ideas? Why don't able-bodied people complain about how expensive it is to be accessible that way and accuse supporters of wanting the games to be shittier because of it?
posted by flatluigi at 7:19 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
To me, the best games are ones that draw me into playing in a new way that I've never tried before. And it's very difficult for a game to do that if I can just adjust a slider whenever I think the game is too hard and isn't letting me play the way I think I want to play.
Me too. Maybe this is some kind of psychological flaw, a defect that somehow makes it more fun to play a challenging game when I know that I can't just flick a switch to immediately overcome any obstacle. But even if it makes me a little bit worse as a human being, sometimes I like playing games that don't have that switch and that use its absence to create something - a kind of emotional experience, I guess - that wouldn't be there otherwise.
Clearly there are a lot of people who don't feel the same way, like how I don't get much out of sandboxy games that let you do what you want without any real challenge. I don't have a problem with those games existing, though. What I don't understand is why it's so important that the first kind of game not exist. I mean, if every game was punishingly difficult I'd happily agree that some of them could do with easy modes. But here we have one tricky game - and really just the console versions, because on PC it's moddable - and that's too many. Really?
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 7:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Me too. Maybe this is some kind of psychological flaw, a defect that somehow makes it more fun to play a challenging game when I know that I can't just flick a switch to immediately overcome any obstacle. But even if it makes me a little bit worse as a human being, sometimes I like playing games that don't have that switch and that use its absence to create something - a kind of emotional experience, I guess - that wouldn't be there otherwise.
Clearly there are a lot of people who don't feel the same way, like how I don't get much out of sandboxy games that let you do what you want without any real challenge. I don't have a problem with those games existing, though. What I don't understand is why it's so important that the first kind of game not exist. I mean, if every game was punishingly difficult I'd happily agree that some of them could do with easy modes. But here we have one tricky game - and really just the console versions, because on PC it's moddable - and that's too many. Really?
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 7:23 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
Why have I never heard anyone get upset at a game adding colorblindness modes or tweaking colors, despite it being completely against the creators' original ideas? Why don't able-bodied people complain about how expensive it is to be accessible that way and accuse supporters of wanting the games to be shittier because of it?
Well, you see, many high level not-colorblind gamers prefer to play with colorblind settings because it gives them an advantage in distinguishing certain game objects (such as spotting blood splashes that indicate your shot hit in PUBG). So, shocker, those modes are totally fine by them.
posted by tocts at 7:40 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Well, you see, many high level not-colorblind gamers prefer to play with colorblind settings because it gives them an advantage in distinguishing certain game objects (such as spotting blood splashes that indicate your shot hit in PUBG). So, shocker, those modes are totally fine by them.
posted by tocts at 7:40 PM on April 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
That can't be it, since accessibility options can help all people no matter their current ability. It must be something else.
posted by flatluigi at 7:49 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by flatluigi at 7:49 PM on April 9, 2019 [1 favorite]
Hi, I've been playing roguelikes for literally 25+ years, and I would argue that an easy mode that allows saves is totally fine. The historical disdain for "savescumming" in roguelike communities is bullshit that amounts to, "people are enjoying a game differently from me and that makes my own achievements less valuable!". No thanks.
I think this take is uncharitable, thoughtlessly dismissive of the art of game design, and naïve about the trade-offs that always happen in game development.
A lot of games that allow -- I'll use the term "quicksaving" for being able save and reload at will as it doesn't have the pejorative sound of "savescumming" -- are going to be designed differently with that in mind and roguelikes are definitely in that category. Most mechanics that involve RNG and the stats and strategies that relate to them (e.g. lockpicking) will be drastically effected or even made pointless by quicksaves.
So you end up with two different game designs. One for players using quicksaves and one for players who aren't. And then you have to ask which of those game modes is going to get the most love and polish from the game developers. I imagine the majority of game players will use a save system if it is there. So you have the very real possibility that adding quicksaves will cause the game to be redesigned primarily for people using quicksaves.
So people objecting to quicksaves in roguelikes are not necessarily just turning their nose up at the way other people play. They have an entirely justified concern that quicksaves taking root in the roguelike genre could lead to the design of those games significantly changing, possibly for the worse.
posted by straight at 8:16 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
I think this take is uncharitable, thoughtlessly dismissive of the art of game design, and naïve about the trade-offs that always happen in game development.
A lot of games that allow -- I'll use the term "quicksaving" for being able save and reload at will as it doesn't have the pejorative sound of "savescumming" -- are going to be designed differently with that in mind and roguelikes are definitely in that category. Most mechanics that involve RNG and the stats and strategies that relate to them (e.g. lockpicking) will be drastically effected or even made pointless by quicksaves.
So you end up with two different game designs. One for players using quicksaves and one for players who aren't. And then you have to ask which of those game modes is going to get the most love and polish from the game developers. I imagine the majority of game players will use a save system if it is there. So you have the very real possibility that adding quicksaves will cause the game to be redesigned primarily for people using quicksaves.
So people objecting to quicksaves in roguelikes are not necessarily just turning their nose up at the way other people play. They have an entirely justified concern that quicksaves taking root in the roguelike genre could lead to the design of those games significantly changing, possibly for the worse.
posted by straight at 8:16 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
Celeste was made by a small indie studio. From Software is orders of magnitude bigger than MattMakesGames and has budgets that scale up accordingly.
But Celeste has "Assist Mode" while Sekiro does not. It's not a budget issue, it's a giving-a-fuck issue.
The games are nothing alike... have you seen what each looks like and contains?
I'm so confused why people are mad at From Software, a developer that has been so unerringly devoted to a consistently evolving vision. I testified at the start of this thread how this game had personally affected me. I guess this is just another internet axe to grind. It's a good game, and I recommend it. Also there won't be any weird, crappy DLC and it was clearly made by people who want to bring an excellent product to market that people will love.
I have personally found this work of art meaningful and a place where I can grow skills I didn't believe in, especially lately, like perseverance. That this thread has been so negative as if the game grinds HAHA YOU CAN'T PLAY in anyone's face... I think I gotta bail on all of this place because of how gamers are viewed. I encourage anyone curious to at least rent the game, it is beautiful and I have always deplored the myth that these games are "so hard" when they're mostly about pattern recognition and a bit of practice. Personally, I want everyone to enjoy things and be able access them. (edit sidenote: I take funny short videos all the time in this game for friends who don't plan to play it. We're really enjoying watching me both get my ass beaten by a giant ape and then subsequently housing it and another ape at once! This is why I love gaming as a social hobby, I can share and appreciate others playing.)
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:24 PM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
But Celeste has "Assist Mode" while Sekiro does not. It's not a budget issue, it's a giving-a-fuck issue.
The games are nothing alike... have you seen what each looks like and contains?
I'm so confused why people are mad at From Software, a developer that has been so unerringly devoted to a consistently evolving vision. I testified at the start of this thread how this game had personally affected me. I guess this is just another internet axe to grind. It's a good game, and I recommend it. Also there won't be any weird, crappy DLC and it was clearly made by people who want to bring an excellent product to market that people will love.
I have personally found this work of art meaningful and a place where I can grow skills I didn't believe in, especially lately, like perseverance. That this thread has been so negative as if the game grinds HAHA YOU CAN'T PLAY in anyone's face... I think I gotta bail on all of this place because of how gamers are viewed. I encourage anyone curious to at least rent the game, it is beautiful and I have always deplored the myth that these games are "so hard" when they're mostly about pattern recognition and a bit of practice. Personally, I want everyone to enjoy things and be able access them. (edit sidenote: I take funny short videos all the time in this game for friends who don't plan to play it. We're really enjoying watching me both get my ass beaten by a giant ape and then subsequently housing it and another ape at once! This is why I love gaming as a social hobby, I can share and appreciate others playing.)
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:24 PM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]
I have personally found this work of art meaningful
yes and there are people who don’t get to experience any portion of this work of art because it was built in a way that excludes them. offering accessibility options allows them to play while not changing your experience whatsoever.
I think I gotta bail on all of this place because of how gamers are viewed
the other people in this thread are also gamers!!!!! that’s why they want accessibility options, so they can enjoy this game!!!!!
they're mostly about pattern recognition and a bit of practice.
they’re also about putting in a complicated series of inputs perfectly and if you fail you have to try again. some people are literally physically not capable of this. you, nor anyone else in this thread, has been able to articulate why those people don’t deserve to experience these games, except for “well, i was able to do it, and also compromising the difficulty (by adding completely optional modes) would decrease my enjoyment of the game,” which is just... so shortsighted it blows my mind.
posted by JimBennett at 8:40 PM on April 9, 2019 [15 favorites]
yes and there are people who don’t get to experience any portion of this work of art because it was built in a way that excludes them. offering accessibility options allows them to play while not changing your experience whatsoever.
I think I gotta bail on all of this place because of how gamers are viewed
the other people in this thread are also gamers!!!!! that’s why they want accessibility options, so they can enjoy this game!!!!!
they're mostly about pattern recognition and a bit of practice.
they’re also about putting in a complicated series of inputs perfectly and if you fail you have to try again. some people are literally physically not capable of this. you, nor anyone else in this thread, has been able to articulate why those people don’t deserve to experience these games, except for “well, i was able to do it, and also compromising the difficulty (by adding completely optional modes) would decrease my enjoyment of the game,” which is just... so shortsighted it blows my mind.
posted by JimBennett at 8:40 PM on April 9, 2019 [15 favorites]
What I don't understand is why it's so important that the first kind of game not exist. I mean, if every game was punishingly difficult I'd happily agree that some of them could do with easy modes. But here we have one tricky game - and really just the console versions, because on PC it's moddable - and that's too many. Really?
i think that framing this argument around "easy mode" does a disservice to the real issue, which is accessibility (the title of this post is literally "accessibility means options, not easy gameplay," but everyone seems to have gotten pretty far from that). it is not okay to say this about anything else in our society. "well, disabled people can get into like, 99% of schools/restaurants/movie theaters/grocery stores, do they really need to get into this one?" we all look at that idea and say it's unacceptable. and you might say "well games aren't as important as schools/restaurants/movie theaters/grocery stores" but then there are actual disabled people saying that this really does matter to them, and they're always the first voice to get ignored in these discussions.
posted by JimBennett at 8:59 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
i think that framing this argument around "easy mode" does a disservice to the real issue, which is accessibility (the title of this post is literally "accessibility means options, not easy gameplay," but everyone seems to have gotten pretty far from that). it is not okay to say this about anything else in our society. "well, disabled people can get into like, 99% of schools/restaurants/movie theaters/grocery stores, do they really need to get into this one?" we all look at that idea and say it's unacceptable. and you might say "well games aren't as important as schools/restaurants/movie theaters/grocery stores" but then there are actual disabled people saying that this really does matter to them, and they're always the first voice to get ignored in these discussions.
posted by JimBennett at 8:59 PM on April 9, 2019 [6 favorites]
The Microsoft Adaptive Controller I have heard from a few people is amazing for some good news. And it’s very affordable.
https://news.microsoft.com/stories/xbox-adaptive-controller/
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:10 PM on April 9, 2019
https://news.microsoft.com/stories/xbox-adaptive-controller/
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:10 PM on April 9, 2019
In many games, when you first boot up the game, it asks you to calibrate your screen -- it shows an image, describes what the image should look like ("the white part of the picture should be barely visible") and tells you to adjust the game's brightness relative to your television and your eyeballs so that it matches what the developer wants you to experience.
I dream of a situation that is similar to this, but for difficulty.
Let me run this back slightly:
Dark Souls is a sticky wicket, because the difficulty, and the type of difficulty as well as the intensity, is actually part of the narrative. In the lore and the story of dark souls, none of the endings are particularly "good" in the long term.
The people you meet in the game who fail or have already failed in their goals are exactly like you. You are called the chosen undead, but in reality, the only difference between you and those who have already failed is that you have not given up, and they have. The story inside the game and outside the game are the same thing: a world that desperately wants to crush you, and you, simply allowing yourself or not allowing yourself to be crushed.
In most video game narratives, the story simply cutely ignores your deaths. Dark Souls does not. The deaths you as a player experience are also experienced by the character themselves. You die and come back within the narrative. Any undead does the same. No version of the story stops when you die. The only thing that makes the story stop is when these deaths become so dispiriting that you -- and your character by extension -- give up, or win.
The only true death is surrender, and the over-arching message of the narrative is "fall down seven times, stand up eight." Unlike many narrative games (e.g. Uncharted, The Last of Us) Dark Souls' gameplay doesn't tell the story, it IS the story.
For most games, I beat the "GIVE US AN EASY MODE" drum as loud as possible, but for this specific type of game, I think a different approach might work just as well and still carry the message the developers desire, possibly even more powerfully:
A calibration, just like you calibrate the brightness of your screen. A brief sequence before beginning that resembles, say, a rhythm game -- where you have to enter specific sets of inputs in response to a stimulus with specific timing. It wouldn't have to last long for the game to recognize if your "twitch" abilities are especially high or low, and edit the difficulty among a few settings accordingly.
This would provide accessibility without watering down the concept, and would also account for the Souls-borne fans that have mastered their largely shared controls and still want more of a challenge. It would give people at varied skill levels similar actual experiences, and yes, it could be gamed (by deliberately doing poorly on the calibration) by people of average ability who are truly determined to have it easy.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 9:13 PM on April 9, 2019 [19 favorites]
I dream of a situation that is similar to this, but for difficulty.
Let me run this back slightly:
Dark Souls is a sticky wicket, because the difficulty, and the type of difficulty as well as the intensity, is actually part of the narrative. In the lore and the story of dark souls, none of the endings are particularly "good" in the long term.
The people you meet in the game who fail or have already failed in their goals are exactly like you. You are called the chosen undead, but in reality, the only difference between you and those who have already failed is that you have not given up, and they have. The story inside the game and outside the game are the same thing: a world that desperately wants to crush you, and you, simply allowing yourself or not allowing yourself to be crushed.
In most video game narratives, the story simply cutely ignores your deaths. Dark Souls does not. The deaths you as a player experience are also experienced by the character themselves. You die and come back within the narrative. Any undead does the same. No version of the story stops when you die. The only thing that makes the story stop is when these deaths become so dispiriting that you -- and your character by extension -- give up, or win.
The only true death is surrender, and the over-arching message of the narrative is "fall down seven times, stand up eight." Unlike many narrative games (e.g. Uncharted, The Last of Us) Dark Souls' gameplay doesn't tell the story, it IS the story.
For most games, I beat the "GIVE US AN EASY MODE" drum as loud as possible, but for this specific type of game, I think a different approach might work just as well and still carry the message the developers desire, possibly even more powerfully:
A calibration, just like you calibrate the brightness of your screen. A brief sequence before beginning that resembles, say, a rhythm game -- where you have to enter specific sets of inputs in response to a stimulus with specific timing. It wouldn't have to last long for the game to recognize if your "twitch" abilities are especially high or low, and edit the difficulty among a few settings accordingly.
This would provide accessibility without watering down the concept, and would also account for the Souls-borne fans that have mastered their largely shared controls and still want more of a challenge. It would give people at varied skill levels similar actual experiences, and yes, it could be gamed (by deliberately doing poorly on the calibration) by people of average ability who are truly determined to have it easy.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 9:13 PM on April 9, 2019 [19 favorites]
You can't say that you should "give the players the option" because given the option, human nature will always choose easy, boring and risk free, then blame you for a bland product.
And yet there are endless examples of video game players inventing totally artificial obstacles or extra objectives and rules for themselves in games to make those games harder. I mean besides those Thief ghosting rules I posted earlier, we just had a thread about people obsessively doing DOOM speedruns. How many of those speedrunners do you suppose fired the game up on Nightmare difficulty the very first time they played the game? I know I sure didn't. But like (I expect) most of them, I increased the difficulty settings voluntarily as I got better at the game. (I just happened to stop playing DOOM before I got the point where Nightmare mode was trivial and speedruns were the only challenge left.) But, then, something about DOOM was good enough to draw me and many others back to it because even on easy mode (which is, yeah, pretty easy) it doesn't feel like a bland, boring product. And then, in defiance of what you claim is human nature...we increased the difficulty for ourselves.
posted by mstokes650 at 9:24 PM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
And yet there are endless examples of video game players inventing totally artificial obstacles or extra objectives and rules for themselves in games to make those games harder. I mean besides those Thief ghosting rules I posted earlier, we just had a thread about people obsessively doing DOOM speedruns. How many of those speedrunners do you suppose fired the game up on Nightmare difficulty the very first time they played the game? I know I sure didn't. But like (I expect) most of them, I increased the difficulty settings voluntarily as I got better at the game. (I just happened to stop playing DOOM before I got the point where Nightmare mode was trivial and speedruns were the only challenge left.) But, then, something about DOOM was good enough to draw me and many others back to it because even on easy mode (which is, yeah, pretty easy) it doesn't feel like a bland, boring product. And then, in defiance of what you claim is human nature...we increased the difficulty for ourselves.
posted by mstokes650 at 9:24 PM on April 9, 2019 [9 favorites]
Hello, I am here saying that Sekiro forced me to rise above what I thought I could. Previously, I would have gotten help for bosses as dark souls allowed.
And on a sob story note, at a time I literally didn’t think I could keep going in life let alone get better at a game.
So I may be weak but the game creator did this for people like me. If you look at all of his games, he is constantly adjusting so his players use new skills they didn’t previously realize they had or could develop.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:29 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
And on a sob story note, at a time I literally didn’t think I could keep going in life let alone get better at a game.
So I may be weak but the game creator did this for people like me. If you look at all of his games, he is constantly adjusting so his players use new skills they didn’t previously realize they had or could develop.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:29 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
i think that framing this argument around "easy mode" does a disservice to the real issue, which is accessibility (the title of this post is literally "accessibility means options, not easy gameplay," but everyone seems to have gotten pretty far from that). it is not okay to say this about anything else in our society. "well, disabled people can get into like, 99% of schools/restaurants/movie theaters/grocery stores, do they really need to get into this one?" we all look at that idea and say it's unacceptable.
Inaccessibility through difficulty isn't like that, though. It's not either/or, like building access or colourblind mode for a game that relies heavily on colour to convey information. It's a continuum, and every game has to set the bar somewhere. Even Celeste isn't going to be playable by everyone. From sets the bar a little higher than most, but not too much higher and the great majority of people should be able to play their games as long as they're willing to put in a bit of time, effort and patience.
Really, 90% of the complaints about From's games are about frustration and lack of patience, not inaccessibility. If you don't want to have to spend hours practising against a boss before you finally get good enough to beat it - which is something that all but the absolute best players have to do sometimes - then there are plenty of other games out there that aren't designed around that kind of gameplay.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 10:05 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
Inaccessibility through difficulty isn't like that, though. It's not either/or, like building access or colourblind mode for a game that relies heavily on colour to convey information. It's a continuum, and every game has to set the bar somewhere. Even Celeste isn't going to be playable by everyone. From sets the bar a little higher than most, but not too much higher and the great majority of people should be able to play their games as long as they're willing to put in a bit of time, effort and patience.
Really, 90% of the complaints about From's games are about frustration and lack of patience, not inaccessibility. If you don't want to have to spend hours practising against a boss before you finally get good enough to beat it - which is something that all but the absolute best players have to do sometimes - then there are plenty of other games out there that aren't designed around that kind of gameplay.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 10:05 PM on April 9, 2019 [3 favorites]
i think that framing this argument around "easy mode" does a disservice to the real issue, which is accessibility
And I think framing a discussion of Sekiro and other From games around accessibility is disingenuous.
Claiming that Sekiro would be "accessible" if it only had the kinds of difficulty options that Celeste, Spider-Man, and God of War have is such a weirdly specific and narrow improvement. There are plenty of people with disabilities such that they can't play any of those games, so why is adding a difficulty slider to Sekiro the big priority here? If accessibility is the real issue, why aren't we focusing on things that could make a whole lot of video games more accessible to people who can't currently play any of them rather than on trying to make this one particular game more like most other video games?
It sure seems like this discussion is more about people who can already play most video games wanting to be able to play one more than it is about making video games in general more accessible to people who are excluded from a lot of them.
posted by straight at 11:20 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
And I think framing a discussion of Sekiro and other From games around accessibility is disingenuous.
Claiming that Sekiro would be "accessible" if it only had the kinds of difficulty options that Celeste, Spider-Man, and God of War have is such a weirdly specific and narrow improvement. There are plenty of people with disabilities such that they can't play any of those games, so why is adding a difficulty slider to Sekiro the big priority here? If accessibility is the real issue, why aren't we focusing on things that could make a whole lot of video games more accessible to people who can't currently play any of them rather than on trying to make this one particular game more like most other video games?
It sure seems like this discussion is more about people who can already play most video games wanting to be able to play one more than it is about making video games in general more accessible to people who are excluded from a lot of them.
posted by straight at 11:20 PM on April 9, 2019 [4 favorites]
It sure seems like this discussion is more about people who can already play most video games wanting to be able to play one more than it is about making video games in general more accessible to people who are excluded from a lot of them.
Gonna blow your mind: some of us would like both.
posted by praemunire at 11:34 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
Gonna blow your mind: some of us would like both.
posted by praemunire at 11:34 PM on April 9, 2019 [11 favorites]
Claiming that Sekiro would be "accessible" if it only had the kinds of difficulty options that Celeste,
again: celeste has ACCESSIBILITY OPTIONS, not just difficulty sliders. literally the same exact Assist Mode options in Celeste (game speed modifiers, infinite stamina, invincibility, unlimited dodges) could be applied to the From software games. tell me why they shouldn't be there. give me a reason instead of trying to reframe the discussion.
posted by JimBennett at 12:41 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
again: celeste has ACCESSIBILITY OPTIONS, not just difficulty sliders. literally the same exact Assist Mode options in Celeste (game speed modifiers, infinite stamina, invincibility, unlimited dodges) could be applied to the From software games. tell me why they shouldn't be there. give me a reason instead of trying to reframe the discussion.
posted by JimBennett at 12:41 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
and i just read the top comment from that celeste article and got a little bit sad we're still having this toxic debate instead of just making games for all people:
"I had no idea this was going to have an accessibility mode! I’m usually too disabled for this genre but they look so fun. Time to save up for a new game :blush: Thanks for this article."
posted by JimBennett at 12:43 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
"I had no idea this was going to have an accessibility mode! I’m usually too disabled for this genre but they look so fun. Time to save up for a new game :blush: Thanks for this article."
posted by JimBennett at 12:43 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
People who like difficult games: nobody is taking difficult games away from you. Developers will keep making them. You can keep playing them on Hardcore Murdermode.
Exclusion is not pretty. If your enjoyment is based on keeping other people out of Your Game... please... think about that, hard.
It's striking that the same sort of defenses seen above were also employed in discussions of female protagonists: it would be hard to develop, it would change the creators' vision, there are other games with female protagonists so why can't people just stick with those.
It is tricky to get the game difficulty right. All the more reason to not insist so much that the only allowable level of difficulty is the one that you yourselves like.
posted by zompist at 1:02 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
Exclusion is not pretty. If your enjoyment is based on keeping other people out of Your Game... please... think about that, hard.
It's striking that the same sort of defenses seen above were also employed in discussions of female protagonists: it would be hard to develop, it would change the creators' vision, there are other games with female protagonists so why can't people just stick with those.
It is tricky to get the game difficulty right. All the more reason to not insist so much that the only allowable level of difficulty is the one that you yourselves like.
posted by zompist at 1:02 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
The newest Tomb Raider had three sliders at the start that let you adjust the difficulty/accessibility of the traversal, combat and puzzles separately. Detailed here: https://tombraider.square-enix-games.com/en-us/news/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-difficulty-and-accessibility
They even have helpful guides underneath explaining explicitly what each slider does to the gameplay. It's a really nice system, especially as I play that game for the exploration and puzzles and not the combat.
There are also several "traditional" accessibility options. Nice to see in a AAA game.
posted by slimepuppy at 1:13 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
They even have helpful guides underneath explaining explicitly what each slider does to the gameplay. It's a really nice system, especially as I play that game for the exploration and puzzles and not the combat.
There are also several "traditional" accessibility options. Nice to see in a AAA game.
posted by slimepuppy at 1:13 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
> I do have to wonder why colorblindness options have become so much more widely accepted
I may be remembering incorrectly, but wasn't part of the apparent acceptance the way some people treated it as just a post processing filter you could throw on, to the point that some things shipped with "colourblind options" that simulated being colourblind.
posted by lucidium at 1:52 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I may be remembering incorrectly, but wasn't part of the apparent acceptance the way some people treated it as just a post processing filter you could throw on, to the point that some things shipped with "colourblind options" that simulated being colourblind.
posted by lucidium at 1:52 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Yes, it's not necessarily too hard for the devs if one only wanted to balance "difficulty" level by the amount of damage one takes/dishes out. However, if I were talking with someone about a game from the "hard game" genre, and I talked about spending 10 hours to do X, and someone said that they found X quite easy, the first thing I'm asking is where their damage slider was. And if they didn't play it at 100% (or 500% or whatever the max is) we're no longer talking about the same game experience.
OK, but what if I can NEVER beat that boss on the current setting. Then we're not talking about the same game experience either. What if an easier mode WOULD allow me to beat the boss in 9 hours? What you're saying is that if I have some issue with playing, this game is just NOT FOR ME and allowing options for me to play would somehow ruin the experience for you. Why does it matter to you if that allows some people to choose an easier game experience for themselves? How does that affect your enjoyment of the game? I may have 100% songs in guitar hero on hard, but I wasn't kidding myself that I was as good at the game as my old flatmate who could do it on heroic or whatever the harder difficulty was.
Then again, I'm a woman so I don't spend much time in online gaming communities discussing games, because they historically have not been very welcoming. My gaming has been mostly a solitary one, and I am very used to hearing Well This Game Isn't For You I Guess, Play Something Else, although not so much in this context.
Also - I am not disabled. I am good at games. I have played a lot of games on the hardest difficulty, I enjoy a challenge. But I am getting older, and my reflexes are slower. My brother can now kick my ass easily in twitchy games. I just want the things I love to be available to MORE people, and me in twenty years.
posted by stillnocturnal at 2:09 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
OK, but what if I can NEVER beat that boss on the current setting. Then we're not talking about the same game experience either. What if an easier mode WOULD allow me to beat the boss in 9 hours? What you're saying is that if I have some issue with playing, this game is just NOT FOR ME and allowing options for me to play would somehow ruin the experience for you. Why does it matter to you if that allows some people to choose an easier game experience for themselves? How does that affect your enjoyment of the game? I may have 100% songs in guitar hero on hard, but I wasn't kidding myself that I was as good at the game as my old flatmate who could do it on heroic or whatever the harder difficulty was.
Then again, I'm a woman so I don't spend much time in online gaming communities discussing games, because they historically have not been very welcoming. My gaming has been mostly a solitary one, and I am very used to hearing Well This Game Isn't For You I Guess, Play Something Else, although not so much in this context.
Also - I am not disabled. I am good at games. I have played a lot of games on the hardest difficulty, I enjoy a challenge. But I am getting older, and my reflexes are slower. My brother can now kick my ass easily in twitchy games. I just want the things I love to be available to MORE people, and me in twenty years.
posted by stillnocturnal at 2:09 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
This whole discussion just reflects the one I had with a friend two days ago, who thought that it was GOOD that dark souls didn't have a pause button, because it was supposed to be hard! Adding a pause button would make it less hard! And I thought it was total bullshit. Because it's bullshit for a game to punish you if you have children who might need help on short notice, or a spouse who wants to walk across the living room in front of the tv sometimes and not wait for you to walk back somewhere safe every time, or hell if you just want the ability to answer the door to the postman or pause when the cat gets on the coffee table in front of the screen. And he thought that if you wanted to play the game, you just had to reserve the time for it and make sure none of those thing would happen, because otherwise you don't *really* want to play the game and a pause button would somehow dilute it. This feels sort of like that.
(Note: I cannot remember if dark souls actually does or does not have a pause button, there was some doubt about that at the end, but that's sort of irrelevant to our actual viewpoints. Also I am the spouse who wants to walk across my own damn living room rather than have it be a dedicated gaming no-go zone where I have to wait for the crossing signal.)
posted by stillnocturnal at 2:40 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
(Note: I cannot remember if dark souls actually does or does not have a pause button, there was some doubt about that at the end, but that's sort of irrelevant to our actual viewpoints. Also I am the spouse who wants to walk across my own damn living room rather than have it be a dedicated gaming no-go zone where I have to wait for the crossing signal.)
posted by stillnocturnal at 2:40 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
I'll use the term "quicksaving" for being able save and reload at will as it doesn't have the pejorative sound of "savescumming"
That's a neat trick, but not one I'm just going to let pass. Serious question for you: if, as you claim, the real reason people in roguelike communities don't like savescumming is not that they're being elitist and gatekeeping but that they're worried about theoretical future games being theoretically not made the way they want, why is the most used term in those communities for the practice of trying to add this ability to games that don't have it the one that's clearly, as you note, a pejorative?
posted by tocts at 3:36 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
That's a neat trick, but not one I'm just going to let pass. Serious question for you: if, as you claim, the real reason people in roguelike communities don't like savescumming is not that they're being elitist and gatekeeping but that they're worried about theoretical future games being theoretically not made the way they want, why is the most used term in those communities for the practice of trying to add this ability to games that don't have it the one that's clearly, as you note, a pejorative?
posted by tocts at 3:36 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
why is the most used term in those communities for the practice of trying to add this ability to games that don't have it the one that's clearly, as you note, a pejorative?
This is going way, way back, but from what I remember "scumming" started out as a general term for anything tedious and repetitive and only slightly rewarding. E.g. in Angband, repeatedly causing levels to be regenerated by climbing up and down the stairs until the text introducing the level indicated that it was likely to have something interesting like a vault or an artefact on it was called level-scumming (thus the system that automated this process was "autoscum"). Save-scumming is similar in that (a) it lets players do things tediously over and over again until they get a lucky run with the RNG and succeed, and (b) most games balanced around permadeath become pretty boring pretty quickly for most people if you take away any risk of failure.
Why does that disability get so much more support? Why have I never heard anyone get upset at a game adding colorblindness modes or tweaking colors, despite it being completely against the creators' original ideas? Why don't able-bodied people complain about how expensive it is to be accessible that way and accuse supporters of wanting the games to be shittier because of it?
Because - despite what one half of this whole bizarre argument seems to want to believe - vanishingly few people have any kind of problem with accessibility options that don't fundamentally change the way a game is designed, and it's really hard to think of what kind of "vision" a creator could have that would be compromised by a colourblind mode. (The only reason I can think of for being against one is if it gives non-colourblind people an advantage in competitive play, but then that's a design problem and developers have a variety of ways of dealing with it).
If at this point anyone is genuinely confused about the argument being made, straight sets it out pretty well here and here in a way that nobody seems to have bothered to address.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:14 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is going way, way back, but from what I remember "scumming" started out as a general term for anything tedious and repetitive and only slightly rewarding. E.g. in Angband, repeatedly causing levels to be regenerated by climbing up and down the stairs until the text introducing the level indicated that it was likely to have something interesting like a vault or an artefact on it was called level-scumming (thus the system that automated this process was "autoscum"). Save-scumming is similar in that (a) it lets players do things tediously over and over again until they get a lucky run with the RNG and succeed, and (b) most games balanced around permadeath become pretty boring pretty quickly for most people if you take away any risk of failure.
Why does that disability get so much more support? Why have I never heard anyone get upset at a game adding colorblindness modes or tweaking colors, despite it being completely against the creators' original ideas? Why don't able-bodied people complain about how expensive it is to be accessible that way and accuse supporters of wanting the games to be shittier because of it?
Because - despite what one half of this whole bizarre argument seems to want to believe - vanishingly few people have any kind of problem with accessibility options that don't fundamentally change the way a game is designed, and it's really hard to think of what kind of "vision" a creator could have that would be compromised by a colourblind mode. (The only reason I can think of for being against one is if it gives non-colourblind people an advantage in competitive play, but then that's a design problem and developers have a variety of ways of dealing with it).
If at this point anyone is genuinely confused about the argument being made, straight sets it out pretty well here and here in a way that nobody seems to have bothered to address.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:14 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Maybe it's just the people I follow but I feel like the attitudes around "savescumming" in roguelikes are actually a lot less dogmatic used to be.
A lot of roguelikes nowadays are willing to accommodate alternate styles of play and have modes or options that let you save the game or otherwise get around permadeath. ADOM has a whole 'custom game' menu where you can toggle things like treasure frequency, monster difficulty, and whether or not saves are reloadable. ToME has both a deathless exploration mode and an 'Adventure Mode' where you have a stock of multiple 'extra lives'. Caves of Qud has an option to turn off permadeath that's buried in a debug menu but they devs aren't shy about pointing it out to people who want it. Just a few examples.
posted by umrain at 4:15 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
A lot of roguelikes nowadays are willing to accommodate alternate styles of play and have modes or options that let you save the game or otherwise get around permadeath. ADOM has a whole 'custom game' menu where you can toggle things like treasure frequency, monster difficulty, and whether or not saves are reloadable. ToME has both a deathless exploration mode and an 'Adventure Mode' where you have a stock of multiple 'extra lives'. Caves of Qud has an option to turn off permadeath that's buried in a debug menu but they devs aren't shy about pointing it out to people who want it. Just a few examples.
posted by umrain at 4:15 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
I do have to wonder why colorblindness options have become so much more widely accepted
Folks, Flatluigi was getting at colorblindness being a disability that affects primarily men, and even those who are otherwise "able-bodied."
And I can't say I disagree. It's pretty notable that the "git-gud" crowd doesn't oppose colorblind mode, because that helps out dudebros, instead of folks who "don't belong" (in their minds).
posted by explosion at 4:33 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Folks, Flatluigi was getting at colorblindness being a disability that affects primarily men, and even those who are otherwise "able-bodied."
And I can't say I disagree. It's pretty notable that the "git-gud" crowd doesn't oppose colorblind mode, because that helps out dudebros, instead of folks who "don't belong" (in their minds).
posted by explosion at 4:33 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
I admit I've savescummed their way through many a challenging game (sorry, X-com 2 developers!)
The problem with quicksaving is that having readily-available savescumming options almost invariably changes the way you think about and approach gameplay. With roguelike games, having quicksave and quickload features run the risk of completely destroying the suspense and challenge that are a major reason people like these games in the first place. Instead of encouraging players to engage with the game mechanics and press forward in challenging situations, they incentivize a playstyle that revolves around pressing F6 right before any challenge and then F7 to revert every time you make a minor mistake. Can't players just avoid using the quicksave functions, you might ask? Sure, in the same way someone with a sweet tooth can just choose not to eat a piece of chocolate someone is dangling in front of your mouth. New players might also be unclear about whether autosaves are part of the intended experience.
I know not everyone wants to play games the way the developers intended, and it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing: for instance, there could be a sort of Iron Man mode players can toggle to disallow saving for a particular run. Autosaves are at least less intrusive and harder to game than quicksaving, though they're probably also harder for developers to implement well.
Quicksaving and manual saving aren't inherently bad, even for roguelikes or Souls-likes, but everything has a trade-off. I think games like Darkest Dungeon found a good compromise: to make the default mode exactly as the developers intended, and then have a section of the options menu with some accessibility and customization options.
posted by Green Winnebago at 4:33 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
The problem with quicksaving is that having readily-available savescumming options almost invariably changes the way you think about and approach gameplay. With roguelike games, having quicksave and quickload features run the risk of completely destroying the suspense and challenge that are a major reason people like these games in the first place. Instead of encouraging players to engage with the game mechanics and press forward in challenging situations, they incentivize a playstyle that revolves around pressing F6 right before any challenge and then F7 to revert every time you make a minor mistake. Can't players just avoid using the quicksave functions, you might ask? Sure, in the same way someone with a sweet tooth can just choose not to eat a piece of chocolate someone is dangling in front of your mouth. New players might also be unclear about whether autosaves are part of the intended experience.
I know not everyone wants to play games the way the developers intended, and it doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing thing: for instance, there could be a sort of Iron Man mode players can toggle to disallow saving for a particular run. Autosaves are at least less intrusive and harder to game than quicksaving, though they're probably also harder for developers to implement well.
Quicksaving and manual saving aren't inherently bad, even for roguelikes or Souls-likes, but everything has a trade-off. I think games like Darkest Dungeon found a good compromise: to make the default mode exactly as the developers intended, and then have a section of the options menu with some accessibility and customization options.
posted by Green Winnebago at 4:33 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Folks, Flatluigi was getting at colorblindness being a disability that affects primarily men, and even those who are otherwise "able-bodied."
To be honest I missed the sarcasm because the question on its face isn't much more nonsensical than some of the other stuff here, like the (mostly deleted) comments comparing people who like hard games to white supremacists.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:42 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
To be honest I missed the sarcasm because the question on its face isn't much more nonsensical than some of the other stuff here, like the (mostly deleted) comments comparing people who like hard games to white supremacists.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 4:42 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
I wasn't sarcastic. I genuinely wanted people to examine why they considered colorblindness to be a 'valid' disability and one that's worth having accessibility options for, whereas other disabilities don't "count" and need to be fought against.
Especially do some examining if you dismissed the question out of hand as 'nonsensical.'
posted by flatluigi at 4:51 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Especially do some examining if you dismissed the question out of hand as 'nonsensical.'
posted by flatluigi at 4:51 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
For the record, I don't think explosion is off the mark but it's only a small part of the conversation and not the thrust of what I was getting at at all (I think it being an invisible disability contributes too, among other things)
Really, though, I think my point stands even if you swap out colorblindness options with other options like view/look sensitivity, control remapping, subtitles, and even FOV sliders -- they all are important functionality to people over a wide spectrum of ability, but they never enter the conversation as something whose implementation and inclusion is to be fought against.
posted by flatluigi at 5:00 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Really, though, I think my point stands even if you swap out colorblindness options with other options like view/look sensitivity, control remapping, subtitles, and even FOV sliders -- they all are important functionality to people over a wide spectrum of ability, but they never enter the conversation as something whose implementation and inclusion is to be fought against.
posted by flatluigi at 5:00 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
If at this point anyone is genuinely confused about the argument being made, straight sets it out pretty well here and here in a way that nobody seems to have bothered to address.
I'm not confused, I don't think many people are. I just disagree with you. I think allowing more people to play is good, even if it allows a number of those people to play it "the wrong way" by choice and enjoy it less. Most people prefer playing at a level that challenges them - everyone I know plays on the hardest difficulty they can, because that is the most enjoyable to them.
vanishingly few people have any kind of problem with accessibility options that don't fundamentally change the way a game is designed
I do not think this is true at all. I recently played a co-op platforming game with my husband that I really enjoyed playing together, but it reached a point where you had several different button presses that like, either flipped the world to an alternate dimension or flipped you, and there were sections with a series of jump sequences that required a whole bunch of flips rapidly in a row and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't press the buttons fast enough. I don't think ten hours would have allowed me to press the buttons fast enough, and really, learning sequences is one thing but improving reaction times is a big ask for a game. If there had been a difficulty option to just slow everything down a bit, we could have kept playing together! As it was, I had to give up. And I HAVE spent hours mastering difficult sections in platformers, this wasn't that. It was just beyond me.
I don't think people who ask for more options are necessarily wanting to fundamentally change the game! Sometimes they just need a bit more time to react, or a big more forgiveness for fucking up, in order to have the same game experience as other people. If you think that option would fundamentally change dark souls, I don't know what to tell you, I don't think anybody here is asking for it to have a save function. If people "play it wrong" I feel that's on them, like people who skim read a book and then don't enjoy it as much.
posted by stillnocturnal at 5:19 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
I'm not confused, I don't think many people are. I just disagree with you. I think allowing more people to play is good, even if it allows a number of those people to play it "the wrong way" by choice and enjoy it less. Most people prefer playing at a level that challenges them - everyone I know plays on the hardest difficulty they can, because that is the most enjoyable to them.
vanishingly few people have any kind of problem with accessibility options that don't fundamentally change the way a game is designed
I do not think this is true at all. I recently played a co-op platforming game with my husband that I really enjoyed playing together, but it reached a point where you had several different button presses that like, either flipped the world to an alternate dimension or flipped you, and there were sections with a series of jump sequences that required a whole bunch of flips rapidly in a row and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't press the buttons fast enough. I don't think ten hours would have allowed me to press the buttons fast enough, and really, learning sequences is one thing but improving reaction times is a big ask for a game. If there had been a difficulty option to just slow everything down a bit, we could have kept playing together! As it was, I had to give up. And I HAVE spent hours mastering difficult sections in platformers, this wasn't that. It was just beyond me.
I don't think people who ask for more options are necessarily wanting to fundamentally change the game! Sometimes they just need a bit more time to react, or a big more forgiveness for fucking up, in order to have the same game experience as other people. If you think that option would fundamentally change dark souls, I don't know what to tell you, I don't think anybody here is asking for it to have a save function. If people "play it wrong" I feel that's on them, like people who skim read a book and then don't enjoy it as much.
posted by stillnocturnal at 5:19 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
The newest Tomb Raider had three sliders at the start that let you adjust the difficulty/accessibility of the traversal, combat and puzzles separately. Detailed here: https://tombraider.square-enix-games.com/en-us/news/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-difficulty-and-accessibility
The game went even further than that to include options for some of the traversal minigames like disabling the "ledge grab" mechanic where you need to press a button with tight timing to get a secure hold on a ledge you just jumped to or allowing you to hold a button to complete "mash repeatedly" quicktime events. I particularly like that those two settings are orthogonal to the difficulty, so you can crank up the Exploration and Puzzle difficulty to hard while leaving the "fuck you, gamers with arthritis" features turned off.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:28 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
The game went even further than that to include options for some of the traversal minigames like disabling the "ledge grab" mechanic where you need to press a button with tight timing to get a secure hold on a ledge you just jumped to or allowing you to hold a button to complete "mash repeatedly" quicktime events. I particularly like that those two settings are orthogonal to the difficulty, so you can crank up the Exploration and Puzzle difficulty to hard while leaving the "fuck you, gamers with arthritis" features turned off.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:28 AM on April 10, 2019 [9 favorites]
like the (mostly deleted) comments comparing people who like hard games to white supremacists
It'd be great if you didn't misrepresent actual arguments as being instead what you defensively interpreted them as. I would never say, "people who like hard games are like white supremacists". I would say: nearly every time there's a big debate in the gaming world about how accommodating historically under-represented and/or under-served players would destroy gaming, you barely have to scratch the surface to find hate groups doing a lot of the signal boosting.
If you haven't noticed the fact that there's been a gamer-to-extremist pipeline going for at least 10-15 years, and that it functions primarily by manufacturing outrage about how some outside force is going to Destroy Our Games and then eventually redirecting that outrage towards marginalized groups, well, I don't know what to tell you.
posted by tocts at 5:29 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
It'd be great if you didn't misrepresent actual arguments as being instead what you defensively interpreted them as. I would never say, "people who like hard games are like white supremacists". I would say: nearly every time there's a big debate in the gaming world about how accommodating historically under-represented and/or under-served players would destroy gaming, you barely have to scratch the surface to find hate groups doing a lot of the signal boosting.
If you haven't noticed the fact that there's been a gamer-to-extremist pipeline going for at least 10-15 years, and that it functions primarily by manufacturing outrage about how some outside force is going to Destroy Our Games and then eventually redirecting that outrage towards marginalized groups, well, I don't know what to tell you.
posted by tocts at 5:29 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
A Thousand Baited Hooks, I think straight is presenting a separate argument than what a lot of other people are talking about here. There's lots of discussion to be had about how to design your game to be fun and lead players into enjoyable gameplay patterns, absolutely, and the both of you have some good points on that front -- however, what many of the articles this post is about cover are players being unable to interact with the basic gameplay for whatever reason. Most of the comments in this thread are having this discussion.
(To address one of the points as an aside, though, Dark Souls did in fact allow you to lower the difficulty for yourself both through being able to overlevel fights and being able to summon co-op partners to have them carry some of the weight.)
posted by flatluigi at 5:33 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
(To address one of the points as an aside, though, Dark Souls did in fact allow you to lower the difficulty for yourself both through being able to overlevel fights and being able to summon co-op partners to have them carry some of the weight.)
posted by flatluigi at 5:33 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Like, the anti-easier mode arguments seems to be that because the difficulty is exactly the right difficulty for you, it should stay that way to force you to play it, and an easier mode would tempt you to take it too easy and ruin the experience for you! So tough luck for those who find it actually too difficult/ impossible for whatever physical reason, find another game. Basically that your experience of the game is more important than other people's, who are saying that they would like to play it but find it too difficult There are already levels of difficulty there, acknowledging that people have different abilities, but apparently if you don't meet the minimum bar tough luck I guess, we can't have people tempted to take it too easy. (and honestly, I really don't think this is going to be a huge thing. Label it "beginner" and anybody who knows they're not new to gaming/ need some help isn't going to pick it, I don't know anybody who picks that level unless they need it.)
posted by stillnocturnal at 5:44 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by stillnocturnal at 5:44 AM on April 10, 2019 [10 favorites]
If you weren't being sarcastic with that comment I take that back. I didn't think it was nonsensical (or sarcastic) when I read it, thus the serious attempt at an answer above.
Like colourblind modes, things like controller sensitivity, remapping, subtitles and FOV sliders can all be implemented without changing the basic design of a game, so why would anyone have a problem with them? I don't think anyone does.
The root cause of the disagreement in this thread isn't really about accessibility or disability; it's about what games are and what they can be. If you're used to thinking of them as standard corporate extruded entertainment product (which, to be fair, is what a lot of them are) then it makes perfect sense to expect that paying your $80 is going to let you see everything the game has to offer with as much or as little effort as you want to put into it. From that point of view not having an easy mode can seem pretty obnoxious, even contemptuous, like a music CD that looks at the rest of your CD collection and refuses to be played because you have bad taste. That's clearly what's driving a lot of the comments here.
But! If you see games as maybe being something more than that - a way to learn something from fleeting contact with another world, a series of long conversations full of subtext (and Miyazaki's games are full of subtext, in a way that 99% of even the most dedicated players miss completely), or even (may Nito have mercy on my soul) ""art"", the problem looks very different. If the designer thinks that it's essential to their design to force players to endure a certain amount of discomfort - that there's no other way to communicate what they want to communicate - then maybe adding a 30% slowdown mode or whatever really wouldn't work. I mean, that's basically what Miyazaki has said he's trying to do, and I think he does a pretty good job of it.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:53 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Like colourblind modes, things like controller sensitivity, remapping, subtitles and FOV sliders can all be implemented without changing the basic design of a game, so why would anyone have a problem with them? I don't think anyone does.
The root cause of the disagreement in this thread isn't really about accessibility or disability; it's about what games are and what they can be. If you're used to thinking of them as standard corporate extruded entertainment product (which, to be fair, is what a lot of them are) then it makes perfect sense to expect that paying your $80 is going to let you see everything the game has to offer with as much or as little effort as you want to put into it. From that point of view not having an easy mode can seem pretty obnoxious, even contemptuous, like a music CD that looks at the rest of your CD collection and refuses to be played because you have bad taste. That's clearly what's driving a lot of the comments here.
But! If you see games as maybe being something more than that - a way to learn something from fleeting contact with another world, a series of long conversations full of subtext (and Miyazaki's games are full of subtext, in a way that 99% of even the most dedicated players miss completely), or even (may Nito have mercy on my soul) ""art"", the problem looks very different. If the designer thinks that it's essential to their design to force players to endure a certain amount of discomfort - that there's no other way to communicate what they want to communicate - then maybe adding a 30% slowdown mode or whatever really wouldn't work. I mean, that's basically what Miyazaki has said he's trying to do, and I think he does a pretty good job of it.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 5:53 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
If the designer thinks that it's essential to their design to force players to endure a certain amount of discomfort - that there's no other way to communicate what they want to communicate - then maybe adding a 30% slowdown mode or whatever really wouldn't work
What you appear to be missing and not addressing, repeatedly, is that that 30% slowdown might compensate for somebody else's lack of abilities, so that they are actually experiencing the same amount of discomfort as you, who is playing the harder mode! So that you can both experience the game the way the designer intended! So people who aren't as faster or flexible as you can still experience all this subtext and art, rather than being shut out by physical disabilities. Nobody here is saying "I should be able to play dark souls without effort because I paid money for it!" they're saying "gosh, it would be nice if I, too, a person with arthritis and slow reactions, could also play this game the way the designer intended"
But apparently those people are just supposed to watch lets plays.
posted by stillnocturnal at 6:00 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
What you appear to be missing and not addressing, repeatedly, is that that 30% slowdown might compensate for somebody else's lack of abilities, so that they are actually experiencing the same amount of discomfort as you, who is playing the harder mode! So that you can both experience the game the way the designer intended! So people who aren't as faster or flexible as you can still experience all this subtext and art, rather than being shut out by physical disabilities. Nobody here is saying "I should be able to play dark souls without effort because I paid money for it!" they're saying "gosh, it would be nice if I, too, a person with arthritis and slow reactions, could also play this game the way the designer intended"
But apparently those people are just supposed to watch lets plays.
posted by stillnocturnal at 6:00 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Really, though, I think my point stands even if you swap out colorblindness options with other options like view/look sensitivity, control remapping, subtitles, and even FOV sliders
To see how things like that are qualitatively different, think of it in the context of competitive multi-player games. If you're competing with remapped controls to suit your needs, nobody's going to complain. If you're in color-blind mode, assuming the game is designed to accommodate it which is trivially easy, you're still playing the same game and everyone will be fine with that. If you're in "easy mode" where you take half damage and score twice as many points or whatever, it is different and you are not playing the same game any more.
For single-player games nobody's going to object if you mod the game to make it easier. If you want to save-scum in nethack for some reason, go for it. I did it myself the first few times I played. If it had been built into the game from the start, I never would've discovered that it's better not to.
But it's not really about the personal experience so much. It's about the game developer/publisher and the choices they want to make in order to make the game popular and sell a lot of copies. From their point of view there's typically no point making it accessible to more people at the cost of making it appealing to fewer people. They consider a wide variety of player types and what appeals to them, they consider how these things interact with their marketing strategy, they decide what game modes make sense according to their feeling for how the game should work, they decide how many of those they want to implement and test and support. They don't always have exactly the one you'd like. They are entirely familiar with the feeling of people on internet forums telling them their game sucks because it lacks feature X which everyone can see is obviously necessary. Sometimes, even, they really did get it wrong. If that's the case with this particular game, it's not because of any nebulous notions of "accessibility" that apply universally.
posted by sfenders at 6:04 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
To see how things like that are qualitatively different, think of it in the context of competitive multi-player games. If you're competing with remapped controls to suit your needs, nobody's going to complain. If you're in color-blind mode, assuming the game is designed to accommodate it which is trivially easy, you're still playing the same game and everyone will be fine with that. If you're in "easy mode" where you take half damage and score twice as many points or whatever, it is different and you are not playing the same game any more.
For single-player games nobody's going to object if you mod the game to make it easier. If you want to save-scum in nethack for some reason, go for it. I did it myself the first few times I played. If it had been built into the game from the start, I never would've discovered that it's better not to.
But it's not really about the personal experience so much. It's about the game developer/publisher and the choices they want to make in order to make the game popular and sell a lot of copies. From their point of view there's typically no point making it accessible to more people at the cost of making it appealing to fewer people. They consider a wide variety of player types and what appeals to them, they consider how these things interact with their marketing strategy, they decide what game modes make sense according to their feeling for how the game should work, they decide how many of those they want to implement and test and support. They don't always have exactly the one you'd like. They are entirely familiar with the feeling of people on internet forums telling them their game sucks because it lacks feature X which everyone can see is obviously necessary. Sometimes, even, they really did get it wrong. If that's the case with this particular game, it's not because of any nebulous notions of "accessibility" that apply universally.
posted by sfenders at 6:04 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
> Like colourblind modes, things like controller sensitivity, remapping, subtitles and FOV sliders can all be implemented without changing the basic design of a game, so why would anyone have a problem with them? I don't think anyone does.
I'm not sure I can remember a colourblind mode example, but modding in increased sensitivity and FOV, remapping a console shooter to use kbm and subtitles highlighting enemies [QUIET RUSTLING] are all things I can recall being maybe not complained about, but pointed out as an advantage. Anecdata, I know, but if pushed I could probably dig up forum posts.
posted by lucidium at 6:08 AM on April 10, 2019
I'm not sure I can remember a colourblind mode example, but modding in increased sensitivity and FOV, remapping a console shooter to use kbm and subtitles highlighting enemies [QUIET RUSTLING] are all things I can recall being maybe not complained about, but pointed out as an advantage. Anecdata, I know, but if pushed I could probably dig up forum posts.
posted by lucidium at 6:08 AM on April 10, 2019
> A Thousand Baited Hooks: If you're used to thinking of them as standard corporate extruded entertainment product (which, to be fair, is what a lot of them are) then it makes perfect sense to expect that paying your $80 is going to let you see everything the game has to offer with as much or as little effort as you want to put into it. From that point of view not having an easy mode can seem pretty obnoxious, even contemptuous, like a music CD that looks at the rest of your CD collection and refuses to be played because you have bad taste. That's clearly what's driving a lot of the comments here.
You're projecting a hell of a lot here and pressing a lot of bad faith into people's arguments. This is not what people are talking about nor is it what people mean.
sfenders: People (in general this time, not really here that I've seen) have in fact objected to modding games to make them 'easier' in single player modes. In fact, you're the first one to introduce the idea of an 'easy mode' being added to a multiplayer game period; none of the conversation or the anger has been directed at anything but how other people might possibly play a single player game differently. If you skipped reading some of the articles in the OP, I'd recommend going back and checking them out.
posted by flatluigi at 6:12 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
You're projecting a hell of a lot here and pressing a lot of bad faith into people's arguments. This is not what people are talking about nor is it what people mean.
sfenders: People (in general this time, not really here that I've seen) have in fact objected to modding games to make them 'easier' in single player modes. In fact, you're the first one to introduce the idea of an 'easy mode' being added to a multiplayer game period; none of the conversation or the anger has been directed at anything but how other people might possibly play a single player game differently. If you skipped reading some of the articles in the OP, I'd recommend going back and checking them out.
posted by flatluigi at 6:12 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I did it myself the first few times I played. If it had been built into the game from the start, I never would've discovered that it's better not to.
Do you realize how contradictory these two statements are? You're saying that if the not-documented-but-easily-discoverable "feature" you used from your first game was built-in (instead of being simply a question of googling how to do it), it would have ruined the game for you -- even though you eventually stopped using it, and starting playing the game the "right" way.
Why do you believe that if it had been a menu option vs. a command that you can figure out in 5 seconds with a google search, you never would have learned to love playing in an "iron man" mode? Why do you believe that players cannot be trusted to graduate themselves from an easy level to a harder level if they're able to and would enjoy it more? Your own experience is precisely in doing it, but others can't be trusted?
Also: "it's better not to" is a hell of a value judgment. It's bettter not to for you. Others may disagree, and that's OK!
posted by tocts at 6:13 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Do you realize how contradictory these two statements are? You're saying that if the not-documented-but-easily-discoverable "feature" you used from your first game was built-in (instead of being simply a question of googling how to do it), it would have ruined the game for you -- even though you eventually stopped using it, and starting playing the game the "right" way.
Why do you believe that if it had been a menu option vs. a command that you can figure out in 5 seconds with a google search, you never would have learned to love playing in an "iron man" mode? Why do you believe that players cannot be trusted to graduate themselves from an easy level to a harder level if they're able to and would enjoy it more? Your own experience is precisely in doing it, but others can't be trusted?
Also: "it's better not to" is a hell of a value judgment. It's bettter not to for you. Others may disagree, and that's OK!
posted by tocts at 6:13 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
That's a neat trick, but not one I'm just going to let pass. Serious question for you: if, as you claim, the real reason people in roguelike communities don't like savescumming is not that they're being elitist and gatekeeping but that they're worried about theoretical future games being theoretically not made the way they want, why is the most used term in those communities for the practice of trying to add this ability to games that don't have it the one that's clearly, as you note, a pejorative?
So, I'm going to answer this from the perspective of someone who occasionally participates in roguelike development. (I think I'm actually not the only person in this thread who has some history of this, and I don't mean to speak for others.)
posted by advil at 6:13 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
So, I'm going to answer this from the perspective of someone who occasionally participates in roguelike development. (I think I'm actually not the only person in this thread who has some history of this, and I don't mean to speak for others.)
- The game that I work on is balanced around permadeath, and is not likely to maintain interest over the long term if you play without permadeath. This is not likely to change and I am personally not interested in a version of this game that would be balanced otherwise (if such a thing is even possible), in this I do speak for pretty much everyone who has ever worked on this game.
- Like most modern roguelikes, it has something called "explore mode" that lets you play without permadeath. This is different to some degree than allowing savefile manipulation, and this game will never include savefile copying as an in-game feature. (Of course, there's no technical barrier to just copying the savefiles when playing offline, people do this, and there even scripts out there to automate it.)
- As far as I can see, for this game, the choice to balance around permadeath for the most part is not remotely an accessibility issue. The game is turn-based, imposes no time or reflex limits, has an extremely customizable interface, and is quite accessible along many dimensions (it is possible for blind people to play it). The only caveat is that it can take a fairly long time to finish a game in the standard game mode, so it does bias towards people who have the time and energy to set aside for that, even if it's spread across many play sessions, and this isn't everyone. (But for these reasons I'm never entirely sure how useful it is to bring up roguelikes in comparison to souls-like games.)
- "-scumming" can be pejorative, but as noted earlier in this thread is generally used in the community to refer to any repetitive action that is some kind of (usually tactical) local maxima for gameplay. Here's a definition. For example, "stairscumming" in games that allow it (which the one I work on does, for better or worse) is the process of repeatedly going up and down stairs to pull smaller numbers of monsters off of crowds, with "scummy" being the general (slightly pejorative) adjective, that has a very similar flavor to "grindy". The phrase "dancing" is also used in a similar way in some parts of the roguelike world, e.g. "stairdancing", "pillar dancing", "victory dancing".
posted by advil at 6:13 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
People (in general this time, not really here that I've seen) have in fact objected to modding games to make them 'easier' in single player modes.
Oh. Well then, people suck.
posted by sfenders at 6:14 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Oh. Well then, people suck.
posted by sfenders at 6:14 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Why do you believe that if it had been a menu option vs. a command that you can figure out in 5 seconds with a google search, you never would have learned to love playing in an "iron man" mode?
Because I know myself? It was difficult to overcome the habit of many years of other games that didn't work that way. "Iron man" mode of that sort wouldn't even be a thing that exists anywhere, if it hadn't been for those games designed around it, which don't really work without it.
posted by sfenders at 6:17 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Because I know myself? It was difficult to overcome the habit of many years of other games that didn't work that way. "Iron man" mode of that sort wouldn't even be a thing that exists anywhere, if it hadn't been for those games designed around it, which don't really work without it.
posted by sfenders at 6:17 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
But I do actually think that winning the game I work on without copying save files or using explore mode is genuinely a serious accomplishment that is not comparable along most dimensions to winning the game with one of these techniques.
OK, but who is asking for it to be comparable?
If you want to run a leaderboard (via server or verified game runs or whatever) that only allows high scores to be compared if people play in hard mode, nobody is going to complain. Nobody is saying you have to believe in your heart of hearts that someone who won the game in easy mode achieved the same thing as someone who beat it in hard mode. But: why is the existence of an easier mode, the existence of a way for people to play the game differently, seen as if it's an existential threat to the game?
You claim "You are all welcome to play this game, however you want!", yet you spend most of your comment explaining why it's wrong for people to do so.
posted by tocts at 6:20 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
OK, but who is asking for it to be comparable?
If you want to run a leaderboard (via server or verified game runs or whatever) that only allows high scores to be compared if people play in hard mode, nobody is going to complain. Nobody is saying you have to believe in your heart of hearts that someone who won the game in easy mode achieved the same thing as someone who beat it in hard mode. But: why is the existence of an easier mode, the existence of a way for people to play the game differently, seen as if it's an existential threat to the game?
You claim "You are all welcome to play this game, however you want!", yet you spend most of your comment explaining why it's wrong for people to do so.
posted by tocts at 6:20 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
A Thousand Baited Hooks, I think straight is presenting a separate argument than what a lot of other people are talking about here. There's lots of discussion to be had about how to design your game to be fun and lead players into enjoyable gameplay patterns, absolutely, and the both of you have some good points on that front -- however, what many of the articles this post is about cover are players being unable to interact with the basic gameplay for whatever reason. Most of the comments in this thread are having this discussion.
I don't think they are, though. Some, sure, but I get the feeling that the vast majority are unhappy that there are games out there which have any skill barriers at all.
(To address one of the points as an aside, though, Dark Souls did in fact allow you to lower the difficulty for yourself both through being able to overlevel fights and being able to summon co-op partners to have them carry some of the weight.)
Yes, absolutely. And it still attracted endless complaints about how it was too hard, because to overlevel and summon you still have to engage with the game and its various obscurities to an extent that some people just weren't willing to deal with.
What you appear to be missing and not addressing, repeatedly, is that that 30% slowdown might compensate for somebody else's lack of abilities, so that they are actually experiencing the same amount of discomfort as you, who is playing the harder mode!
No, this has been addressed a number of times. 30% slowdown might help someone, but it still excludes someone else who needs 40% slowdown. 40% is going to exclude someone else. Every game draws the line somewhere; From just draws it a bit higher than most (but there are much harder games out there).
I think people are really underestimating how difficult it can be to design a game around overcoming difficult challenges (which is explicitly From's goal), and then take out those challenges without taking out the fun. Most AAA games can afford to do it because the challenge is a relatively small part of the game; Sekiro without the challenge would be less than half a game, and people would quite reasonably complain that they were playing it in a developer-approved mode and it wasn't much fun at all.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:23 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
I don't think they are, though. Some, sure, but I get the feeling that the vast majority are unhappy that there are games out there which have any skill barriers at all.
(To address one of the points as an aside, though, Dark Souls did in fact allow you to lower the difficulty for yourself both through being able to overlevel fights and being able to summon co-op partners to have them carry some of the weight.)
Yes, absolutely. And it still attracted endless complaints about how it was too hard, because to overlevel and summon you still have to engage with the game and its various obscurities to an extent that some people just weren't willing to deal with.
What you appear to be missing and not addressing, repeatedly, is that that 30% slowdown might compensate for somebody else's lack of abilities, so that they are actually experiencing the same amount of discomfort as you, who is playing the harder mode!
No, this has been addressed a number of times. 30% slowdown might help someone, but it still excludes someone else who needs 40% slowdown. 40% is going to exclude someone else. Every game draws the line somewhere; From just draws it a bit higher than most (but there are much harder games out there).
I think people are really underestimating how difficult it can be to design a game around overcoming difficult challenges (which is explicitly From's goal), and then take out those challenges without taking out the fun. Most AAA games can afford to do it because the challenge is a relatively small part of the game; Sekiro without the challenge would be less than half a game, and people would quite reasonably complain that they were playing it in a developer-approved mode and it wasn't much fun at all.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 6:23 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
why is the existence of an easier mode, the existence of a way for people to play the game differently, seen as if it's an existential threat to the game?
An existential threat that is literally built into the game, and not going away any time soon? Please stop with the hyperbole if you want to actually have a conversation.
posted by advil at 6:25 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
An existential threat that is literally built into the game, and not going away any time soon? Please stop with the hyperbole if you want to actually have a conversation.
posted by advil at 6:25 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Because I know myself? It was difficult to overcome the habit of many years of other games that didn't work that way.
Not to get all “gotcha!” but I hope you take a moment to consider that what you’re asking for is game design to accommodate the fact that something would make it too difficult to enjoy enjoy the game in the way you want. You just lucked out that it was easier to design around your particular needs.
posted by Gygesringtone at 6:48 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Not to get all “gotcha!” but I hope you take a moment to consider that what you’re asking for is game design to accommodate the fact that something would make it too difficult to enjoy enjoy the game in the way you want. You just lucked out that it was easier to design around your particular needs.
posted by Gygesringtone at 6:48 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
> A Thousand Baited Hooks:I don't think they are, though. Some, sure, but I get the feeling that the vast majority are unhappy that there are games out there which have any skill barriers at all.
I can tell that you don't think they are, which is why I've been telling you to read and understand what people are actually saying. Can you point to a single person here who has been saying they're (as you put it before) only looking for the ability to play games with as little effort as possible? Are you saying people are lying when they're giving their (numerous) arguments and sharing their actual experiences?
I feel that you've bought into the overarching gatekeeping narrative of accessibility being an excuse for people just being ""bad at videogames"" and I hope you can change your mind.
posted by flatluigi at 6:52 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I can tell that you don't think they are, which is why I've been telling you to read and understand what people are actually saying. Can you point to a single person here who has been saying they're (as you put it before) only looking for the ability to play games with as little effort as possible? Are you saying people are lying when they're giving their (numerous) arguments and sharing their actual experiences?
I feel that you've bought into the overarching gatekeeping narrative of accessibility being an excuse for people just being ""bad at videogames"" and I hope you can change your mind.
posted by flatluigi at 6:52 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Can you point to a single person here who has been saying they're (as you put it before) only looking for the ability to play games with as little effort as possible?
No, of course people haven't put it like that. I don't think I put it exactly that way myself. But it is a little odd that this only ever seems to come up with games, and particularly FromSoft games, that have a reputation for being difficult and not with all of the other games that have non-difficulty-related accessibility problems (and there are many of those).
I feel that you've bought into the overarching gatekeeping narrative of accessibility being an excuse for people just being ""bad at videogames"" and I hope you can change your mind.
Let's hold on to some perspective here! The argument isn't between "easy modes are great" and "no game should have an easy mode", it's between "all games *must* have an easy mode" and "it's okay if every now and then a game comes out that doesn't". If anyone's gatekeeping here (whatever "gatekeeping" is supposed to mean in this context, which I'm honestly finding rather difficult to grasp since nobody in this thread can tell Miyazaki how to make videogames) it's not the people who are happy that a fraction of 1% of the games that come out each year are designed in a certain way.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 7:18 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
No, of course people haven't put it like that. I don't think I put it exactly that way myself. But it is a little odd that this only ever seems to come up with games, and particularly FromSoft games, that have a reputation for being difficult and not with all of the other games that have non-difficulty-related accessibility problems (and there are many of those).
I feel that you've bought into the overarching gatekeeping narrative of accessibility being an excuse for people just being ""bad at videogames"" and I hope you can change your mind.
Let's hold on to some perspective here! The argument isn't between "easy modes are great" and "no game should have an easy mode", it's between "all games *must* have an easy mode" and "it's okay if every now and then a game comes out that doesn't". If anyone's gatekeeping here (whatever "gatekeeping" is supposed to mean in this context, which I'm honestly finding rather difficult to grasp since nobody in this thread can tell Miyazaki how to make videogames) it's not the people who are happy that a fraction of 1% of the games that come out each year are designed in a certain way.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 7:18 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
- It absolutely comes up across a wide variety of games, you just haven't been paying attention. People discussing how important it is is why there's beginning to be more accessibility options in games from Tomb Raider to Celeste and a lot of places in between.
- The gatekeeping is in the statement that it is good and correct that gamers with disabilities should be excluded from certain games for the simple reason that they're not worth the effort of including. If you're confused, I again ask you to read what people are saying instead of what you've assumed they're saying.
posted by flatluigi at 7:30 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
- The gatekeeping is in the statement that it is good and correct that gamers with disabilities should be excluded from certain games for the simple reason that they're not worth the effort of including. If you're confused, I again ask you to read what people are saying instead of what you've assumed they're saying.
posted by flatluigi at 7:30 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
it is not okay to say this about anything else in our society. "well, disabled people can get into like, 99% of schools/restaurants/movie theaters/grocery stores, do they really need to get into this one?" we all look at that idea and say it's unacceptable.
Hi, so, as a disabled person, I think that this perspective is wildly misrepresenting the amount of access you get as a person with a disability. Disability access is essentially dependent on it not impacting the business's business model too severely, and the vast majority of people are okay with that.
For example: I have a memory-related disability that makes it hard for me to pay bills on time. My credit score is, accordingly, abysmal. There is no disability accomodation I can get that will make the credit reporting agencies not report my late bills. For that matter, there is no disability accomodation I can get that will make companies - or even the state, for parking tickets - not charge me late fees because I am late on paying their bills. And this impacts me wildly and deeply, far more so than whether or not I get to play a particular video game. It's why my name isn't on a house right now, as well as a host of other issues.
The vast majority of people look at this situation and say "oh, well, naturally, the whole point of credit reporting agencies would be overridden if you could just say your disability invalidates it, no wonder they won't."
I think that people are in a weird place with video games in this thread, where they are making assumptions about Who Gamers Are and Why They Feel Things, and a lot of the anger seems as though it's about these hypothetical people, rather than the ones actually in the thread. Disability accomodations are not nearly as widespread as we might wish; it is reasonable to ask why this particular aspect is being focused on so intently.
posted by corb at 7:32 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Hi, so, as a disabled person, I think that this perspective is wildly misrepresenting the amount of access you get as a person with a disability. Disability access is essentially dependent on it not impacting the business's business model too severely, and the vast majority of people are okay with that.
For example: I have a memory-related disability that makes it hard for me to pay bills on time. My credit score is, accordingly, abysmal. There is no disability accomodation I can get that will make the credit reporting agencies not report my late bills. For that matter, there is no disability accomodation I can get that will make companies - or even the state, for parking tickets - not charge me late fees because I am late on paying their bills. And this impacts me wildly and deeply, far more so than whether or not I get to play a particular video game. It's why my name isn't on a house right now, as well as a host of other issues.
The vast majority of people look at this situation and say "oh, well, naturally, the whole point of credit reporting agencies would be overridden if you could just say your disability invalidates it, no wonder they won't."
I think that people are in a weird place with video games in this thread, where they are making assumptions about Who Gamers Are and Why They Feel Things, and a lot of the anger seems as though it's about these hypothetical people, rather than the ones actually in the thread. Disability accomodations are not nearly as widespread as we might wish; it is reasonable to ask why this particular aspect is being focused on so intently.
posted by corb at 7:32 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Mod note: One comment deleted; sorry for the late delete, but "fuck you" is not okay.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:33 AM on April 10, 2019
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:33 AM on April 10, 2019
- It absolutely comes up across a wide variety of games, you just haven't been paying attention. People discussing how important it is is why there's beginning to be more accessibility options in games from Tomb Raider to Celeste and a lot of places in between.
I mean the outpouring of righteous anger. That seems to be much more specific.
- The gatekeeping is in the statement that it is good and correct that gamers with disabilities should be excluded from certain games for the simple reason that they're not worth the effort of including. If you're confused, I again ask you to read what people are saying instead of what you've assumed they're saying.
That goes both ways; I don't think anyone has said anything even remotely close to "it is good and correct that gamers with disabilities should be excluded from certain games for the simple reason that they're not worth the effort of including". What I have been saying is that (a) virtually all games are exclusionary to *some* extent, because that's just what games are, and (b) it's great if there are lots of games that most people can play, and it's also okay for there to be games aimed at niche audiences.
If anything, the (attempted) gatekeeping is in the refusal to accept that some people just like playing these kinds of games, and some people just like making them.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 7:54 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I mean the outpouring of righteous anger. That seems to be much more specific.
- The gatekeeping is in the statement that it is good and correct that gamers with disabilities should be excluded from certain games for the simple reason that they're not worth the effort of including. If you're confused, I again ask you to read what people are saying instead of what you've assumed they're saying.
That goes both ways; I don't think anyone has said anything even remotely close to "it is good and correct that gamers with disabilities should be excluded from certain games for the simple reason that they're not worth the effort of including". What I have been saying is that (a) virtually all games are exclusionary to *some* extent, because that's just what games are, and (b) it's great if there are lots of games that most people can play, and it's also okay for there to be games aimed at niche audiences.
If anything, the (attempted) gatekeeping is in the refusal to accept that some people just like playing these kinds of games, and some people just like making them.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 7:54 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Who is saying that it is good and correct that people be excluded? Please point out the comments here that say that.
I feel like these articles wished for features which don't exist, and then people who are into From titles pondered whether that could be done without breaking core game function and philosophy. And then, to put it mildly, I feel like the From fans in this thread have a ton of anger coming at them that may not be warranted, since they are not the developers.
To be clear, I think the whole concept of IP is pretty crap and all games should be open-source and moddable.
posted by heatvision at 7:58 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I feel like these articles wished for features which don't exist, and then people who are into From titles pondered whether that could be done without breaking core game function and philosophy. And then, to put it mildly, I feel like the From fans in this thread have a ton of anger coming at them that may not be warranted, since they are not the developers.
To be clear, I think the whole concept of IP is pretty crap and all games should be open-source and moddable.
posted by heatvision at 7:58 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I hope you take a moment to consider that what you’re asking for is game design to accommodate ...
I'm not the one asking for anything. I'm the one saying that what they gave us doesn't seem to be as straightforwardly bad as some people are making it out to be.
posted by sfenders at 7:59 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'm not the one asking for anything. I'm the one saying that what they gave us doesn't seem to be as straightforwardly bad as some people are making it out to be.
posted by sfenders at 7:59 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't think anyone has said anything even remotely close to "it is good and correct that gamers with disabilities should be excluded from certain games for the simple reason that they're not worth the effort of including".
Hmm, why would anyone think people in this thread are saying something like th...
And if they’re getting paid for it, the question you’re asking is either “what part of the game do you want to be made shittier” or “how much do you want the games to cost?” And they’re already pretty expensive.
Oh, yeah, there it is, as usual.
"If they included accessibility features they would have to spend less money on the part of the game I, an able-bodied person, care about" is literally the stock argument against accessibility features. If you're not seeing it, it's because you don't want to see it.
posted by tocts at 8:00 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Hmm, why would anyone think people in this thread are saying something like th...
And if they’re getting paid for it, the question you’re asking is either “what part of the game do you want to be made shittier” or “how much do you want the games to cost?” And they’re already pretty expensive.
Oh, yeah, there it is, as usual.
"If they included accessibility features they would have to spend less money on the part of the game I, an able-bodied person, care about" is literally the stock argument against accessibility features. If you're not seeing it, it's because you don't want to see it.
posted by tocts at 8:00 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Mod note: Couple comments deleted. First of all please take a look at the earlier part of this thread before jumping in with your hot take ...about lazy people not reading. Second, please don't engage by putting words in other people's mouths, just make your own points.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:01 AM on April 10, 2019
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:01 AM on April 10, 2019
Oh, yeah, there it is, as usual.
"If they included accessibility features they would have to spend less money on the part of the game I, an able-bodied person, care about" is literally the stock argument against accessibility features. If you're not seeing it, it's because you don't want to see it.
I believe it was mentioned up above (apologies for not scrolling up and reading through every comment, this is a large the thread), but I want to comment on this often argued excuse.
That someone has to be paid more and that it costs more resources and time to make the game more accessible. I'm not denying that resources and money would be spent to make games more accessible. But on the flip side, consider that a programmer, developer, gaming company went out of their way to spend resources making the game harder, to add those extra nightmare-badass-permadeath modes. That is a choice.
There's a choice being made to design the game one way and not add accessibility for others. And this is one of the many things that is being discussed here.
I'll step out now and go back to reading/listening.
posted by Fizz at 8:10 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
"If they included accessibility features they would have to spend less money on the part of the game I, an able-bodied person, care about" is literally the stock argument against accessibility features. If you're not seeing it, it's because you don't want to see it.
I believe it was mentioned up above (apologies for not scrolling up and reading through every comment, this is a large the thread), but I want to comment on this often argued excuse.
That someone has to be paid more and that it costs more resources and time to make the game more accessible. I'm not denying that resources and money would be spent to make games more accessible. But on the flip side, consider that a programmer, developer, gaming company went out of their way to spend resources making the game harder, to add those extra nightmare-badass-permadeath modes. That is a choice.
There's a choice being made to design the game one way and not add accessibility for others. And this is one of the many things that is being discussed here.
I'll step out now and go back to reading/listening.
posted by Fizz at 8:10 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
> A Thousand Baited Hooks: "That goes both ways; I don't think anyone has said anything even remotely close to "it is good and correct that gamers with disabilities should be excluded from certain games for the simple reason that they're not worth the effort of including". What I have been saying is that (a) virtually all games are exclusionary to *some* extent, because that's just what games are, and (b) it's great if there are lots of games that most people can play, and it's also okay for there to be games aimed at niche audiences.
If anything, the (attempted) gatekeeping is in the refusal to accept that some people just like playing these kinds of games, and some people just like making them."
To the first statement: games do not have to be exclusionary and it's absolutely not something inherent about the medium or even the specific genre as you've been framing it throughout this thread. You may not want to think you've been saying it's a good thing, but you have.
To your ending statement: as been said many times before, adding accessibility options in no way takes anything from people who choose not to use those options and the suggestion that they should exist is not in any way an attack on those people. They're options, so they're optional. There is no gate to reverse-gatekeep; there is no exclusion by the existence of options.
posted by flatluigi at 8:15 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
If anything, the (attempted) gatekeeping is in the refusal to accept that some people just like playing these kinds of games, and some people just like making them."
To the first statement: games do not have to be exclusionary and it's absolutely not something inherent about the medium or even the specific genre as you've been framing it throughout this thread. You may not want to think you've been saying it's a good thing, but you have.
To your ending statement: as been said many times before, adding accessibility options in no way takes anything from people who choose not to use those options and the suggestion that they should exist is not in any way an attack on those people. They're options, so they're optional. There is no gate to reverse-gatekeep; there is no exclusion by the existence of options.
posted by flatluigi at 8:15 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Nobody has mentioned Baba is You. It seems debateable whether Sekiro could have a built-in "easy mode" without losing something of what it is or requiring an undue amount of effort to redesign it. Baba on the other hand is one of those games where it's obviously not possible. It's a very challenging puzzle game. To many people it's inaccessibly difficult, but there's really nothing that can be done about that. It's the nature of the game.
Personally I'm pretty sure I would like all the Souls games better if they were easier to play. They're too much for me. Probably for most people, really. That's one of the things that strikes me as odd about this. It seems akin to demanding wheelchair ramps up the side of Mt. Everest. Sure, mountains don't have to be exclusionary either, but that one is, and it's fine. At this point in history, getting to the top of it shouldn't be essential to anyone's well-being.
posted by sfenders at 8:31 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Personally I'm pretty sure I would like all the Souls games better if they were easier to play. They're too much for me. Probably for most people, really. That's one of the things that strikes me as odd about this. It seems akin to demanding wheelchair ramps up the side of Mt. Everest. Sure, mountains don't have to be exclusionary either, but that one is, and it's fine. At this point in history, getting to the top of it shouldn't be essential to anyone's well-being.
posted by sfenders at 8:31 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
I mean the outpouring of righteous anger. That seems to be much more specific.
for the record, i think people are angry because they're repeatedly being told their concerns don't matter, that their inability to play these games doesn't matter, and that they're just complaining because they haven't taken the time or put the work in to get good, even as they explain how much more nuanced their position actually is.
posted by JimBennett at 8:36 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
for the record, i think people are angry because they're repeatedly being told their concerns don't matter, that their inability to play these games doesn't matter, and that they're just complaining because they haven't taken the time or put the work in to get good, even as they explain how much more nuanced their position actually is.
posted by JimBennett at 8:36 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Hello, I am in this thread. I developed psoriatic arthritis (identical in effect to rheumatoid) at 16. I’m now 35. I’ve been a gamer since I can remember, but many, many games have literally slipped out of my grasp.
Part of my point is that while the discussion in this thread is focused on accessibility, most of the discussion in the articles in the links above and elsewhere on the net seems to be about adding a mode to Sekiro to make it more like some of those other games you also can't play.
posted by straight at 8:42 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Part of my point is that while the discussion in this thread is focused on accessibility, most of the discussion in the articles in the links above and elsewhere on the net seems to be about adding a mode to Sekiro to make it more like some of those other games you also can't play.
posted by straight at 8:42 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
There are in fact a LOT of From/Souls fans in here supporting accessibility, and we're just getting ignored.
Sekiro is, perhaps, its own thing. But in some way it's the 6th of a series. Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1-3, and Bloodborne all had various ways to make things a bit easier, whether through character select or Jolly Cooperation. Sekiro isn't a continuation of this tradition. It is in fact a departure.
Comparing a video game to a mountain is not even honest. One's designed, one is natural. We can tell a designer what they should do, we can't tell nature.
And again, why is Sekiro the focus? Because gatekeepers made it such. They chose for this game to be the hill to die on. When reviewers criticized other brutal games, people accepted it and moved on. When reviewers criticized this game, a bunch of folks suddenly came out of the woodwork to say how WRONG the reviewers were.
There's just so much dishonesty. People are asking for accessibility, not ease. These games are supposed to be about discovery and mastery. Not reflexes. We've quoted the designers. There's nothing inherent to the Souls/Borne/Sekiro experience or ethos that requires fast reflexes.
posted by explosion at 8:43 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Sekiro is, perhaps, its own thing. But in some way it's the 6th of a series. Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1-3, and Bloodborne all had various ways to make things a bit easier, whether through character select or Jolly Cooperation. Sekiro isn't a continuation of this tradition. It is in fact a departure.
Comparing a video game to a mountain is not even honest. One's designed, one is natural. We can tell a designer what they should do, we can't tell nature.
And again, why is Sekiro the focus? Because gatekeepers made it such. They chose for this game to be the hill to die on. When reviewers criticized other brutal games, people accepted it and moved on. When reviewers criticized this game, a bunch of folks suddenly came out of the woodwork to say how WRONG the reviewers were.
There's just so much dishonesty. People are asking for accessibility, not ease. These games are supposed to be about discovery and mastery. Not reflexes. We've quoted the designers. There's nothing inherent to the Souls/Borne/Sekiro experience or ethos that requires fast reflexes.
posted by explosion at 8:43 AM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
sfenders: Baba is You has had multiple patches since release explicitly to add better onboarding to certain puzzle ideas and to rearrange/remove/replace puzzles that weren't working well. It's also a turn-based game with an infinite rewind system so you can take all the time you need. I've even personally talked with the developer about how I admired the intentional avoidance of solutions that require difficult execution.
People haven't brought it up because it's orthogonal to any discussion that's been happening.
> straight: Part of my point is that while the discussion in this thread is focused on accessibility, most of the discussion in the articles in the links above and elsewhere on the net seems to be about adding a mode to Sekiro to make it more like some of those other games you also can't play.
That's patently and clearly untrue even when you only look at the pullquotes Fizz included. There's certainly been attempts to frame it as 'people just can't handle hard videogames' but that absolutely isn't what the conversation has been about at large.
posted by flatluigi at 8:51 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
People haven't brought it up because it's orthogonal to any discussion that's been happening.
> straight: Part of my point is that while the discussion in this thread is focused on accessibility, most of the discussion in the articles in the links above and elsewhere on the net seems to be about adding a mode to Sekiro to make it more like some of those other games you also can't play.
That's patently and clearly untrue even when you only look at the pullquotes Fizz included. There's certainly been attempts to frame it as 'people just can't handle hard videogames' but that absolutely isn't what the conversation has been about at large.
posted by flatluigi at 8:51 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Oh, yeah, there it is, as usual.
Nah, that comment was just pointing out that properly tuning multiple difficulty levels is actually quite a lot of work. And it is. Nothing about it being "good and correct" to exclude people with disabilities, unless you insist on reading it in the least charitable possible way.
To the first statement: games do not have to be exclusionary and it's absolutely not something inherent about the medium or even the specific genre as you've been framing it throughout this thread.
? A game which relies on graphics to communicate information excludes people who rely on screen readers. A text-heavy game which uses complex language excludes people who don't have a strong enough grasp of the language(s) it's available in. An action game that requires the use of a controller or a keyboard excludes people who can't use a controller or a keyboard. A real-time strategy game that is built around multitasking excludes people who can't multitask. That's all inherent to the medium, like the way most music excludes people who can't hear it.
You may not want to think you've been saying it's a good thing, but you have.
What was that about projecting again?
To your ending statement: as been said many times before, adding accessibility options in no way takes anything from people who choose not to use those options and the suggestion that they should exist is not in any way an attack on those people.
Nah, plenty of people have carefully explained why actually it does take something away; just because you don't feel the same way doesn't make them wrong.
And again, why is Sekiro the focus? Because gatekeepers made it such. They chose for this game to be the hill to die on. When reviewers criticized other brutal games, people accepted it and moved on. When reviewers criticized this game, a bunch of folks suddenly came out of the woodwork to say how WRONG the reviewers were.
Oh, those terrible gatekeepers! What will they do next? Is any gate safe?
Actually, I wouldn't be too surprised if Sekiro gets patched to make it a bit easier in some parts. If From wants to do that, that's fine; they've done it before with their other games. They're the only gatekeepers that matter here, and they get to keep the gate because they made it.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 8:57 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Nah, that comment was just pointing out that properly tuning multiple difficulty levels is actually quite a lot of work. And it is. Nothing about it being "good and correct" to exclude people with disabilities, unless you insist on reading it in the least charitable possible way.
To the first statement: games do not have to be exclusionary and it's absolutely not something inherent about the medium or even the specific genre as you've been framing it throughout this thread.
? A game which relies on graphics to communicate information excludes people who rely on screen readers. A text-heavy game which uses complex language excludes people who don't have a strong enough grasp of the language(s) it's available in. An action game that requires the use of a controller or a keyboard excludes people who can't use a controller or a keyboard. A real-time strategy game that is built around multitasking excludes people who can't multitask. That's all inherent to the medium, like the way most music excludes people who can't hear it.
You may not want to think you've been saying it's a good thing, but you have.
What was that about projecting again?
To your ending statement: as been said many times before, adding accessibility options in no way takes anything from people who choose not to use those options and the suggestion that they should exist is not in any way an attack on those people.
Nah, plenty of people have carefully explained why actually it does take something away; just because you don't feel the same way doesn't make them wrong.
And again, why is Sekiro the focus? Because gatekeepers made it such. They chose for this game to be the hill to die on. When reviewers criticized other brutal games, people accepted it and moved on. When reviewers criticized this game, a bunch of folks suddenly came out of the woodwork to say how WRONG the reviewers were.
Oh, those terrible gatekeepers! What will they do next? Is any gate safe?
Actually, I wouldn't be too surprised if Sekiro gets patched to make it a bit easier in some parts. If From wants to do that, that's fine; they've done it before with their other games. They're the only gatekeepers that matter here, and they get to keep the gate because they made it.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 8:57 AM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
this thread is not going to age well.
posted by JimBennett at 8:59 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by JimBennett at 8:59 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
? A game which relies on graphics to communicate information excludes people who rely on screen readers. A text-heavy game which uses complex language excludes people who don't have a strong enough grasp of the language(s) it's available in. An action game that requires the use of a controller or a keyboard excludes people who can't use a controller or a keyboard. A real-time strategy game that is built around multitasking excludes people who can't multitask. That's all inherent to the medium, like the way most music excludes people who can't hear it.
A game which relies on graphics to communicate information can include screen-readable captions or clear sound cues, and there have been games that have done that. A text-heavy game which uses unfamiliar language can have alternate translations for people more versed in those languages, and they have. An action game that requires the use of a controller or keyboard can have remappable controls so that alternate controls like the Quadstick or Microsoft's new adaptive controller can be used instead, and many do. A real-time strategy game can have controllable timescale for people unable to do quick movements or many successive movements, and some do.
This is what accessibility is, and if you're making this point after this long of a thread I don't know how you've been able to miss that entirely.
posted by flatluigi at 9:14 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
A game which relies on graphics to communicate information can include screen-readable captions or clear sound cues, and there have been games that have done that. A text-heavy game which uses unfamiliar language can have alternate translations for people more versed in those languages, and they have. An action game that requires the use of a controller or keyboard can have remappable controls so that alternate controls like the Quadstick or Microsoft's new adaptive controller can be used instead, and many do. A real-time strategy game can have controllable timescale for people unable to do quick movements or many successive movements, and some do.
This is what accessibility is, and if you're making this point after this long of a thread I don't know how you've been able to miss that entirely.
posted by flatluigi at 9:14 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Nah, plenty of people have carefully explained why actually it does take something away; just because you don't feel the same way doesn't make them wrong.
It takes something away because?
Not one person has successfully explained how - if people who want to play at LEET-murdercore-ULTRAVIOLENCE level can continue to play at that level, but others who select an accessible mode have taken something away from the former class of players. How?
So - by this logic, because there are professional baseball players, blind players who have accommodations so they can also play baseball (at their level) somehow takes something away from the professionals? Someone mentioned the lack of wheelchair ramps on Everest... Try searching for paraplegic mountain climbers... They use accommodations, but they get the job done.
Therefore it "demeans" the sport, and destroys the original vision of a pure game? Are the ego's and self-worth defined by being a LEET-player so fragile that they cannot understand anyone else but themselves enjoying the same game at a different level? Apparently.
There are multiple people with actual physical disabilities participating in this thread - and carefully explain their positions - and yet their experiences are continuously discounted.
Well - apparently games are for petulant children. Same as it ever was. A few people have brought up the alt-right in this thread, at first I mentally discounted their comparisons - but you know who else was concerned about elitism and purity of vision, right?
“They're the only gatekeepers that matter here, and they get to keep the gate because they made it.”
Then, they can be boo'd, boycotted, shamed and discussed - we don't have to hold them up on a pedestal - because they are "shining examples" of artistic ingenuity. Frankly, they seem to have only one single actual design trick.... The innovation of ...Difficulty....
posted by jkaczor at 9:24 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
It takes something away because?
Not one person has successfully explained how - if people who want to play at LEET-murdercore-ULTRAVIOLENCE level can continue to play at that level, but others who select an accessible mode have taken something away from the former class of players. How?
So - by this logic, because there are professional baseball players, blind players who have accommodations so they can also play baseball (at their level) somehow takes something away from the professionals? Someone mentioned the lack of wheelchair ramps on Everest... Try searching for paraplegic mountain climbers... They use accommodations, but they get the job done.
Therefore it "demeans" the sport, and destroys the original vision of a pure game? Are the ego's and self-worth defined by being a LEET-player so fragile that they cannot understand anyone else but themselves enjoying the same game at a different level? Apparently.
There are multiple people with actual physical disabilities participating in this thread - and carefully explain their positions - and yet their experiences are continuously discounted.
Well - apparently games are for petulant children. Same as it ever was. A few people have brought up the alt-right in this thread, at first I mentally discounted their comparisons - but you know who else was concerned about elitism and purity of vision, right?
“They're the only gatekeepers that matter here, and they get to keep the gate because they made it.”
Then, they can be boo'd, boycotted, shamed and discussed - we don't have to hold them up on a pedestal - because they are "shining examples" of artistic ingenuity. Frankly, they seem to have only one single actual design trick.... The innovation of ...Difficulty....
posted by jkaczor at 9:24 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
The comparisons above to "easy modes" of challenging novels seem ridiculous to me. The actual comparison would be to large print books. I hope there is no macho posturing about being able to read small font sizes.
posted by demiurge at 9:28 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by demiurge at 9:28 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
The actual comparison would be to large print books
Or Braille - or Audiobooks... Different accommodations for different needs.
posted by jkaczor at 9:29 AM on April 10, 2019
Or Braille - or Audiobooks... Different accommodations for different needs.
posted by jkaczor at 9:29 AM on April 10, 2019
Frankly, they seem to have only one single actual design trick.... The innovation of ...Difficulty....
Not really. They make great games. They're innovative in ways beyond their difficulty. Honestly, the developers aren't even putting up much of a fuss about reducing the difficulty or adding other accessibility options. It's the posturing fans like Thousand.
With fans like these, who needs enemies?
posted by explosion at 9:31 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Not really. They make great games. They're innovative in ways beyond their difficulty. Honestly, the developers aren't even putting up much of a fuss about reducing the difficulty or adding other accessibility options. It's the posturing fans like Thousand.
With fans like these, who needs enemies?
posted by explosion at 9:31 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
> straight: Part of my point is that while the discussion in this thread is focused on accessibility, most of the discussion in the articles in the links above and elsewhere on the net seems to be about adding a mode to Sekiro to make it more like some of those other games you also can't play.
That's patently and clearly untrue even when you only look at the pullquotes Fizz included.
No it is not.
The Forbes article (the first link) that sparked a whole lot of this conversation ends with this: "An easy mode does not have to be complicated: ideally, I'd like to see the sort of deeper customization that Celeste has, but all you need to do is turn up the damage the player does and turn down the damage the enemies do." It was initially only about the claim that Sekiro's difficulty is no different from and can be tweaked in the same way as the hit point sliders in Skyrim. It has a later "UPDATE" that basically says, Oh yeah, maybe accessibility is an argument in my favor as well.
The Spinoff article is explicitly about criticizing Sekiro's game design rather than talking about accessibility for the disabled:
posted by straight at 9:34 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
That's patently and clearly untrue even when you only look at the pullquotes Fizz included.
No it is not.
The Forbes article (the first link) that sparked a whole lot of this conversation ends with this: "An easy mode does not have to be complicated: ideally, I'd like to see the sort of deeper customization that Celeste has, but all you need to do is turn up the damage the player does and turn down the damage the enemies do." It was initially only about the claim that Sekiro's difficulty is no different from and can be tweaked in the same way as the hit point sliders in Skyrim. It has a later "UPDATE" that basically says, Oh yeah, maybe accessibility is an argument in my favor as well.
The Spinoff article is explicitly about criticizing Sekiro's game design rather than talking about accessibility for the disabled:
The other interpretation of “accessibility”, and what I’m dealing with here, is how the level of challenge built into a game’s design can make it difficult for players, disabled and abled alike, to progress through it.The Kotaku article is arguing that Sekiro should be more like Halo and Devil May Cry. The Gamasutra article contrasts Sekiro with God of War and Spider-Man. They're not talking about making AAA games more widely accessible, they're about making Sekiro more like other AAA games.
posted by straight at 9:34 AM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
If you misread the articles they definitely support your point, sure.
posted by flatluigi at 9:37 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by flatluigi at 9:37 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
With fans like these, who needs enemies?
Yeah - I am pretty sure the developers (and their corporate masters) want to sell as many copies as possible, because while games may be art - they are also commercial ventures.
But - frankly, there are toxic, snobbish, elitist cultures across sports fandom, art/music, social/political activists, etc.
People (in groups) mostly just suck.
posted by jkaczor at 9:38 AM on April 10, 2019
Yeah - I am pretty sure the developers (and their corporate masters) want to sell as many copies as possible, because while games may be art - they are also commercial ventures.
But - frankly, there are toxic, snobbish, elitist cultures across sports fandom, art/music, social/political activists, etc.
People (in groups) mostly just suck.
posted by jkaczor at 9:38 AM on April 10, 2019
Do you really believe the players of your game that do this are just joylessly whittling their hours away? Or is it more likely that you're wrong that your game does not maintain interest without permadeath?
In my experience, players who don't play with permadeath do an average of 0-2 playthroughs in total and move on to something else, like they would with a typical commercial RPG. Which is fine! I also didn't mean to suggest that everyone has a uniform experience with this.
I play roguelikes by save-scumming. They are interesting and fun to me, and it avoids triggering my anxiety in a way which isn't fun or interesting to me. I am here, and yes, this is also a possible accessibility option.
This is one reason why explore mode exists in our game! In our estimation it works better in game design terms than save backups as an in-game feature would, though, for some kinds of games.
posted by advil at 9:39 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
In my experience, players who don't play with permadeath do an average of 0-2 playthroughs in total and move on to something else, like they would with a typical commercial RPG. Which is fine! I also didn't mean to suggest that everyone has a uniform experience with this.
I play roguelikes by save-scumming. They are interesting and fun to me, and it avoids triggering my anxiety in a way which isn't fun or interesting to me. I am here, and yes, this is also a possible accessibility option.
This is one reason why explore mode exists in our game! In our estimation it works better in game design terms than save backups as an in-game feature would, though, for some kinds of games.
posted by advil at 9:39 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
It was initially only about the claim that Sekiro's difficulty is no different from and can be tweaked in the same way as the hit point sliders in Skyrim. It has a later "UPDATE" that basically says, Oh yeah, maybe accessibility is an argument in my favor as well.
Not true. Here's another part of the article (emphasis mine):
Not true. Here's another part of the article (emphasis mine):
But most people, even most people that might like to see that sort of thing, will never see any of that. Maybe they have limited gaming time and don't want to spend that time fighting Lady Butterfly 100 times in a row. Maybe they're just not that good at timing their parries, maybe they get frustrated and don't feel like being frustrated, just now. Maybe they have a physical ailment makes this sort of precision just a little too difficult to pull off. An easy mode would allow an order of magnitude more players to see what From has built, and yet these experiences remained walled off for those millions of people for reasons that I just can't parse.posted by zombieflanders at 10:21 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Thanks for the response, advil. If your game is public, could you link or namedrop? I don’t think I’ve played a game by a Mefi’s Own, before, and I’d like to check it out!
Well, it's definitely not just my game (nor am I the only mefi's own for it I think) -- the number of people who've worked on it over the years is huge (github says 244) and I've only been involved in development since 2016 or so. I'm just one of the main people active right now. But it's dcss.
Actually, if you're interested in a more chill approach to dcss than the usual online play communities, one of my biggest projects lately has been to get seeding to work as a player-oriented feature. It's worked the degree that there's recently an offline game of the month thing run by a prominent community member that is emphasizing the more relaxed end of things, e.g. games are all offline and there's no rules about replays. ("This is supposed to be a shared learning experience rather than a form of competition so feel free to have as many attempts as you'd like.") I think this will be great for the community and help alleviate some potential gatekeeping issues (which I wouldn't want to deny are present in the community in general).
posted by advil at 10:22 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Well, it's definitely not just my game (nor am I the only mefi's own for it I think) -- the number of people who've worked on it over the years is huge (github says 244) and I've only been involved in development since 2016 or so. I'm just one of the main people active right now. But it's dcss.
Actually, if you're interested in a more chill approach to dcss than the usual online play communities, one of my biggest projects lately has been to get seeding to work as a player-oriented feature. It's worked the degree that there's recently an offline game of the month thing run by a prominent community member that is emphasizing the more relaxed end of things, e.g. games are all offline and there's no rules about replays. ("This is supposed to be a shared learning experience rather than a form of competition so feel free to have as many attempts as you'd like.") I think this will be great for the community and help alleviate some potential gatekeeping issues (which I wouldn't want to deny are present in the community in general).
posted by advil at 10:22 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Baba is You has had multiple patches since release explicitly to add better onboarding to certain puzzle ideas and to rearrange/remove/replace puzzles that weren't working well.
Good for them, but so long as playing it to the end remains prohibitively difficult for lots of people, I don't think it is entirely irrelevant to the discussion. It is renowned for its difficulty, as the Guardian article suggests. People who aren't good at that type of game and are unwilling or unable, for any of various reasons, to become so are not going to get much out of it. The easier parts are more extensive than those of Sekira perhaps, but as has been pointed out, difficulty is relative and of course for some people even those will be too much. Just because the difficulty isn't based on button-mashing and dexterity doesn't mean it won't be impossible to play for people with other types of limitations. There is no difficulty slider or easy mode. Instead of designing such a thing being difficult, impractical, contrary to the purity of their sacrosanct artistic vision, or unacceptable to the marketing department, it's just impossible. So perhaps, like Mount Everest, that game gets a pass? Does Sekiro deserve one as well? It is, in the end, a work of art and not a public square or an elevator. Why should it be a political choice, rather than the game developer's choice?
posted by sfenders at 10:25 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Good for them, but so long as playing it to the end remains prohibitively difficult for lots of people, I don't think it is entirely irrelevant to the discussion. It is renowned for its difficulty, as the Guardian article suggests. People who aren't good at that type of game and are unwilling or unable, for any of various reasons, to become so are not going to get much out of it. The easier parts are more extensive than those of Sekira perhaps, but as has been pointed out, difficulty is relative and of course for some people even those will be too much. Just because the difficulty isn't based on button-mashing and dexterity doesn't mean it won't be impossible to play for people with other types of limitations. There is no difficulty slider or easy mode. Instead of designing such a thing being difficult, impractical, contrary to the purity of their sacrosanct artistic vision, or unacceptable to the marketing department, it's just impossible. So perhaps, like Mount Everest, that game gets a pass? Does Sekiro deserve one as well? It is, in the end, a work of art and not a public square or an elevator. Why should it be a political choice, rather than the game developer's choice?
posted by sfenders at 10:25 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
And while we're at it, the push to say that this conversation wasn't about accessibility, but some people made it into one only reinforces the idea that this is about defining what gaming is about. Further, the fallback to"well, if they can't play how everyone else did, then they can just not play" is 100% classic gatekeeping, and the continued insistence that it isn't just makes the whole thing worse.
posted by zombieflanders at 10:27 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by zombieflanders at 10:27 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
The comparisons above to "easy modes" of challenging novels seem ridiculous to me. The actual comparison would be to large print books.
That seems like the core of the disagreement. The comparison to large print books is the one that seems ridiculous to me.
posted by sfenders at 10:32 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
That seems like the core of the disagreement. The comparison to large print books is the one that seems ridiculous to me.
posted by sfenders at 10:32 AM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
The last game I completed was Dishonoured 2 on Extra hard mode, going for the Ghost / No Kill twin achievements and boy let me tell you that was some HARD shit right there. But one of the things I like about that game (besides playing as Emily) is that it has very fine-grained control of just how hard you want it to be, and restarts/reloads are reasonably fast. So you can challenge yourself as much or as little as you want.
Having had enough of that shit for a while, I'm now playing No Man's Sky on creative mode, which means I have infinite resources. I could have chosen to play it with restrictions up to and including permadeath but that's not what I want out of NMS. I want to explore, hang out, and goof around.
I do think every game with an environment more complex than 8-bit tiles would benefit from a creative mode, where you can just wander around and explore and poke things and just enjoy the ambience and art assets. Hell, I spent dozens of hours just wandering around in Horizon Zero Dawn not pursuing any quests, just climbing shit and riding robot horses because it's such a great environment.
Anyway, anyone who says that an easy mode makes their hard game experience somehow lesser because they might be tempted to use it needs examine their motivations for gaming. Games are about challenging yourself. If you cheat or drop back to an easier game mode and are later disappointed in yourself because your gaming experience was ruined, that's on you, not the designer. Don't cheat. Don't choose easy mode. Don't read spoilers. Can't handle that? Level up your self-control, scrub.
- Signed, the person who died well over 200 times to the fucking taurus demon in DkS1 on the first playthrough because stubbornly refusing to use a god damn shield because shields are for cowards.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:34 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Having had enough of that shit for a while, I'm now playing No Man's Sky on creative mode, which means I have infinite resources. I could have chosen to play it with restrictions up to and including permadeath but that's not what I want out of NMS. I want to explore, hang out, and goof around.
I do think every game with an environment more complex than 8-bit tiles would benefit from a creative mode, where you can just wander around and explore and poke things and just enjoy the ambience and art assets. Hell, I spent dozens of hours just wandering around in Horizon Zero Dawn not pursuing any quests, just climbing shit and riding robot horses because it's such a great environment.
Anyway, anyone who says that an easy mode makes their hard game experience somehow lesser because they might be tempted to use it needs examine their motivations for gaming. Games are about challenging yourself. If you cheat or drop back to an easier game mode and are later disappointed in yourself because your gaming experience was ruined, that's on you, not the designer. Don't cheat. Don't choose easy mode. Don't read spoilers. Can't handle that? Level up your self-control, scrub.
- Signed, the person who died well over 200 times to the fucking taurus demon in DkS1 on the first playthrough because stubbornly refusing to use a god damn shield because shields are for cowards.
posted by seanmpuckett at 10:34 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
So perhaps, like Mount Everest, that game gets a pass? Does Sekiro deserve one as well?
Mount Everest isn't a game. Mount Everest is tough optional content to the "climbing" game which itself is a refinement of the "mobility" genre.
To not channel /r/outside too much, Mount Everest is not equivalent to playing "a game," but equivalent to pursuing the high scores or completing an optional challenge mode like "fists-only, played with Guitar Hero controller."
Achievements and community challenges exist to give additional challenge to folks. Speedrunners don't need extra lives in games, but the existence of extra lives doesn't hurt the speedrunning community.
Similarly, accessibility options don't hurt a game. Most people will play it on the default difficulty, and discuss the game as initially presented.
posted by explosion at 10:44 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Mount Everest isn't a game. Mount Everest is tough optional content to the "climbing" game which itself is a refinement of the "mobility" genre.
To not channel /r/outside too much, Mount Everest is not equivalent to playing "a game," but equivalent to pursuing the high scores or completing an optional challenge mode like "fists-only, played with Guitar Hero controller."
Achievements and community challenges exist to give additional challenge to folks. Speedrunners don't need extra lives in games, but the existence of extra lives doesn't hurt the speedrunning community.
Similarly, accessibility options don't hurt a game. Most people will play it on the default difficulty, and discuss the game as initially presented.
posted by explosion at 10:44 AM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, on the other hand, is a game. If you were to take it, reverse engineer it, modify it in whatever way you like to make it more accessible, I agree it would not be in any way hurt by that. Its publisher might object. The game you come up as a result might be better, or worse; given I haven't played and I don't know how good you are at game design, I can't really say.
posted by sfenders at 11:02 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by sfenders at 11:02 AM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
New players might also be unclear about whether autosaves are part of the intended experience.
So, as I mentioned above, Rimworld effectively has permadeath v. no-permadeath options. Are new players confused? I doubt it. Why? BECAUSE WHEN YOU MAKE THE CHOICE, THE PROS AND CONS ARE SPELLED OUT FOR YOU RIGHT THERE ON THE SCREEN. (Indeed, the game is pitching you to choose permadeath.) If you are incapable as a designer of conveying that basic information to your audience, then you are a bad designer and blaming others for the consequences of your own incapacity.
It's harder to make pure puzzle games easier than games involving the senses and reflexes. That is not an excuse for not doing it for the latter.
posted by praemunire at 11:34 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
So, as I mentioned above, Rimworld effectively has permadeath v. no-permadeath options. Are new players confused? I doubt it. Why? BECAUSE WHEN YOU MAKE THE CHOICE, THE PROS AND CONS ARE SPELLED OUT FOR YOU RIGHT THERE ON THE SCREEN. (Indeed, the game is pitching you to choose permadeath.) If you are incapable as a designer of conveying that basic information to your audience, then you are a bad designer and blaming others for the consequences of your own incapacity.
It's harder to make pure puzzle games easier than games involving the senses and reflexes. That is not an excuse for not doing it for the latter.
posted by praemunire at 11:34 AM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
It's certainly not "impossible" to make Baba is You easier or accessible to more players without changing the puzzles. Add the ability to skip any individual level if you're really stuck on one puzzle. Add some sort of optional hints mode (there are lots of ways to do hints, some easier to implement than others). The developer is a smart person, I bet he could come up with more ideas.
But even if it can't be made more accessible that's not really an excuse for other games that can. Also, just to be clear, cause I feel like there's some confusion on this point, I don't think Sekiro is a bad game for not having these options. I don't think it shouldn't exist. I think it's a great game, but I believe it could be even better. Wanting it to be better isn't meant as some sort of attack.
posted by umrain at 11:51 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
But even if it can't be made more accessible that's not really an excuse for other games that can. Also, just to be clear, cause I feel like there's some confusion on this point, I don't think Sekiro is a bad game for not having these options. I don't think it shouldn't exist. I think it's a great game, but I believe it could be even better. Wanting it to be better isn't meant as some sort of attack.
posted by umrain at 11:51 AM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Why should it be a political choice, rather than the game developer's choice
the fact that you see making games accessible for disabled people as a “political choice” really says everything there is to say about this debate.
posted by JimBennett at 2:05 PM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
the fact that you see making games accessible for disabled people as a “political choice” really says everything there is to say about this debate.
posted by JimBennett at 2:05 PM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
A comment above made me think of Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect. Wright was short, and he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about it. Sometimes he would be commissioned to build a house where one of the owners was 6 feet tall, and that owner would say "I love it, but can you raise the ceiling a little bit so I don't hit my head?" and Wright would say, "No, that would compromise my artistic vision." He was open with his students that he considered HIS OWN height the model of the human scale and he would only build to accommodate his own height; he considered other people's heights objectively wrong. When tall friends came to visit Fallingwater, he would sometimes demand they sit down because they were wrecking the aesthetic effect of the building by being too tall for it.
I mean, it's ridiculous! He was a ridiculous man! And kind-of a jerk! But one of the reasons we can appreciate him as a great artist is that he didn't build that many buildings and most of us don't have to live in them. If every building were built to his specifications, people would rightly be pretty enraged that he was excluding a huge portion of humanity from existing comfortably in the world.
Part of people's frustrations with video games is that so, so many of them are Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, designed to exclude when they don't need to. Sure, not every game has to be accessible for every person, but when you say that, you're not in a city where there are two or three Frank Lloyd Wright houses, and people who don't like them have thousands upon thousands of other choices. But way too often, video games are a city where 95% of the houses are Frank Lloyd Wright houses, where people who are taller than 5'8" walk around banging their heads constantly, and get told, "But accommodating you would compromise my artistic vision! Not every house has to be for every person! Go live in a different house!" TECHNICALLY TRUE STATEMENTS! That in a city with 2 or 3 Frank Lloyd Wright houses would be fair to say. But in a city that's 95% FLW, it's obnoxious and obtuse and completely missing the point. "Go play a different video game! Not all games are for all people!" I mean, okay! But the video game industry, at least for the "big" titles, the "important" games, makes it pretty clear that NONE of their games are for me or people like me and if I happen to be able to play, that's really an afterthought or a happy accident.
Video games are way, way too often designed by designers who say "I am the human scale, I am the normal, I am the ideal, anyone who differs from me is abnormal, defective, aberrant," and who get righteously indignant when people question them declaring themselves the standard of "normal" and everyone not exactly like them outside normal. And it's easy to see this play out over many different debates in video games -- female player characters and non-white player characters jump to mind first. But AAA video games as an industry primarily design for able-bodied men in their teens and 20s, treat that as the "normal," and everyone outside that as aberrant.
People wouldn't be so irate at this particular game if it weren't for the hundreds and hundreds of games that also insist to the majority of us that we are abnormal, we are outsiders, we are aberrations in the world of gaming. If the video game industry wants to sometimes follow an artistic vision that excludes a bunch of people without suffering intense criticism for it, then maybe don't have the entire industry constantly center a 25-year-old able-bodied man as the human normal that implicitly excludes the majority of gamers. It's understandable that people get salty when the constant exclusion becomes a desirable game mechanic and a badge of success. It's crappy.
I don't have any particular desire to play this particular game, but I definitely understand why people are upset about it, because it turns the exclusionary attitudes of SO SO many games into a deliberate mechanic. If it were the only game like that, people might shrug. But it's the AAA video game version of "saying the quiet part loud." And it's really unfortunate that the industry is dominated by a group of Frank Lloyd Wrights who insist they are the measure of normalcy, and who are so wedded to that vision of themselves as the typical human that they don't hear how ridiculous they sound when they tell someone different from them to sit down and stop wrecking the aesthetic appeal of the room by being too tall.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:26 PM on April 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
I mean, it's ridiculous! He was a ridiculous man! And kind-of a jerk! But one of the reasons we can appreciate him as a great artist is that he didn't build that many buildings and most of us don't have to live in them. If every building were built to his specifications, people would rightly be pretty enraged that he was excluding a huge portion of humanity from existing comfortably in the world.
Part of people's frustrations with video games is that so, so many of them are Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, designed to exclude when they don't need to. Sure, not every game has to be accessible for every person, but when you say that, you're not in a city where there are two or three Frank Lloyd Wright houses, and people who don't like them have thousands upon thousands of other choices. But way too often, video games are a city where 95% of the houses are Frank Lloyd Wright houses, where people who are taller than 5'8" walk around banging their heads constantly, and get told, "But accommodating you would compromise my artistic vision! Not every house has to be for every person! Go live in a different house!" TECHNICALLY TRUE STATEMENTS! That in a city with 2 or 3 Frank Lloyd Wright houses would be fair to say. But in a city that's 95% FLW, it's obnoxious and obtuse and completely missing the point. "Go play a different video game! Not all games are for all people!" I mean, okay! But the video game industry, at least for the "big" titles, the "important" games, makes it pretty clear that NONE of their games are for me or people like me and if I happen to be able to play, that's really an afterthought or a happy accident.
Video games are way, way too often designed by designers who say "I am the human scale, I am the normal, I am the ideal, anyone who differs from me is abnormal, defective, aberrant," and who get righteously indignant when people question them declaring themselves the standard of "normal" and everyone not exactly like them outside normal. And it's easy to see this play out over many different debates in video games -- female player characters and non-white player characters jump to mind first. But AAA video games as an industry primarily design for able-bodied men in their teens and 20s, treat that as the "normal," and everyone outside that as aberrant.
People wouldn't be so irate at this particular game if it weren't for the hundreds and hundreds of games that also insist to the majority of us that we are abnormal, we are outsiders, we are aberrations in the world of gaming. If the video game industry wants to sometimes follow an artistic vision that excludes a bunch of people without suffering intense criticism for it, then maybe don't have the entire industry constantly center a 25-year-old able-bodied man as the human normal that implicitly excludes the majority of gamers. It's understandable that people get salty when the constant exclusion becomes a desirable game mechanic and a badge of success. It's crappy.
I don't have any particular desire to play this particular game, but I definitely understand why people are upset about it, because it turns the exclusionary attitudes of SO SO many games into a deliberate mechanic. If it were the only game like that, people might shrug. But it's the AAA video game version of "saying the quiet part loud." And it's really unfortunate that the industry is dominated by a group of Frank Lloyd Wrights who insist they are the measure of normalcy, and who are so wedded to that vision of themselves as the typical human that they don't hear how ridiculous they sound when they tell someone different from them to sit down and stop wrecking the aesthetic appeal of the room by being too tall.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:26 PM on April 10, 2019 [13 favorites]
It is, in the end, a work of art and not a public square or an elevator. Why should it be a political choice, rather than the game developer's choice?
As was said earlier, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. Being art doesn't mean something is then free criticism or discussion of how it fits with society as a whole. Actually, just the opposite, if you want to claim something is art, then you better be prepared for it to be analyzed like art, and that means that people are going to talk about what it includes and what it doesn't include. I mean, look, you said it yourself this is the developer's choice. That doesn't mean it's not also a political one. Even if the developer doesn't think about it as political, that lack of consideration is a reflection of how they view who their audience is, and the wider views of the artist's society as a whole. All of which is the kind of thing people who study, think about, and create art discuss as a way of engaging the art and shaping the future of that particular art form.
"It's art, it's the artists choice" is not a shield to keep people from discussing what the choice was, and what that means for their enjoyment of the art.
posted by Gygesringtone at 2:27 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
As was said earlier, art doesn't exist in a vacuum. Being art doesn't mean something is then free criticism or discussion of how it fits with society as a whole. Actually, just the opposite, if you want to claim something is art, then you better be prepared for it to be analyzed like art, and that means that people are going to talk about what it includes and what it doesn't include. I mean, look, you said it yourself this is the developer's choice. That doesn't mean it's not also a political one. Even if the developer doesn't think about it as political, that lack of consideration is a reflection of how they view who their audience is, and the wider views of the artist's society as a whole. All of which is the kind of thing people who study, think about, and create art discuss as a way of engaging the art and shaping the future of that particular art form.
"It's art, it's the artists choice" is not a shield to keep people from discussing what the choice was, and what that means for their enjoyment of the art.
posted by Gygesringtone at 2:27 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Video games are way, way too often designed by designers who say "I am the human scale, I am the normal, I am the ideal, anyone who differs from me is abnormal, defective, aberrant," and who get righteously indignant when people question them declaring themselves the standard of "normal" and everyone not exactly like them outside normal.
Perhaps more true than you think:
Perhaps more true than you think:
One of From Software's approval standard is that "Miyazaki can play through the game by himself." Which means that Sekiro is actually at a difficulty level that Miyazaki can beat it. After all, Miyazaki is not so good at action game himself.posted by pwnguin at 3:19 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
The comparisons above to "easy modes" of challenging novels seem ridiculous to me. The actual comparison would be to large print books.
The trouble is, most people see the comparison as being to Reader's Digest versions. It's a wrong comparison, but peeple gonna peep.
I've work on gummint websites for near a couple of decades, where we have a legal requirement to provide accessible services, and it is still an major uphill battle to get projects to take accessibility as more than an afterthought. I've pushed that barrow pretty hard, and can tell (albeit second hand) a bunch of stories about what a difference what we've done has made for people's quality of life, but that's with the (admittedly abstract) threat of legal consequences to back us up . I can only imagine how tricky it would be to get a foreign company like From take notice.
At this point From's identity is tied up in this particular type of game. There are harder games, there are easier games with harder 'nightmare' modes, there are equivalent difficulty games with accessibility options, but they are not From games, with the organically grown history of releasing 'famously' difficult games, and they don't warrant the kind of column inches that a new From release does.
Obviously, I don't know what the internal discussions at From would be like on the topic. But I would imagine they are too scared of destroying their brand identity as 'famously difficult' that gives them all this wonderful free publicity to countenance a move in the direction of greater accessibility. The fact that they seem to have doubled down on difficulty, removing co-op and over-levelling would seem to support this assessment. And this is a great shame, because thematically, celebrating the tenacious spirit of those who bash their heads against insurmountable obstacles until they become surmountable would seem to be a great fit for them.
From likely sees their current approach as a strength. But this is capitalism, so claims about remaining true to artistic vision could equally be plain fear about leaving the niche they currently dominate. And anyone who has ever played a soulsborne game knows the stagnation that happens when fear prevents forward movement. Short of a campaign aimed at From directly, I doubt there will be much traction derived from the Internet message boards of the English speaking world toward changing things at From, but titles like the recent Tomb Raider are giving me hope for the future in general. Niches shrink, bigger audiences are better for companies, so at this point From is holding out against the tide ...hopefully it is not sustainable.
Full disclosure: I have 'finished' all the Dark Souls games and I totally savescummed my way through most of it once I figured out how, by playing offline and writing scripts to back up save files. This didn't make any bosses any easier, but saved me a lot of time killing the same enemies repeatedly, because I am an old and have a life - so I fully admit to playing on my own version of 'easy mode'. But I know what it means to have spent days fighting one particular boss, to edge closer and closer toward victory, and experience the zen-like calm of finally doing not dying. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing in that process that would be lost by adding other ways to play the game. If people desperately want it to be known that they completed the game how Miyazaki intended - add an achievement for doing so. I hear cheevos are big with the kidz.
posted by Sparx at 3:57 PM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
The trouble is, most people see the comparison as being to Reader's Digest versions. It's a wrong comparison, but peeple gonna peep.
I've work on gummint websites for near a couple of decades, where we have a legal requirement to provide accessible services, and it is still an major uphill battle to get projects to take accessibility as more than an afterthought. I've pushed that barrow pretty hard, and can tell (albeit second hand) a bunch of stories about what a difference what we've done has made for people's quality of life, but that's with the (admittedly abstract) threat of legal consequences to back us up . I can only imagine how tricky it would be to get a foreign company like From take notice.
At this point From's identity is tied up in this particular type of game. There are harder games, there are easier games with harder 'nightmare' modes, there are equivalent difficulty games with accessibility options, but they are not From games, with the organically grown history of releasing 'famously' difficult games, and they don't warrant the kind of column inches that a new From release does.
Obviously, I don't know what the internal discussions at From would be like on the topic. But I would imagine they are too scared of destroying their brand identity as 'famously difficult' that gives them all this wonderful free publicity to countenance a move in the direction of greater accessibility. The fact that they seem to have doubled down on difficulty, removing co-op and over-levelling would seem to support this assessment. And this is a great shame, because thematically, celebrating the tenacious spirit of those who bash their heads against insurmountable obstacles until they become surmountable would seem to be a great fit for them.
From likely sees their current approach as a strength. But this is capitalism, so claims about remaining true to artistic vision could equally be plain fear about leaving the niche they currently dominate. And anyone who has ever played a soulsborne game knows the stagnation that happens when fear prevents forward movement. Short of a campaign aimed at From directly, I doubt there will be much traction derived from the Internet message boards of the English speaking world toward changing things at From, but titles like the recent Tomb Raider are giving me hope for the future in general. Niches shrink, bigger audiences are better for companies, so at this point From is holding out against the tide ...hopefully it is not sustainable.
Full disclosure: I have 'finished' all the Dark Souls games and I totally savescummed my way through most of it once I figured out how, by playing offline and writing scripts to back up save files. This didn't make any bosses any easier, but saved me a lot of time killing the same enemies repeatedly, because I am an old and have a life - so I fully admit to playing on my own version of 'easy mode'. But I know what it means to have spent days fighting one particular boss, to edge closer and closer toward victory, and experience the zen-like calm of finally doing not dying. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing in that process that would be lost by adding other ways to play the game. If people desperately want it to be known that they completed the game how Miyazaki intended - add an achievement for doing so. I hear cheevos are big with the kidz.
posted by Sparx at 3:57 PM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
It's understandable that people get salty when the constant exclusion becomes a desirable game mechanic and a badge of success. It's crappy.
This discussion has been a garbled mess because so many participants on both sides have been conflating accessibility with adjustable difficulty.
Most AAA games feature adjustable difficulty. Sekiro, apparently, does not. The Dark Souls games did not. 95% of games are not like From Software games; From Software games are the Frank Lloyd Wrightish outliers.
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:11 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
This discussion has been a garbled mess because so many participants on both sides have been conflating accessibility with adjustable difficulty.
Most AAA games feature adjustable difficulty. Sekiro, apparently, does not. The Dark Souls games did not. 95% of games are not like From Software games; From Software games are the Frank Lloyd Wrightish outliers.
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:11 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Put another way, I think static and consistent enemy behavior, enemy placement, item placement, and damage levels are a defining and necessary characteristic of Souls games. Does accessibility require that these specific things be adjustable?
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:14 PM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:14 PM on April 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
Aww don't be so hard on Sekiro. It's not as bad as a Frank Lloyd Wright building.
posted by umrain at 4:16 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by umrain at 4:16 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
NTATEF, I've seen adjustable speed mentioned a few times, and I don't think that would have broken Dark Souls from a gameplay perspective, but since Dark Souls is an online multiplayer game that would not have been possible to implement. I don't know if that's the case with Sekiro.
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:17 PM on April 10, 2019
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:17 PM on April 10, 2019
but since Dark Souls is an online multiplayer game that would not have been possible to implement
It is completely possible to play DS entirely offline, a connection is not a necessary element (maybe for setup...perhaps). From even provides offline NPCs to summon for boss battles (though that toughens up the bosses a little). You could limit connections to people with the same game settings, as they are currently limited via soul levels and wotnot. Figuring how exactly that would work wouldn't be trivial, but its probably not impossible.
posted by Sparx at 4:26 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
It is completely possible to play DS entirely offline, a connection is not a necessary element (maybe for setup...perhaps). From even provides offline NPCs to summon for boss battles (though that toughens up the bosses a little). You could limit connections to people with the same game settings, as they are currently limited via soul levels and wotnot. Figuring how exactly that would work wouldn't be trivial, but its probably not impossible.
posted by Sparx at 4:26 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Not all games are for all people!" I mean, okay! But the video game industry, at least for the "big" titles, the "important" games, makes it pretty clear that NONE of their games are for me or people like me and if I happen to be able to play, that's really an afterthought or a happy accident.
I actually had the complete opposite impression of the games industry - by and large 90% of games that exist today, especially AAA titles, are deliberately made easy to appeal to the largest audience possible, and have multiple difficulty settings, and the way things are going, it will soon get to 95% or even 100% with or without any intervention by anyone.
Just look at World of Warcraft, the original Vanilla version, only 2% of players even managed to set foot in Naxxaramas in early 2006 to have a look around, and only 0.05%, around 60 guilds, managed to see the ending. My guild was the 2nd most successful guild on the server and we got about halfway through, and I'm pretty sure no guild on our server managed to complete it. Progressing through MC, BWL, ZG, AQ and Naxx kept us occupied and playing for 2-3 years.
Contrast this to when they "remade" Naxxaramas in late 2008 with the launch of WOTLK. Totally different philosophy - they created an easy mode where even casual players could finish the entire dungeon within about 1-2 weeks of trying. We had a far lower skilled and casual group this time and we still finished it within a month of launch then unsubscribed and quit and never played WoW again. Coincidentally... WoW subscriber numbers peaked at this point at around 12 mil, then it's been downhill ever since.
From Software's success is precisely due to its rarity, one of the few games that is bucking the trend towards making things easier and easier. It makes them a lightning rod for criticism, of course. If all games were hard, Sekiro wouldn't really be exceptional.
Best selling PC games in 2018 -
Red Dead Redemption 2 - No difficulty setting, but allows you to skip the checkpoint if you failed 3 times to continue the story
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 - Yes contains difficulty settings
NBA 2K19 - Yes contains difficulty settings
Madden NFL 19 - Yes contains difficulty settings
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Yes contains difficulty settings
Marvel’s Spider-Man - Yes contains difficulty settings
Far Cry 5 - Yes contains difficulty settings
God of War 2018 - Yes contains difficulty settings
Monster Hunter: World - No difficulty settings, but you can call 3 allies to help you defeat any encounter, you could even just stand around while they defeat it for you
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey - Yes contains difficulty settings
The list goes on but it's more of the same.
posted by xdvesper at 5:39 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I actually had the complete opposite impression of the games industry - by and large 90% of games that exist today, especially AAA titles, are deliberately made easy to appeal to the largest audience possible, and have multiple difficulty settings, and the way things are going, it will soon get to 95% or even 100% with or without any intervention by anyone.
Just look at World of Warcraft, the original Vanilla version, only 2% of players even managed to set foot in Naxxaramas in early 2006 to have a look around, and only 0.05%, around 60 guilds, managed to see the ending. My guild was the 2nd most successful guild on the server and we got about halfway through, and I'm pretty sure no guild on our server managed to complete it. Progressing through MC, BWL, ZG, AQ and Naxx kept us occupied and playing for 2-3 years.
Contrast this to when they "remade" Naxxaramas in late 2008 with the launch of WOTLK. Totally different philosophy - they created an easy mode where even casual players could finish the entire dungeon within about 1-2 weeks of trying. We had a far lower skilled and casual group this time and we still finished it within a month of launch then unsubscribed and quit and never played WoW again. Coincidentally... WoW subscriber numbers peaked at this point at around 12 mil, then it's been downhill ever since.
From Software's success is precisely due to its rarity, one of the few games that is bucking the trend towards making things easier and easier. It makes them a lightning rod for criticism, of course. If all games were hard, Sekiro wouldn't really be exceptional.
Best selling PC games in 2018 -
Red Dead Redemption 2 - No difficulty setting, but allows you to skip the checkpoint if you failed 3 times to continue the story
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 - Yes contains difficulty settings
NBA 2K19 - Yes contains difficulty settings
Madden NFL 19 - Yes contains difficulty settings
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Yes contains difficulty settings
Marvel’s Spider-Man - Yes contains difficulty settings
Far Cry 5 - Yes contains difficulty settings
God of War 2018 - Yes contains difficulty settings
Monster Hunter: World - No difficulty settings, but you can call 3 allies to help you defeat any encounter, you could even just stand around while they defeat it for you
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey - Yes contains difficulty settings
The list goes on but it's more of the same.
posted by xdvesper at 5:39 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
And how many of those have accessibility options?
posted by flatluigi at 5:56 PM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by flatluigi at 5:56 PM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
I haven't played Sekiro yet, I was curious about it but I heard it was super hard and didn't want to spend 60 bux and not be able to take more than two steps into it. I started playing Dark Souls 3 last week to get a taste for what From does and then didn't like it (It's fast in a way that doesn't feel fluid to me and the enemy animations are kind of unreadable flailing to me.) I did find I like Dark Souls 2 a lot though. (I've had keys for a while but they didn't run well on Linux in the past so were not accessible to me.)
It's impossible for everything to be accessible to everyone. I don't just mean accessible to those with different abilities I mean in terms of general human variance.
I can't play spooky games. I mean, I suppose I could physically, but every next step I'm thinking "here it is, the terrible thing is going to happen, I'm going to take one more step and it's going to happen, I'm going to turn around and it's going to happen" and eventually I have to turn it off. I hate spooky games. Do I wish spooky games were abolished? No, because other people enjoy them and I think that's fine for them. Do I want every spooky game to have a No Spook Mode? No, a lot of these spooky games are all spook, all atmosphere, the spook is the game, total spookfests. Take that away and there's nothing left, why would I even want to play some gutted mode? If anything it might even be more spooky if they turn the music off, turn the lights on, and send all the monsters home leaving me to wander through an abandoned spookfest.
In this thread, I see some people in the name of "inclusion" basically calling for anything specific to be destroyed and homogenized so that everyone can do some version of the same thing.
There's like ten thousand games being released every minute.. the best any of us can hope for that is that enough of them to fill our free time are enjoyable to us.
Exclusion isn't even inherently a bad thing! It's a neutral concept. Everything is exclusive to some subset of everyone. (Example: You can't post on this site if you don't have $5 and most participants here seem to think that that form of exclusion preserves the quality of the site.) It's okay for people to have niches and specific interests. It's also okay for people to not want to change them in order to share them with you (as long as they are not hostile or harmful towards you and you are also respectful to them). I don't feel aggrieved that white people don't invite me to their White People Parties (really, if you're having a White People Party please don't invite me), I definitely don't invite them to my Black People Parties.
Is it really gatekeeping to acknowledge that there is a boundary between what you like and what you don't? Literally anyone can play any game, it just might be really boring if they can't perceive or interact with it at all.
Play a game you like and enjoy yourself. Ask for more games you enjoy without condemning those you don't. I don't think a conversation about accessibility and difficulty can usefully feature too much focus on specific games. At its core are Sekiro and its ilk not third person melee action games? By my count at least 120 hours of third person melee gameplay that offers a variety of difficulty and accessibility settings has been mentioned in this thread alone. If there's a hypothetical game called Button Mashathon 3000 and the gameplay is entirely mashing buttons while you can't or don't enjoy mashing buttons why would you want to play it without button mashing, what's left in it for you?
The idea that "content" (which I almost don't feel should even be used in the context of an interactive computer program like a game, it seems to imply the game itself is little more than a jumped up media player) and gameplay should be separated is also strange to me. I play, for example, a lot of atmospheric puzzle games and I think I might feel condescended to if the game let me breeze past the puzzles and then kept in all the 'Wow, you're so clever.' dialog and achievements. What would you even be doing at that point anyway? Looking at puzzles and moving on? (I think it's harder, but still interesting, to talk about this with regard to puzzle games because you have to admit that you can't figure something out and while people are comfortable saying "I'm over 35 and my hands don't move that fast anymore." having to say "Look, I'm not this clever, damn you!" is a little tougher.)
If a game is too hard for you though and you want to play it anyway.. you should just cheat.. and don't play games without difficulty settings that are on platforms where you can't cheat. I guess online play/achievements is why developers stopped implementing cheats.. but they need to bring that back. Good cheats are a great feature that give you officially sanctioned "easy modes" while still allowing a single default recommended experience for people who want to play it "as it was meant to be played". Software is fancier these days, there could be whole cheat menus.. in a sense that's what people are asking for but they don't want to call them cheats for some reason--I don't think cheats in a single player game need to be euphemized.
Personally, I enjoy a well crafted losing experience (I'm one of those losing is fun people. No jokes about accepting my lot in life, please.) I have never seen the end of XCOM 2, which I only play on Iron Man. I get attached to my people, I take pictures of them, I tell myself stories about them, I move them based on what I think their personalities are, and ultimately I get them killed and then try and remember what I did wrong. I have photo albums full of my people and I loved each and everyone of them and they paid the final price for my incompetence. It's so emotionally engaging and so sad. XCOM 2 is a tragedy. I still get misty when I think about how my unstoppable heroine who always swooped in when death was on the line and saved the day turned out to be very stoppable. XCOM 2, the way I play it, is a game about a team of amazing and talented Earthlings from all over the world who unite to save their planet and then are killed due to managerial incompetence.
I have a personal story of a game just completely denying me: I bought this game Butcher because I thought it looked really cool. Their tagline is "The Easiest Mode Is Hard" I made ZERO progress in this game. I could not get past the first room. I could not improve. I loved the aesthetic of the game (it reminds me of Teleglitch.. another really hard game) and even the kind of gameplay appealed to me--but for me it was just not humanly possible to play. This isn't one of those "and then I got good" stories. I did not get good, if anything I got worse. Eventually they came out with a free DLC called W.I.M.P (funny trailer) that adds an easy mode. I was amused and offended, I almost refunded the game, but ultimately I decided to let them keep the 10 bux because well.. they won, I don't think any game has ever exposed me as that rawly incapable and utterly lacking in the potential to improve at the VERY beginning since NES days. I can really empathize with anyone who has felt straight up locked out of a game. (No, I did not play WIMP mode and I have no plans to do so. They think they're funny, I think they're funny too, but they can also go fuck themselves, gently.)
Fun story: In my recent foray into Dark Souls 2, according to my stats, I have died on average once every 4 minutes and took around 50 tries to beat the second boss. I ultimately just got lucky and didn't even use any of the skills I was practicing. Then I accidentally beat the third boss on the first try, without even really understanding what was going on, after flatout running past all of the enemies leading up to him because I just couldn't defeat them. When I say accidentally, I mean that.. I pushed him--with 95% of his health remaining--off a ledge that I didn't even know was there and only by luck didn't walk off of myself. I only made it to the fourth boss by depopulating every enemy leading up to him through repeated grinding. Tried that boss a few times and almost had him once then summoned help and my random partner helped me breeze through it. I'm sort of wondering if I can bumble all the way through this game through failure, audacity, dumb luck, and relying on the kindness of strangers.
posted by yonega at 6:03 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
It's impossible for everything to be accessible to everyone. I don't just mean accessible to those with different abilities I mean in terms of general human variance.
I can't play spooky games. I mean, I suppose I could physically, but every next step I'm thinking "here it is, the terrible thing is going to happen, I'm going to take one more step and it's going to happen, I'm going to turn around and it's going to happen" and eventually I have to turn it off. I hate spooky games. Do I wish spooky games were abolished? No, because other people enjoy them and I think that's fine for them. Do I want every spooky game to have a No Spook Mode? No, a lot of these spooky games are all spook, all atmosphere, the spook is the game, total spookfests. Take that away and there's nothing left, why would I even want to play some gutted mode? If anything it might even be more spooky if they turn the music off, turn the lights on, and send all the monsters home leaving me to wander through an abandoned spookfest.
In this thread, I see some people in the name of "inclusion" basically calling for anything specific to be destroyed and homogenized so that everyone can do some version of the same thing.
There's like ten thousand games being released every minute.. the best any of us can hope for that is that enough of them to fill our free time are enjoyable to us.
Exclusion isn't even inherently a bad thing! It's a neutral concept. Everything is exclusive to some subset of everyone. (Example: You can't post on this site if you don't have $5 and most participants here seem to think that that form of exclusion preserves the quality of the site.) It's okay for people to have niches and specific interests. It's also okay for people to not want to change them in order to share them with you (as long as they are not hostile or harmful towards you and you are also respectful to them). I don't feel aggrieved that white people don't invite me to their White People Parties (really, if you're having a White People Party please don't invite me), I definitely don't invite them to my Black People Parties.
Is it really gatekeeping to acknowledge that there is a boundary between what you like and what you don't? Literally anyone can play any game, it just might be really boring if they can't perceive or interact with it at all.
Play a game you like and enjoy yourself. Ask for more games you enjoy without condemning those you don't. I don't think a conversation about accessibility and difficulty can usefully feature too much focus on specific games. At its core are Sekiro and its ilk not third person melee action games? By my count at least 120 hours of third person melee gameplay that offers a variety of difficulty and accessibility settings has been mentioned in this thread alone. If there's a hypothetical game called Button Mashathon 3000 and the gameplay is entirely mashing buttons while you can't or don't enjoy mashing buttons why would you want to play it without button mashing, what's left in it for you?
The idea that "content" (which I almost don't feel should even be used in the context of an interactive computer program like a game, it seems to imply the game itself is little more than a jumped up media player) and gameplay should be separated is also strange to me. I play, for example, a lot of atmospheric puzzle games and I think I might feel condescended to if the game let me breeze past the puzzles and then kept in all the 'Wow, you're so clever.' dialog and achievements. What would you even be doing at that point anyway? Looking at puzzles and moving on? (I think it's harder, but still interesting, to talk about this with regard to puzzle games because you have to admit that you can't figure something out and while people are comfortable saying "I'm over 35 and my hands don't move that fast anymore." having to say "Look, I'm not this clever, damn you!" is a little tougher.)
If a game is too hard for you though and you want to play it anyway.. you should just cheat.. and don't play games without difficulty settings that are on platforms where you can't cheat. I guess online play/achievements is why developers stopped implementing cheats.. but they need to bring that back. Good cheats are a great feature that give you officially sanctioned "easy modes" while still allowing a single default recommended experience for people who want to play it "as it was meant to be played". Software is fancier these days, there could be whole cheat menus.. in a sense that's what people are asking for but they don't want to call them cheats for some reason--I don't think cheats in a single player game need to be euphemized.
Personally, I enjoy a well crafted losing experience (I'm one of those losing is fun people. No jokes about accepting my lot in life, please.) I have never seen the end of XCOM 2, which I only play on Iron Man. I get attached to my people, I take pictures of them, I tell myself stories about them, I move them based on what I think their personalities are, and ultimately I get them killed and then try and remember what I did wrong. I have photo albums full of my people and I loved each and everyone of them and they paid the final price for my incompetence. It's so emotionally engaging and so sad. XCOM 2 is a tragedy. I still get misty when I think about how my unstoppable heroine who always swooped in when death was on the line and saved the day turned out to be very stoppable. XCOM 2, the way I play it, is a game about a team of amazing and talented Earthlings from all over the world who unite to save their planet and then are killed due to managerial incompetence.
I have a personal story of a game just completely denying me: I bought this game Butcher because I thought it looked really cool. Their tagline is "The Easiest Mode Is Hard" I made ZERO progress in this game. I could not get past the first room. I could not improve. I loved the aesthetic of the game (it reminds me of Teleglitch.. another really hard game) and even the kind of gameplay appealed to me--but for me it was just not humanly possible to play. This isn't one of those "and then I got good" stories. I did not get good, if anything I got worse. Eventually they came out with a free DLC called W.I.M.P (funny trailer) that adds an easy mode. I was amused and offended, I almost refunded the game, but ultimately I decided to let them keep the 10 bux because well.. they won, I don't think any game has ever exposed me as that rawly incapable and utterly lacking in the potential to improve at the VERY beginning since NES days. I can really empathize with anyone who has felt straight up locked out of a game. (No, I did not play WIMP mode and I have no plans to do so. They think they're funny, I think they're funny too, but they can also go fuck themselves, gently.)
Fun story: In my recent foray into Dark Souls 2, according to my stats, I have died on average once every 4 minutes and took around 50 tries to beat the second boss. I ultimately just got lucky and didn't even use any of the skills I was practicing. Then I accidentally beat the third boss on the first try, without even really understanding what was going on, after flatout running past all of the enemies leading up to him because I just couldn't defeat them. When I say accidentally, I mean that.. I pushed him--with 95% of his health remaining--off a ledge that I didn't even know was there and only by luck didn't walk off of myself. I only made it to the fourth boss by depopulating every enemy leading up to him through repeated grinding. Tried that boss a few times and almost had him once then summoned help and my random partner helped me breeze through it. I'm sort of wondering if I can bumble all the way through this game through failure, audacity, dumb luck, and relying on the kindness of strangers.
posted by yonega at 6:03 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I want to address two specific lines, yonega:
- In this thread, I see some people in the name of "inclusion" basically calling for anything specific to be destroyed and homogenized so that everyone can do some version of the same thing.
There are absolutely zero people here wanting that. The addition of options in no way removes anything from people who can and want to play on the default modes and nobody at all even once is suggesting that all games should be homogenized in that way.
- Literally anyone can play any game
The articles above and this thread is full of stories of people who cannot play certain games because they aren't physically able to do so. It feels like you're yet another person swinging into this conversation assuming you know what people are talking about and condemning people for their perceived laziness.
posted by flatluigi at 6:17 PM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
- In this thread, I see some people in the name of "inclusion" basically calling for anything specific to be destroyed and homogenized so that everyone can do some version of the same thing.
There are absolutely zero people here wanting that. The addition of options in no way removes anything from people who can and want to play on the default modes and nobody at all even once is suggesting that all games should be homogenized in that way.
- Literally anyone can play any game
The articles above and this thread is full of stories of people who cannot play certain games because they aren't physically able to do so. It feels like you're yet another person swinging into this conversation assuming you know what people are talking about and condemning people for their perceived laziness.
posted by flatluigi at 6:17 PM on April 10, 2019 [6 favorites]
> Niches shrink, bigger audiences are better for companies, so at this point From is holding out against the tide ...hopefully it is not sustainable.
Absolutely zero?
> The articles above and this thread is full of stories of people who cannot play certain games because they aren't physically able to do so. It feels like you're yet another person swinging into this conversation assuming you know what people are talking about and condemning people for their perceived laziness.
You're really going to cherry pick only the first half of my sentence?
posted by yonega at 6:43 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Absolutely zero?
> The articles above and this thread is full of stories of people who cannot play certain games because they aren't physically able to do so. It feels like you're yet another person swinging into this conversation assuming you know what people are talking about and condemning people for their perceived laziness.
You're really going to cherry pick only the first half of my sentence?
posted by yonega at 6:43 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Sparkx's post that you quote is about 'not having accessibility options' not being sustainable and explicitly says they're talking about adding other ways to play the game. It does not say there shouldn't be a hard, default mode. Try again.
To your other statement, I cut for length as the first quote I included expressed the same sentiment. Your full quote in that line is: "Is it really gatekeeping to acknowledge that there is a boundary between what you like and what you don't? Literally anyone can play any game, it just might be really boring if they can't perceive or interact with it at all."
You're still framing it as people 'not liking' a game instead of people not being able to play a game, which is untrue. People in this thread have expressed repeatedly that they want to play games to enjoy what the games have, but a lack of accessibility options keeps them from being able to do so. They would like the game to have said options so that they can play the game period, not to make it a cakewalk; it's going to be hard for them even with the options on and the options just enable them to play it in the first place.
posted by flatluigi at 7:00 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
To your other statement, I cut for length as the first quote I included expressed the same sentiment. Your full quote in that line is: "Is it really gatekeeping to acknowledge that there is a boundary between what you like and what you don't? Literally anyone can play any game, it just might be really boring if they can't perceive or interact with it at all."
You're still framing it as people 'not liking' a game instead of people not being able to play a game, which is untrue. People in this thread have expressed repeatedly that they want to play games to enjoy what the games have, but a lack of accessibility options keeps them from being able to do so. They would like the game to have said options so that they can play the game period, not to make it a cakewalk; it's going to be hard for them even with the options on and the options just enable them to play it in the first place.
posted by flatluigi at 7:00 PM on April 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
I don't think the second half of that sentence helps anything if we're talking about accessibility as in inclusive design, though. It's not false, but it's also not exactly a stirring defense. Like, literally anyone can watch any film they like too, but if it's a film with no captioning content viewers with hearing disabilities will for sure be left out in the cold, and while you can say "just watch something else" what has happened in practice is folks industry-wide have gotten better over time at providing, and providing tools to support, captioning content (among other accessibility-minded alternate content) for media in general. That's definitely been a good thing.
I don't think that comes down to From Software or anyone else having a moral mandate to be flexible about their design philosophy, and I think their games are at least interesting as an example of something that is difficult the way it is in a purposeful rather than lazy or spiteful fashion. That said, I also think they could make that flexibility happen if they chose to, and that what they are making is a choice not to, and people who love video games and love the concept of these games but are left out in the cold by that decision are justified in having a critical reaction to that.
posted by cortex at 7:02 PM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
I don't think that comes down to From Software or anyone else having a moral mandate to be flexible about their design philosophy, and I think their games are at least interesting as an example of something that is difficult the way it is in a purposeful rather than lazy or spiteful fashion. That said, I also think they could make that flexibility happen if they chose to, and that what they are making is a choice not to, and people who love video games and love the concept of these games but are left out in the cold by that decision are justified in having a critical reaction to that.
posted by cortex at 7:02 PM on April 10, 2019 [8 favorites]
Most AAA games feature adjustable difficulty. Sekiro, apparently, does not. The Dark Souls games did not.
The Dark Souls games did. It wasn't labeled as such, but character creation and ally summoning were the game's difficulty sliders.
posted by explosion at 8:40 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
The Dark Souls games did. It wasn't labeled as such, but character creation and ally summoning were the game's difficulty sliders.
posted by explosion at 8:40 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
I've been saying for years that vastly more video games need an "I have a job" mode that takes out most difficulty and all grinding for levels. I beat Dark Souls 1 and I got the highest difficulty/no kills/saved the pilot achievements in Deus Ex 3 but, like, some days I've got other shit to do besides watch that pilot explode for three hours because I knocked out the cyborg soldiers in the wrong order.
posted by fomhar at 10:07 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by fomhar at 10:07 PM on April 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
It wasn't labeled as such, but character creation and ally summoning were the game's difficulty sliders.
More like difficulty wobblers. Character stats from creation can be built up any way desired (and reset later) so while your initial class may make the starting point require lightly different playstyles, it all evens out not much further down the line. Summoning, even other PCs, creates bosses with greater HPs, and that's not going to help you one bit if your jolly cooperator get wiped on the first attack. In fact it will make things harder.
posted by Sparx at 10:10 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
More like difficulty wobblers. Character stats from creation can be built up any way desired (and reset later) so while your initial class may make the starting point require lightly different playstyles, it all evens out not much further down the line. Summoning, even other PCs, creates bosses with greater HPs, and that's not going to help you one bit if your jolly cooperator get wiped on the first attack. In fact it will make things harder.
posted by Sparx at 10:10 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Another thought- People are annoyed about asking for a difficulty slider in Dark Souls/From games in particular because once you get rid of the difficulty there's nothing left. There's some nice looking scenery, which you can just set your desktop wallpaper to a google image search for "big castle" and pretty much get there. There's a story that the game actively hides from you at all costs, and you can just not buy the game and browse the wiki, which is how 99% of people who bought and played the game figure out what the fuck is actually going on anyway, and what's actually going on is you are the weakest possible metaphor for repeatedly failing and then succeeding at something hard. And then there's being killed all the time until you master complicated timing. The NPCs are obtuse, bored assholes who barely explain anything, the crafting system is tedious at best, the level design is intricate but confusing... there's just nothing else in this box besides "die a lot" and if you take out the one thing then you get an empty box.
Celeste was a wonderful game and the difficulty options in Celeste were wonderful because there was something to the game besides fucking up and falling into spike pits- there was a compelling story with a relatable metaphor. Deus Ex has a whole lot of complicated points about prejudice and humanity and technology that it makes with varying degrees of success, but a difficulty slider works there because it has a lot of story and memorable NPCs with unique personalities. From software games just don't. There's the difficulty and the wallpaper and nothing else in the game itself.
posted by fomhar at 10:59 PM on April 10, 2019
Celeste was a wonderful game and the difficulty options in Celeste were wonderful because there was something to the game besides fucking up and falling into spike pits- there was a compelling story with a relatable metaphor. Deus Ex has a whole lot of complicated points about prejudice and humanity and technology that it makes with varying degrees of success, but a difficulty slider works there because it has a lot of story and memorable NPCs with unique personalities. From software games just don't. There's the difficulty and the wallpaper and nothing else in the game itself.
posted by fomhar at 10:59 PM on April 10, 2019
Although obviously not a replacement for built-in accessibility options, Cheat Engine is often my go to for making a game easier, with its ability to slow down most games or change stats—although I find I use it most in story-based RPGs, where the combat is entirely not my cup of tea. That said, it seems like RPGs have gotten better with putting in low difficulty options. That said, Cheat Engine isn't always the easiest tool to use, especially when developers make it hard to find values using it.
posted by No One Ever Does at 11:06 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by No One Ever Does at 11:06 PM on April 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Contrast this to when they "remade" Naxxaramas in late 2008 with the launch of WOTLK. Totally different philosophy - they created an easy mode where even casual players could finish the entire dungeon within about 1-2 weeks of trying. We had a far lower skilled and casual group this time and we still finished it within a month of launch then unsubscribed and quit and never played WoW again. Coincidentally... WoW subscriber numbers peaked at this point at around 12 mil, then it's been downhill ever since.
I've never played WoW, but this makes perfect sense to me. It's easy to say "more options are always good! How could anyone be against giving players more options?" but the thing is that people don't actually work that way, or at least a lot of people don't.
Go to most online forums for popular games and you'll see endless suggestions for removing any part of the game that offers just a little too much resistance: add fast travel, because making players walk around the map themselves doesn't "respect their time". Add ways to get loot faster to remove the grind. Add automated matchmaking so no-one needs to communicate with anyone else. Let every class do almost everything if they want to. Let players opt out of all penalties for failure. And why not? These are all options; anyone who doesn't like them can just not use them.
Sometimes they're right. But sometimes it turns out that giving players what they say they want just makes them get bored, and then you need to change the rest of the game for everyone to deal with all the bored players you now have. And sometimes what looks like a choice about useability is a lot more fundamental. Take fast travel: the first part of Dark Souls is brilliant, because you have to walk everywhere and the game's world is set up very carefully to make that part of the challenge, and part of the fun, and part of the process of embedding the player in the world by forcing them to engage with it. Needless to say, plenty of people hated it and demanded fast travel. And the later games have it (probably for other reasons; From doesn't seem to pay much attention to player feedback), and have a different approach to the map because the designers understand that what looks like a fairly simple time-saving interface adjustment is really a basic change in the way players play the game.
(I've read about fast travel and automated grouping doing similar things to WoW; it went from a vast, interconnected world to effectively a series of small pockets that players can jump around at will, and that's not the same world at all even if the terrain hasn't changed. I can't confirm that, though.)
Fortunately, most games can have an easy mode, or accessibility options that make the game easier, without doing this. But when the whole game is designed around a sense of challenge and overcoming, you can't just add difficulty-reducing options in isolation. And yes, this does mean that some people won't be able to play the unmodified game. There's an unavoidable conflict there, but given a choice between getting an occasional game built on challenge in an ocean of other games where all difficulty is optional, and getting none at all, I'm okay with the first option - especially since most single-player games with a PC version can be modded to introduce plenty of accessibility options (for example; it's also easy to find hacked saves for the console versions which can be loaded with an ordinary USB drive).
One of the many bizarre things about this thread has been the number of people telling us that no, options are always good and anyone who disagrees must be wrong about their own reasons for enjoying games, and then turning around and complaining about "gatekeeping". Nope, it doesn't work that way.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 11:11 PM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
I've never played WoW, but this makes perfect sense to me. It's easy to say "more options are always good! How could anyone be against giving players more options?" but the thing is that people don't actually work that way, or at least a lot of people don't.
Go to most online forums for popular games and you'll see endless suggestions for removing any part of the game that offers just a little too much resistance: add fast travel, because making players walk around the map themselves doesn't "respect their time". Add ways to get loot faster to remove the grind. Add automated matchmaking so no-one needs to communicate with anyone else. Let every class do almost everything if they want to. Let players opt out of all penalties for failure. And why not? These are all options; anyone who doesn't like them can just not use them.
Sometimes they're right. But sometimes it turns out that giving players what they say they want just makes them get bored, and then you need to change the rest of the game for everyone to deal with all the bored players you now have. And sometimes what looks like a choice about useability is a lot more fundamental. Take fast travel: the first part of Dark Souls is brilliant, because you have to walk everywhere and the game's world is set up very carefully to make that part of the challenge, and part of the fun, and part of the process of embedding the player in the world by forcing them to engage with it. Needless to say, plenty of people hated it and demanded fast travel. And the later games have it (probably for other reasons; From doesn't seem to pay much attention to player feedback), and have a different approach to the map because the designers understand that what looks like a fairly simple time-saving interface adjustment is really a basic change in the way players play the game.
(I've read about fast travel and automated grouping doing similar things to WoW; it went from a vast, interconnected world to effectively a series of small pockets that players can jump around at will, and that's not the same world at all even if the terrain hasn't changed. I can't confirm that, though.)
Fortunately, most games can have an easy mode, or accessibility options that make the game easier, without doing this. But when the whole game is designed around a sense of challenge and overcoming, you can't just add difficulty-reducing options in isolation. And yes, this does mean that some people won't be able to play the unmodified game. There's an unavoidable conflict there, but given a choice between getting an occasional game built on challenge in an ocean of other games where all difficulty is optional, and getting none at all, I'm okay with the first option - especially since most single-player games with a PC version can be modded to introduce plenty of accessibility options (for example; it's also easy to find hacked saves for the console versions which can be loaded with an ordinary USB drive).
One of the many bizarre things about this thread has been the number of people telling us that no, options are always good and anyone who disagrees must be wrong about their own reasons for enjoying games, and then turning around and complaining about "gatekeeping". Nope, it doesn't work that way.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 11:11 PM on April 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Another thought- People are annoyed about asking for a difficulty slider in Dark Souls/From games in particular because once you get rid of the difficulty there's nothing left.
No.
Also those games had cooperation where a partner could do everything for you.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:19 PM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
No.
Also those games had cooperation where a partner could do everything for you.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:19 PM on April 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Hooks, I really don't know why you insist on misrepresenting people in this thread like you've been doing and it's beginning to look like an active choice you're making. Please at least address some of the arguments people have made towards you instead of putting words in their mouths and acting like they're saying things they aren't.
It just makes it all the more confusing when you link to fan-made accessibility options as a good thing after railing so hard against the concept for so long.
posted by flatluigi at 12:34 AM on April 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
It just makes it all the more confusing when you link to fan-made accessibility options as a good thing after railing so hard against the concept for so long.
posted by flatluigi at 12:34 AM on April 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
The argument seems pretty clear to me:
1. options that reduce difficulty are important for accessibility
2. more options is always good; nobody could have any good reason for not wanting official, developer-approved and supported options added to single-player games
3. all games should be accessible to as many people who want to play them as possible
4. therefore, all games must have options that reduce difficulty.
Then there's:
5. anyone who disagrees with the above is an elitist and a gatekeeper
That's the argument I've been responding to throughout the thread (FWIW it's mostly 2 (and thus 4) and 5 that I take issue with). What am I misrepresenting?
It just makes it all the more confusing when you link to fan-made accessibility options as a good thing after railing so hard against the concept for so long.
Perhaps you've taken all the nonsense about "elitists" and "gatekeepers" a little too seriously and assumed that the only reason someone could disagree is because they really are some kind of wannabe gamer Übermensch. But no, I don't really care if people mod games or hack savefiles or whatever to make single-player games easier, and I don't think I've said anything that would suggest otherwise.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:20 AM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
1. options that reduce difficulty are important for accessibility
2. more options is always good; nobody could have any good reason for not wanting official, developer-approved and supported options added to single-player games
3. all games should be accessible to as many people who want to play them as possible
4. therefore, all games must have options that reduce difficulty.
Then there's:
5. anyone who disagrees with the above is an elitist and a gatekeeper
That's the argument I've been responding to throughout the thread (FWIW it's mostly 2 (and thus 4) and 5 that I take issue with). What am I misrepresenting?
It just makes it all the more confusing when you link to fan-made accessibility options as a good thing after railing so hard against the concept for so long.
Perhaps you've taken all the nonsense about "elitists" and "gatekeepers" a little too seriously and assumed that the only reason someone could disagree is because they really are some kind of wannabe gamer Übermensch. But no, I don't really care if people mod games or hack savefiles or whatever to make single-player games easier, and I don't think I've said anything that would suggest otherwise.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:20 AM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
then why the fuck do you seem to care so much if those options are built into the games themselves? what is even the POINT of disagreeing with those first four points except to say "my experience matters over anyone else's."
posted by JimBennett at 1:29 AM on April 11, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by JimBennett at 1:29 AM on April 11, 2019 [8 favorites]
Because:
(a) there's a difference between an option added by the developer, which makes them responsible for designing the rest of the game around the availability of the option (or at least will result in players holding them responsible), and an unofficial mod.
and
(b) I think game designers should be able to make games that use challenge as an essential part of their game design.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:44 AM on April 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
(a) there's a difference between an option added by the developer, which makes them responsible for designing the rest of the game around the availability of the option (or at least will result in players holding them responsible), and an unofficial mod.
and
(b) I think game designers should be able to make games that use challenge as an essential part of their game design.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 1:44 AM on April 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
It sounds to me like there's some essential difference in how games are viewed involved in this, with some suggesting more that a game should be able to be used in whatever manner a player wants and others suggesting there is an essential purpose or function to the games that must be respected, even as that purpose may vary from game to game.
I guess I'd liken it to the idea of a marathon. Official marathons have made accommodations for people in wheelchairs to roll the event while others run them, both being sufficiently difficult to provide a roughly similar challenge. I could neither run nor roll a marathon, so to complete one I'd need motorized assistance or an absurd length of time to just walk it with a bad knee. The purpose of a marathon though is defeated were they to allow motorized assistance even as that would allow more people to participate in some vague sense that shifts the very notion of a marathon from one being about the physical effort involved to one of the route alone being the main element of importance.
Unofficially, however, a marathon is just marking a preordained distance so anyone could run, roll or otherwise travel a like distance or some part of it however they want since it's only them measuring success, failure or participation. In that sense the term marathon is empty as a measure of effort, but can exist as a measure of space that one can approach however one likes. Running five miles for some can be as difficult as running a complete marathon would be for others, thus becoming something of a equivalent challenge, while others won't care about the challenge aspect at all and just enjoy traveling the route since there is no real rule needed for that kind of enjoyment.
The likeness to video games is that some just want to fuck around in the world created without worry over the purpose or rules for completing it, while others want a like challenge to that of completion but at a different level of ability, while some assert the whole purpose of the exercise is in completing it with the effort involved as that's what the game "means". One can't separate the effort from the meaning as that's what's being communicated, not just the world of the game, which is just the shell the purpose is fit under.
In art, that latter fits the idea that there is no greater ultimate meaning to art than the experience of it, to reduce the work for ease of apprehension necessarily loses meaning and thus its purpose as expression. In the former idea, art is purposeless other than in the apprehension of the beholder who can use or approach it however they like and take whatever they want from it without need in considering the creator's expression or anything they don't want at all.
The added issue is that most art can be received more or less passively, almost anyone can watch a movie and say they've experienced it. The question comes in whether those separate experiences all have equal merit in understanding or appreciating the work and whether that should matter at all. Art can be passively received by most, but that may or may not be the most useful sense of evaluating the experience since art is a form of communication and communication doesn't work as a one sided affair. That video games are modifiable makes them a more contested area than other games, sports and arts, where there the defining purpose of the things are as readily changeable.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:17 AM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
I guess I'd liken it to the idea of a marathon. Official marathons have made accommodations for people in wheelchairs to roll the event while others run them, both being sufficiently difficult to provide a roughly similar challenge. I could neither run nor roll a marathon, so to complete one I'd need motorized assistance or an absurd length of time to just walk it with a bad knee. The purpose of a marathon though is defeated were they to allow motorized assistance even as that would allow more people to participate in some vague sense that shifts the very notion of a marathon from one being about the physical effort involved to one of the route alone being the main element of importance.
Unofficially, however, a marathon is just marking a preordained distance so anyone could run, roll or otherwise travel a like distance or some part of it however they want since it's only them measuring success, failure or participation. In that sense the term marathon is empty as a measure of effort, but can exist as a measure of space that one can approach however one likes. Running five miles for some can be as difficult as running a complete marathon would be for others, thus becoming something of a equivalent challenge, while others won't care about the challenge aspect at all and just enjoy traveling the route since there is no real rule needed for that kind of enjoyment.
The likeness to video games is that some just want to fuck around in the world created without worry over the purpose or rules for completing it, while others want a like challenge to that of completion but at a different level of ability, while some assert the whole purpose of the exercise is in completing it with the effort involved as that's what the game "means". One can't separate the effort from the meaning as that's what's being communicated, not just the world of the game, which is just the shell the purpose is fit under.
In art, that latter fits the idea that there is no greater ultimate meaning to art than the experience of it, to reduce the work for ease of apprehension necessarily loses meaning and thus its purpose as expression. In the former idea, art is purposeless other than in the apprehension of the beholder who can use or approach it however they like and take whatever they want from it without need in considering the creator's expression or anything they don't want at all.
The added issue is that most art can be received more or less passively, almost anyone can watch a movie and say they've experienced it. The question comes in whether those separate experiences all have equal merit in understanding or appreciating the work and whether that should matter at all. Art can be passively received by most, but that may or may not be the most useful sense of evaluating the experience since art is a form of communication and communication doesn't work as a one sided affair. That video games are modifiable makes them a more contested area than other games, sports and arts, where there the defining purpose of the things are as readily changeable.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:17 AM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
Then there's:
5. anyone who disagrees with the above is an elitist and a gatekeeper
"Sit tight while I redefine terms until I'm not an asshole..."
posted by tobascodagama at 5:22 AM on April 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
5. anyone who disagrees with the above is an elitist and a gatekeeper
"Sit tight while I redefine terms until I'm not an asshole..."
posted by tobascodagama at 5:22 AM on April 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
(I've read about fast travel and automated grouping doing similar things to WoW; it went from a vast, interconnected world to effectively a series of small pockets that players can jump around at will, and that's not the same world at all even if the terrain hasn't changed. I can't confirm that, though.)
Boy do I have things to say about this.
In the long ago past, there was no matchmaking and no fast travel. If you wanted to do a dungeon, the first thing you turned to was your friends list. This means that networking and forming relationships was a crucial part of the game. By creating a community, it also enforced its own norms - respectful behavior towards others, and a generous and unselfish attitude towards loot. If you behaved badly, people wouldn't add you to their friends lists, and you'd find it hard to play the game. But building your network took weeks and months, emotional labor and lots of time.
Contrast this to auto-matchmaking, both in current WoW and also in "toxic" games like League of Legends - because the game finds you random players to play with each time, there's effectively no penalty to behaving badly. This is particularly awful in WoW, because everyone can roll on loot, if you have a community, people are quite generous and if you need something they will let you have it... if you are grouping with randoms, there's no disincentive to roll Need on every item because even if you didn't need the item you could break it down into materials, never mind that you might be screwing over the guy who has played that dungeon 30 times in the hope of getting that item to drop.
Dungeon matchmaking, of course, was a huge "improvement". You just pressed "play" and you got a group in seconds, instead of spending weeks and months cultivating your friends list. And even then, you might not have enough players, so what you needed to do was sit around in town and spam advertisements in chat to find takers. It was not unusual to actually spend 1 hour or more trying to get a group together and failing and not actually playing anything.
This actually created an incentive for people to actually BE in town, and thus created a bustling, busy atmosphere with lots going on. And if you're in town people need stuff to do... so began the practice of dueling. You had 30 people standing around in a circle, and players would duel each other in turn. Everyone wanted to challenge the winner. Endless rematches, honing their skills, trying different tactics. People had different builds. It was funny. It didn't matter if you won or lost. Some people would get famous. You were the local hero, they would be glad to have you at their side in the battle against the enemy faction. People who chat with random other people they met. There were trivia quiz competitions with people just standing around outside the Auction House. Heck, in the early days, even the trip to GET to the auction house could take 15 minutes or so... now you just bring it up in a menu wherever you are.
Contrast this to how League of Legends works. No community at all, the only time you "fight" is during a sterile "all serious" match where you get banned if you fool around and then you statistically never see them again. How awful.
WoW was all about building community, networking, relationships. And in the name of convenience, they offered cross realm matchmaking, fast travel, and a host of other "improvements" that completely destroyed the game. Everything requires a critical mass of players. I can't just go to town and duel someone at the gates now: it's a ghost town relative to what it was before. No one knows anyone else. Almost everyone you play with is from another server, so it's physically impossible to see them again. Before, plenty of high level players would be generous and take newbies through dungeons, because it was nice to have the gratitude in the community, and in the future they might pay you back. Now there IS no community.
But yes... standing around for hours trying to round people up to do a dungeon and failing to get a group together in the past, versus now you click a button and within seconds you get a perfectly formed 5 man group vetted for gear quality and class composition. The price of progress...
posted by xdvesper at 5:26 AM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
Boy do I have things to say about this.
In the long ago past, there was no matchmaking and no fast travel. If you wanted to do a dungeon, the first thing you turned to was your friends list. This means that networking and forming relationships was a crucial part of the game. By creating a community, it also enforced its own norms - respectful behavior towards others, and a generous and unselfish attitude towards loot. If you behaved badly, people wouldn't add you to their friends lists, and you'd find it hard to play the game. But building your network took weeks and months, emotional labor and lots of time.
Contrast this to auto-matchmaking, both in current WoW and also in "toxic" games like League of Legends - because the game finds you random players to play with each time, there's effectively no penalty to behaving badly. This is particularly awful in WoW, because everyone can roll on loot, if you have a community, people are quite generous and if you need something they will let you have it... if you are grouping with randoms, there's no disincentive to roll Need on every item because even if you didn't need the item you could break it down into materials, never mind that you might be screwing over the guy who has played that dungeon 30 times in the hope of getting that item to drop.
Dungeon matchmaking, of course, was a huge "improvement". You just pressed "play" and you got a group in seconds, instead of spending weeks and months cultivating your friends list. And even then, you might not have enough players, so what you needed to do was sit around in town and spam advertisements in chat to find takers. It was not unusual to actually spend 1 hour or more trying to get a group together and failing and not actually playing anything.
This actually created an incentive for people to actually BE in town, and thus created a bustling, busy atmosphere with lots going on. And if you're in town people need stuff to do... so began the practice of dueling. You had 30 people standing around in a circle, and players would duel each other in turn. Everyone wanted to challenge the winner. Endless rematches, honing their skills, trying different tactics. People had different builds. It was funny. It didn't matter if you won or lost. Some people would get famous. You were the local hero, they would be glad to have you at their side in the battle against the enemy faction. People who chat with random other people they met. There were trivia quiz competitions with people just standing around outside the Auction House. Heck, in the early days, even the trip to GET to the auction house could take 15 minutes or so... now you just bring it up in a menu wherever you are.
Contrast this to how League of Legends works. No community at all, the only time you "fight" is during a sterile "all serious" match where you get banned if you fool around and then you statistically never see them again. How awful.
WoW was all about building community, networking, relationships. And in the name of convenience, they offered cross realm matchmaking, fast travel, and a host of other "improvements" that completely destroyed the game. Everything requires a critical mass of players. I can't just go to town and duel someone at the gates now: it's a ghost town relative to what it was before. No one knows anyone else. Almost everyone you play with is from another server, so it's physically impossible to see them again. Before, plenty of high level players would be generous and take newbies through dungeons, because it was nice to have the gratitude in the community, and in the future they might pay you back. Now there IS no community.
But yes... standing around for hours trying to round people up to do a dungeon and failing to get a group together in the past, versus now you click a button and within seconds you get a perfectly formed 5 man group vetted for gear quality and class composition. The price of progress...
posted by xdvesper at 5:26 AM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
Horizon Zero Dawn is a beautiful game with rich lore. It also has twitchy combat (hard for me) in third person (also very hard for me). Thankfully, the devs added options to customize the difficulty of combat, even a "story mode". You still have the fights, and if you just stand there you're gonna die, but it also made the combat not-impossible, making the game not only accessible to me, but enjoyable. I got to play, explore, and complete a game that I otherwise would have given up on, and now Guerrilla Games has another fan. Watching a Let's Play is just not the same as experiencing it first-hand, with my hands on the controls, at my pace, exploring the nooks and crannies that I want to see, and I am grateful that the devs made the choice to make their game accessible to a wider audience.
I mean heck, while the devs are tuning the game prior to release, they're often already adjusting various things to arrive at the intended final experience; why not leave those settings available so that players can optimize the game for themselves?
Super Mario Odyssey is a great platformer for Switch. I played around with the "assist mode" built into the game, and it's great. There are several options that make the game more accessible for players who might not have the fastest reflexes or the ability to use motion controls, and really, their inclusion seems like a no-brainer? Having played the crap out of Odyssey, I am seriously having a hard time picturing how the inclusion of these assist features in any way detracted from my game experience.
posted by xedrik at 7:08 AM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
I mean heck, while the devs are tuning the game prior to release, they're often already adjusting various things to arrive at the intended final experience; why not leave those settings available so that players can optimize the game for themselves?
Super Mario Odyssey is a great platformer for Switch. I played around with the "assist mode" built into the game, and it's great. There are several options that make the game more accessible for players who might not have the fastest reflexes or the ability to use motion controls, and really, their inclusion seems like a no-brainer? Having played the crap out of Odyssey, I am seriously having a hard time picturing how the inclusion of these assist features in any way detracted from my game experience.
posted by xedrik at 7:08 AM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
I think game designers are clever enough to make challenge an essential element without also saying "your body must be at least this able to enter", as the design philosophy of From games literally does, with its exclusive barometer of the designer being able to beat it himself.
So, just to try to nudge this discussion, I think that one of the many axes of miscommunication/conflation that's going on in this thread is what can/should a highly resourced corporation like From do vs. what can/should game designers in general do. At the other end of the spectrum is the question of what can/should/ought an individual game designer do in terms of accommodation who is doing this in their spare time and probably not being paid much if anything. I suspect (though I am not speaking for them by any means) this is more where Hooks might be coming from. It's also where I'm coming from, though I'm at least part of an (unpaid, volunteer) team working on a game that has seen a huge number of perspectives over many years.
The answer from my perspective would have to be, "do the best you can to open your game to as many people as you can", because at some practical level universal accommodation is an unreachable ideal for a lone developer (for example, it is a very rare game even with a lot of resources where the needs of blind players can be genuinely supported). So part of this discussion here seems to be implicitly what the best one can do as a game designer, and I think this is a real and useful discussion for any game designer + gaming community to have -- to the extent I have spent time trying to understand what it's like to be a blind gamer (I wasn't the main person putting effort into this but I did spend some time on it) it was incredibly enlightening and added a laundry list of ways in which our project could still be better (which, sigh, is still only fractionally realized). The current best for anyone can always be better, and I think this is also reflected in a real and interesting way in Terry Cavanagh's twitter thread about super hexagon that was linked earlier.
But I would like it if this thread had better communication about what doing the best you can might reaelistically be for a game like super hexagon, or an indie shmup, or even something like undertale that has bullet hell elements (if your reaction is that undertale is easy enough already, see here for somewhat painful discussion among players I just found with echos of this current thread); it seems to me that any attempt to bring up tradeoffs from the developer's point of view here has been dismissed in ways that just shut down discussion. Well, in terms of the feature list, there is a laundry list of potentially applicable features one can extract from this thread for games of this sort, many of which would help people who are directly posting here (and some who are not): fov sliders, color/contrast controls, subtitles, zoom modes, remappable controls, lower/no-damage mode, slo-mo mode, autosteering or some kind of steering nudge, path indicators, autoaiming, combined/granular assist modes e.g. as in celeste, increased saving/checkpoints, unlimited restarts (if that's relevant). There are probably more that I've missed. Some of these are easy, some are not (it's great that celeste's designers say their assist mode only took them a couple days to implement, but that's definitely not something I would be able to say, and I suspect this quote is not counting the playtesting/tuning/support cost of these features). And I think it's also pretty fair to say that at least some of these are in tension with the underlying gameplay genres or genre traditions, something that for example celeste navigates masterfully both in-game and at the meta-level but again is not actually easy to do as a designer. It seems clear that for accessibility features that are easy (or even moderately hard) and not in tension with the genre/game, it's pretty problematic in 2019 not to be attempting to include them, and as far as I can tell everyone is actually in agreement on this. But the real pushback is about features that are in tension with the particular genres in question, and especially ones that are also not super easy to implement or tune (e.g. slo-mo modes, which I still think are likely to have a pretty non-trivial developer-time cost if you include tuning and support, as opposed to just tossing the feature into the wind) -- and I just can't get to the position where there's an obvious one-size-fits all solution to these kinds of features from the game designer's perspective.
posted by advil at 7:46 AM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
So, just to try to nudge this discussion, I think that one of the many axes of miscommunication/conflation that's going on in this thread is what can/should a highly resourced corporation like From do vs. what can/should game designers in general do. At the other end of the spectrum is the question of what can/should/ought an individual game designer do in terms of accommodation who is doing this in their spare time and probably not being paid much if anything. I suspect (though I am not speaking for them by any means) this is more where Hooks might be coming from. It's also where I'm coming from, though I'm at least part of an (unpaid, volunteer) team working on a game that has seen a huge number of perspectives over many years.
The answer from my perspective would have to be, "do the best you can to open your game to as many people as you can", because at some practical level universal accommodation is an unreachable ideal for a lone developer (for example, it is a very rare game even with a lot of resources where the needs of blind players can be genuinely supported). So part of this discussion here seems to be implicitly what the best one can do as a game designer, and I think this is a real and useful discussion for any game designer + gaming community to have -- to the extent I have spent time trying to understand what it's like to be a blind gamer (I wasn't the main person putting effort into this but I did spend some time on it) it was incredibly enlightening and added a laundry list of ways in which our project could still be better (which, sigh, is still only fractionally realized). The current best for anyone can always be better, and I think this is also reflected in a real and interesting way in Terry Cavanagh's twitter thread about super hexagon that was linked earlier.
But I would like it if this thread had better communication about what doing the best you can might reaelistically be for a game like super hexagon, or an indie shmup, or even something like undertale that has bullet hell elements (if your reaction is that undertale is easy enough already, see here for somewhat painful discussion among players I just found with echos of this current thread); it seems to me that any attempt to bring up tradeoffs from the developer's point of view here has been dismissed in ways that just shut down discussion. Well, in terms of the feature list, there is a laundry list of potentially applicable features one can extract from this thread for games of this sort, many of which would help people who are directly posting here (and some who are not): fov sliders, color/contrast controls, subtitles, zoom modes, remappable controls, lower/no-damage mode, slo-mo mode, autosteering or some kind of steering nudge, path indicators, autoaiming, combined/granular assist modes e.g. as in celeste, increased saving/checkpoints, unlimited restarts (if that's relevant). There are probably more that I've missed. Some of these are easy, some are not (it's great that celeste's designers say their assist mode only took them a couple days to implement, but that's definitely not something I would be able to say, and I suspect this quote is not counting the playtesting/tuning/support cost of these features). And I think it's also pretty fair to say that at least some of these are in tension with the underlying gameplay genres or genre traditions, something that for example celeste navigates masterfully both in-game and at the meta-level but again is not actually easy to do as a designer. It seems clear that for accessibility features that are easy (or even moderately hard) and not in tension with the genre/game, it's pretty problematic in 2019 not to be attempting to include them, and as far as I can tell everyone is actually in agreement on this. But the real pushback is about features that are in tension with the particular genres in question, and especially ones that are also not super easy to implement or tune (e.g. slo-mo modes, which I still think are likely to have a pretty non-trivial developer-time cost if you include tuning and support, as opposed to just tossing the feature into the wind) -- and I just can't get to the position where there's an obvious one-size-fits all solution to these kinds of features from the game designer's perspective.
posted by advil at 7:46 AM on April 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
thoroughburro, thanks for your contributions to this thread. You are absolutely correct; I wish my own comment further up had focused more on accessibility instead of my own able-bodied experience with these games. I mean, even the very title of this thread is "Accessibility means options, not easy gameplay"; the fact that ~80% or more of the discussion has focused on "easy modes, yay or nay?" is to our collective discredit.
posted by Roommate at 8:09 AM on April 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Roommate at 8:09 AM on April 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
But the response in this thread to requests to consider accessibility as a goal have been met largely by a response which assumes, in the face of repeated clarification, that the request is equivalent to simply wanting games to be easy.
I think in part because what's being suggested is mostly 'make things easier', not 'make things accessible'. In thread, folks have suggested things like "slowing down combat", "slow down the game, replace repetitive button presses with holds", "slower initial speed, a slower scaling factor, and/or a slower maximum speed". No one that I have seen is suggesting things that balance for an accessibility mode, like, oh, I don't know "slow down combat, but you start at 50% health" or "No repetitive button mashes, but you have to do a hidden object find with 500 objects instead of the boss fight."
I think if people were talking about that stuff, we could talk about how possible/complicated they would be or how possible they would be to implement or which game studios should be expected to do this or not. But instead, folks are arguing for 'accessibility' modes which are really 'make the game easier, with no trade off consequence'. And that makes it harder to talk about the actual problems.
Which are problems that are caused by specific and common disabilities? How can we mitigate that, while keeping the challenge of the game the same?
posted by corb at 8:34 AM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
I think in part because what's being suggested is mostly 'make things easier', not 'make things accessible'. In thread, folks have suggested things like "slowing down combat", "slow down the game, replace repetitive button presses with holds", "slower initial speed, a slower scaling factor, and/or a slower maximum speed". No one that I have seen is suggesting things that balance for an accessibility mode, like, oh, I don't know "slow down combat, but you start at 50% health" or "No repetitive button mashes, but you have to do a hidden object find with 500 objects instead of the boss fight."
I think if people were talking about that stuff, we could talk about how possible/complicated they would be or how possible they would be to implement or which game studios should be expected to do this or not. But instead, folks are arguing for 'accessibility' modes which are really 'make the game easier, with no trade off consequence'. And that makes it harder to talk about the actual problems.
Which are problems that are caused by specific and common disabilities? How can we mitigate that, while keeping the challenge of the game the same?
posted by corb at 8:34 AM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
Yeah, it really hasn't been very clear what the exact kinds of considerations people are talking about on either side much of the time, when referencing the Celeste access features as a positive, for example, there were options for invincibility, auto-aim, unlimited lives and other options that do seem to potentially cross from access alone to ease, while other options discussed were certainly more about access alone.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:40 AM on April 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by gusottertrout at 8:40 AM on April 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
Also, may I say I’m really happy and appreciative that one of the major and, dare I say, best of the traditional roguelikes has an active eye on accessibility in spite of few development resources. Thank you!
Thanks, I appreciate this! But I do have to say that because of the game we're relatively in easy mode for most accessibility goals: long tradition of extreme configurability, a purely text-based mode that is actively maintained (even though most of the playerbase uses tiles, it happens that most of the dev team plays with ascii, so bugs get fixed very quickly), the text-based mode runs in a tty so there's also the tradition of extreme configurability for terminals in unix that we inherit, no sound, no time-based or reflex-based gameplay at all (unless you're a realtime speedrunner).
posted by advil at 8:41 AM on April 11, 2019
Thanks, I appreciate this! But I do have to say that because of the game we're relatively in easy mode for most accessibility goals: long tradition of extreme configurability, a purely text-based mode that is actively maintained (even though most of the playerbase uses tiles, it happens that most of the dev team plays with ascii, so bugs get fixed very quickly), the text-based mode runs in a tty so there's also the tradition of extreme configurability for terminals in unix that we inherit, no sound, no time-based or reflex-based gameplay at all (unless you're a realtime speedrunner).
posted by advil at 8:41 AM on April 11, 2019
Good post corb, that does a good job at outlining some of the ways that people could find a happy middle ground (which seems like just about everybody's goal in this conversation anyways!). It seems weird that people are focusing on being able to slowdown gameplay specifically when that would most likely make it very boring for other people with dexterity issues. Wouldn't that just make a slow-motion version of the game?
As Thousand Hooks has said repeatedly, each gamer is going to bring a different level of skill to the game. How is a developer supposed to accommodate what each and every single one of them finds to be an appropriate challenge, given that From's goal seems to be, "make extremely challenging games"?
It's weird to me that people aren't focusing on accessibility as a third-party issue -- such as controllers that, when a certain button is held down, button-mash the corresponding button in-game.
Reading charitably, I personally believe that no one wants disabled or disadvantaged gamers to be unable to play Sekiro, and vice versa, no one wants From to not make Sekiro extremely difficult.
On preview: thoroughburro, I think corb is simply trying to say that a blanket "reduction of difficulty" is not an appropriate, fun, engaging, interesting, or valid way of making Sekiro accessible, and is instead suggesting that, in the spirit of respecting the player, the developers could be looking at ways to still make the game extremely challenging (in its original spirit) while accommodating people who can't perform twitch movements or otherwise play the game at it's highest, abled level.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 8:51 AM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
As Thousand Hooks has said repeatedly, each gamer is going to bring a different level of skill to the game. How is a developer supposed to accommodate what each and every single one of them finds to be an appropriate challenge, given that From's goal seems to be, "make extremely challenging games"?
It's weird to me that people aren't focusing on accessibility as a third-party issue -- such as controllers that, when a certain button is held down, button-mash the corresponding button in-game.
Reading charitably, I personally believe that no one wants disabled or disadvantaged gamers to be unable to play Sekiro, and vice versa, no one wants From to not make Sekiro extremely difficult.
On preview: thoroughburro, I think corb is simply trying to say that a blanket "reduction of difficulty" is not an appropriate, fun, engaging, interesting, or valid way of making Sekiro accessible, and is instead suggesting that, in the spirit of respecting the player, the developers could be looking at ways to still make the game extremely challenging (in its original spirit) while accommodating people who can't perform twitch movements or otherwise play the game at it's highest, abled level.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 8:51 AM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
The. Game. Would. Still. Be. Challenging. With. Accessibility. Options. Because. They. Are. To. Be. Used. By. People. For. Whom. The. Default. Difficulty. Is. Extreme. In. A. Way. Not. Experienced. By. Able-bodied. People.
Hey, um, I'm actually disabled in ways that thoroughly affect my life and cuts off some video games from me that I would otherwise be interested in, FYI. I feel like there's a lot of assumptions of bad faith going on here that are completely unwarranted.
There does not, insofar as I'm aware, currently exist a way for developers to make things accessible in such a way that they are able to perfectly fine tune difficulty so that everyone faces the same level of challenging experience, in part because everyone can only self-report their own experience and has no idea of where the other person is coming from. Attempts have been made at this - I've played a few games (I think one of them was in the Witcher series?) where they start with a prologue that tests your ability to fight enemies, and then adjusts the difficulty accordingly, but that's only measuring 'your ability to fight these particular enemies in this particular time' and isn't really able to measure whether you failed to defeat them quickly because switching between spells and combat tactics quickly was physically hard for you, or because you kept trying to use the wrong spells on the wrong creatures or didn't understand how traps worked.
I would say the vast majority of people who face disability-related difficulties in playing games are not going to be aware of the fine tuning effect, such that they could say 'Ah yes, 65% is too slow for me, give me a nice clean 80% to take me at par in the world.' Multi-sliders offer a lot of tools, but ones that have to be fine tuned - and there's no way to know the developer's intent when you're shifting them. And within the category of people who have physical difficulties with games, you're going to have a host of different reasons and a host of different abilities. And "just trust people to choose the level that's right for them" doesn't really work, because assuming sincerity on the part of people with disabilities, which I do, there is no way that people just entering the game would have an idea about what the devs actually meant the game to be.
One reason non-accessible difficulty modes work is because they are providing a clear-cut guess of what they think most people's experience is going to be, so people can say 'Oh, I want things to be casual, I'll choose the easy mode' or "I want an extra challenge, Hard it is'. And that works for difficulty, but doesn't work for accessibility, because it is so unique and individual to each person.
posted by corb at 9:34 AM on April 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
Hey, um, I'm actually disabled in ways that thoroughly affect my life and cuts off some video games from me that I would otherwise be interested in, FYI. I feel like there's a lot of assumptions of bad faith going on here that are completely unwarranted.
There does not, insofar as I'm aware, currently exist a way for developers to make things accessible in such a way that they are able to perfectly fine tune difficulty so that everyone faces the same level of challenging experience, in part because everyone can only self-report their own experience and has no idea of where the other person is coming from. Attempts have been made at this - I've played a few games (I think one of them was in the Witcher series?) where they start with a prologue that tests your ability to fight enemies, and then adjusts the difficulty accordingly, but that's only measuring 'your ability to fight these particular enemies in this particular time' and isn't really able to measure whether you failed to defeat them quickly because switching between spells and combat tactics quickly was physically hard for you, or because you kept trying to use the wrong spells on the wrong creatures or didn't understand how traps worked.
I would say the vast majority of people who face disability-related difficulties in playing games are not going to be aware of the fine tuning effect, such that they could say 'Ah yes, 65% is too slow for me, give me a nice clean 80% to take me at par in the world.' Multi-sliders offer a lot of tools, but ones that have to be fine tuned - and there's no way to know the developer's intent when you're shifting them. And within the category of people who have physical difficulties with games, you're going to have a host of different reasons and a host of different abilities. And "just trust people to choose the level that's right for them" doesn't really work, because assuming sincerity on the part of people with disabilities, which I do, there is no way that people just entering the game would have an idea about what the devs actually meant the game to be.
One reason non-accessible difficulty modes work is because they are providing a clear-cut guess of what they think most people's experience is going to be, so people can say 'Oh, I want things to be casual, I'll choose the easy mode' or "I want an extra challenge, Hard it is'. And that works for difficulty, but doesn't work for accessibility, because it is so unique and individual to each person.
posted by corb at 9:34 AM on April 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
There's no reason why people with physical disabilities couldn't fine-tune robust accessibility options to the point where they're still feeling challenged by the game, though?
Imposing penalties on enabling accessibility options like you suggest is yet again just conflating 'some people need these options to play the game in the first place' with 'some people are only looking for the easy way out.'
posted by flatluigi at 11:03 AM on April 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
Imposing penalties on enabling accessibility options like you suggest is yet again just conflating 'some people need these options to play the game in the first place' with 'some people are only looking for the easy way out.'
posted by flatluigi at 11:03 AM on April 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
when referencing the Celeste access features as a positive
So, Celeste had a plot, and one that the developer thought was good enough that everyone should see it. It was actually pretty good! Apparently From Software does not believe this is true of Sekiro, and so far I agree with that assessment.
posted by pwnguin at 11:44 AM on April 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
So, Celeste had a plot, and one that the developer thought was good enough that everyone should see it. It was actually pretty good! Apparently From Software does not believe this is true of Sekiro, and so far I agree with that assessment.
posted by pwnguin at 11:44 AM on April 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
> such as controllers that, when a certain button is held down, button-mash the corresponding button in-game
Huh, I'd forgotten about controllers that did that. I had one for the Genesis / Mega Drive that had a switch on it labelled "slo-mo" that just spammed the hell out of the start button.
posted by lucidium at 12:08 PM on April 11, 2019
Huh, I'd forgotten about controllers that did that. I had one for the Genesis / Mega Drive that had a switch on it labelled "slo-mo" that just spammed the hell out of the start button.
posted by lucidium at 12:08 PM on April 11, 2019
There's no reason why people with physical disabilities couldn't fine-tune robust accessibility options to the point where they're still feeling challenged by the game, though?
Seems like that really depends on the game, though. If you're playing Doom or a bullet-hell shmup where the point is to be on the edge of your seat the whole time, then, yeah, you just have to adjust the slider until you've got the adrenaline pumping steadily. Or if you're playing Diablo or Skyrim you can tweak those sliders until you're making steady progress though the dungeons and the loot and the level-ups are dropping at just the right rate.
But if you're playing something new and unfamiliar where part of the point is that you don't know whether this part is supposed to feel easy or hard, safe or scary, how do you know where to set the sliders?
Derek Yu (maker of Spelunky) had some interesting thoughts about this:
Seems like that really depends on the game, though. If you're playing Doom or a bullet-hell shmup where the point is to be on the edge of your seat the whole time, then, yeah, you just have to adjust the slider until you've got the adrenaline pumping steadily. Or if you're playing Diablo or Skyrim you can tweak those sliders until you're making steady progress though the dungeons and the loot and the level-ups are dropping at just the right rate.
But if you're playing something new and unfamiliar where part of the point is that you don't know whether this part is supposed to feel easy or hard, safe or scary, how do you know where to set the sliders?
Derek Yu (maker of Spelunky) had some interesting thoughts about this:
A fundamental problem with difficulty options in games is that there are many players between obvious skill levels. This means: 1. Players have to immediately make an important decision without adequate knowledge. 2. Players will continue to question that decision during play.posted by straight at 1:42 PM on April 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
Players know that difficulty levels are often tacked on, regardless of the game's budget, exacerbating the anxiety of whether they chose the "right" one. This breaks immersion pretty hard. Gentle reminders about easier difficulty settings after Game Over don't help.
In many ways, interactivity (audience control) and art (creator's vision) simply don't mix well, and game designers have become very creative about band-aiding the bad parts. We've gotten used to tutorials and difficulty settings and such even though they're less than ideal.
Regarding From Software games specifically, I think most solutions would be too blunt and would cause many "in-between" players to miss the point of the games. They would feel empty at the end and wonder why the games are so highly regarded.
If a developer fails to gauge your ability correctly and fails to surprise you with the challenge or lack of challenge they intended, that's unfortunate. But you can't really fix that by going back yourself and saying, "Now here's what would have surprised me in the right way...if this part was set at 7 and this part was 3 and this part was 12, then I would have had the experience the developers intended." At that point it's too late. The game has already failed you.
posted by straight at 1:49 PM on April 11, 2019
posted by straight at 1:49 PM on April 11, 2019
The design group at one company I worked for had a good rule for design reviews: let them point out problems, but not sit around trying to design solutions— that's the designer's job. Neil Gaiman offered the same rule for writers: if someone points out a problem in your manuscript, believe them, but feel free to ignore their solutions.
The solution to an accessibility problem might be a slow-motion mode... or it might not be. We can't decide it here for all games, and we certainly can't declare that there is no possible solution.
Programmers are creative people, they can figure things out, preferably consulting with the people who are affected.
Maybe 90% of the time, some easy parameter switches will do the trick. (These probably already exist and have been fiddled with: challenge is not pre-ordained by God, and the devs already adjusted those parameters so they, or their boss, could play the game.) Sometime the solution might be more creative. As just one example, in the Arkham games, if you miss a jump, Batman doesn't die, but gracefully recovers using his grapple. That would be a bad idea in a platforming game, but it's a great idea in a game with only minor platforming. Not everything has to be punished with death of the character.
posted by zompist at 2:22 PM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
The solution to an accessibility problem might be a slow-motion mode... or it might not be. We can't decide it here for all games, and we certainly can't declare that there is no possible solution.
Programmers are creative people, they can figure things out, preferably consulting with the people who are affected.
Maybe 90% of the time, some easy parameter switches will do the trick. (These probably already exist and have been fiddled with: challenge is not pre-ordained by God, and the devs already adjusted those parameters so they, or their boss, could play the game.) Sometime the solution might be more creative. As just one example, in the Arkham games, if you miss a jump, Batman doesn't die, but gracefully recovers using his grapple. That would be a bad idea in a platforming game, but it's a great idea in a game with only minor platforming. Not everything has to be punished with death of the character.
posted by zompist at 2:22 PM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
I’ll choose the game that “fails me” by being theoretically less gripping than it might have been over the one I simply can’t play at all ten times out of ten.
But are you fine with saying, "It's okay if some people miss out on the best version of that game (because they were presented with a bunch of tweaking options that otherwise wouldn't have been there) in order to give me the opportunity to play a mediocre version of it"?
posted by straight at 2:35 PM on April 11, 2019
But are you fine with saying, "It's okay if some people miss out on the best version of that game (because they were presented with a bunch of tweaking options that otherwise wouldn't have been there) in order to give me the opportunity to play a mediocre version of it"?
posted by straight at 2:35 PM on April 11, 2019
If by "best" you mean "designer's intent", which would be the "default" settings you could get by selecting "start game" instead of "options" at the main menu... yes?
posted by Roommate at 2:43 PM on April 11, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Roommate at 2:43 PM on April 11, 2019 [3 favorites]
Hello, I am here saying that Sekiro forced me to rise above what I thought I could. Previously, I would have gotten help for bosses as dark souls allowed.
And on a sob story note, at a time I literally didn’t think I could keep going in life let alone get better at a game.
So I may be weak but the game creator did this for people like me. If you look at all of his games, he is constantly adjusting so his players use new skills they didn’t previously realize they had or could develop.
OnTheLastCastle, I think that's great, I really do. But, rather than it being just for you, wouldn't it be great if other people could get that feeling too?
Like: slow the enemy attacks down by 5%. That would make a huge difference. Or give your toon 10% more health, or have the baddies two-shot instead of one-shot you. That would make a huge difference.
Sure, let that be a different difficulty level, and like Celeste did, have a popup that explains this isn't how the game was intended to be. But let people get better than they were from their baseline, not some arbitrary baseline.
Like, if you've never deadlifted a barbell before, are you not achieving anything until you hit 200kg? Or are you achieving something by simply lifting more than you could or did lift the day before, regardless of what the weight is? Because I think - no, I tell you - that it is the latter.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:15 PM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
And on a sob story note, at a time I literally didn’t think I could keep going in life let alone get better at a game.
So I may be weak but the game creator did this for people like me. If you look at all of his games, he is constantly adjusting so his players use new skills they didn’t previously realize they had or could develop.
OnTheLastCastle, I think that's great, I really do. But, rather than it being just for you, wouldn't it be great if other people could get that feeling too?
Like: slow the enemy attacks down by 5%. That would make a huge difference. Or give your toon 10% more health, or have the baddies two-shot instead of one-shot you. That would make a huge difference.
Sure, let that be a different difficulty level, and like Celeste did, have a popup that explains this isn't how the game was intended to be. But let people get better than they were from their baseline, not some arbitrary baseline.
Like, if you've never deadlifted a barbell before, are you not achieving anything until you hit 200kg? Or are you achieving something by simply lifting more than you could or did lift the day before, regardless of what the weight is? Because I think - no, I tell you - that it is the latter.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:15 PM on April 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
I wonder how much of this disagreement is not about the availability of these options in the abstract, but rather about the presentation of these options. Because nobody, not even the people most strongly against options that would affect difficulty, seems to be against mods.
In particular, many games have a developer console which can be used to modify the game while it's running, originally used by developers for testing and debugging but often left available to players. If options like changing the game time scale or enemy damage scaling were available through the developer console, would that be acceptable?
posted by Pyry at 5:24 PM on April 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
In particular, many games have a developer console which can be used to modify the game while it's running, originally used by developers for testing and debugging but often left available to players. If options like changing the game time scale or enemy damage scaling were available through the developer console, would that be acceptable?
posted by Pyry at 5:24 PM on April 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
Pyry / thoroughburro I have had a think about it overnight and kind of get what you mean - if you had a menu called accessibility and you lumped items in there such as ...
1. Color Blind Mode - as normal
2. Vision assist - reduces smoke and motion blur, adds colored high contrast outlines to enemies / allies
3. Hearing assist - adds subtitles + additional directional visual cues to compensate for lack of directional sound. Can be used by players who need to play at low sound to be considerate of family members.
4. Reflex assist level 1 - adds directional arrows telling you when and which way to dodge / block / jump, can be scaled to give additional forewarning before the action required, it could trigger when the tell becomes obvious, or they could make it appear 0.5 seconds beforehand.
5. Reflex assist level 2 - increases window for invulnerability frames from dodging or parrying or contact frames for hitting abilities, can be scaled to make the window larger, eg 0.9 seconds window to parry instead of 0.3 seconds.
6. Aim Assist - increases bullet tracking, can be scaled to increase the hit zone.
These are all items that preserve the core experience of the game - you are still doing the exact same things, but you have additional assistance doing so. Enemies still have the same HP. Same number of enemies. Their damage is still the same. You still need to jump off a ledge and grab onto the rope. This respects the player who needs them by giving them essentially the same experience as an abled person. You could even name all this in a lore friendly way, eg eagle eye, future sight, cat reflexes, unerring accuracy.
In fact I now think you could implement this into Sekiro without really compromising the game at all. It even sounds like potentially even less work than the way games currently are tuned with 4 difficulty levels where they tune the number of enemies, how much resources you have, the damage each ability does, etc. Instead of re-balancing the entire game to make them "easy or hard" if developers focused on assist modes instead I think it could benefit everyone.
posted by xdvesper at 8:53 PM on April 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
1. Color Blind Mode - as normal
2. Vision assist - reduces smoke and motion blur, adds colored high contrast outlines to enemies / allies
3. Hearing assist - adds subtitles + additional directional visual cues to compensate for lack of directional sound. Can be used by players who need to play at low sound to be considerate of family members.
4. Reflex assist level 1 - adds directional arrows telling you when and which way to dodge / block / jump, can be scaled to give additional forewarning before the action required, it could trigger when the tell becomes obvious, or they could make it appear 0.5 seconds beforehand.
5. Reflex assist level 2 - increases window for invulnerability frames from dodging or parrying or contact frames for hitting abilities, can be scaled to make the window larger, eg 0.9 seconds window to parry instead of 0.3 seconds.
6. Aim Assist - increases bullet tracking, can be scaled to increase the hit zone.
These are all items that preserve the core experience of the game - you are still doing the exact same things, but you have additional assistance doing so. Enemies still have the same HP. Same number of enemies. Their damage is still the same. You still need to jump off a ledge and grab onto the rope. This respects the player who needs them by giving them essentially the same experience as an abled person. You could even name all this in a lore friendly way, eg eagle eye, future sight, cat reflexes, unerring accuracy.
In fact I now think you could implement this into Sekiro without really compromising the game at all. It even sounds like potentially even less work than the way games currently are tuned with 4 difficulty levels where they tune the number of enemies, how much resources you have, the damage each ability does, etc. Instead of re-balancing the entire game to make them "easy or hard" if developers focused on assist modes instead I think it could benefit everyone.
posted by xdvesper at 8:53 PM on April 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
Great suggestions, xdvesper.
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 9:54 PM on April 11, 2019
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 9:54 PM on April 11, 2019
It seems impossible to talk about accessibility in this thread and not have it immediately reframed as about making games easier. It wouldn't be so annoying except that the very real accessibility situations which I and others tried to talk about have been literally ignored by those continuously reframing the debate.
I don't think anyone disagrees with adding accessibility options that non-disabled players can't use to change the nature of the game. Nobody's talking about it because there's not much to talk about.
I've directly asked those opposed to increased accessibility options to apply their arguments to my and others' real, personal, and fairly typical, accessibility concerns. That they have not responded even to refuse indicates, to me, that they are only interested in the hypothetical rather than the more difficult reality. That, or they simply wish I would disappear from the thread like they wish I would disappear from games.
I've spent most of this thread trying to explain why a game designer might want to make a game that's difficult and has no (explicit) options that reduce the difficulty, for both creative and financial reasons. And why saying "it's just an option, you don't have to use it" isn't really an answer to that.
But on a more concrete level - I guess I don't really understand the specific problem. The game that started off the present iteration of this discussion, Sekiro, has mods that slow down the game, slow down everything but the player character, give infinite health etc., like the one I linked to above. Plenty of other PC games do as well (DRM that prevents modding is another issue), and there are also hacked saves for console games.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 10:38 PM on April 11, 2019
I don't think anyone disagrees with adding accessibility options that non-disabled players can't use to change the nature of the game. Nobody's talking about it because there's not much to talk about.
I've directly asked those opposed to increased accessibility options to apply their arguments to my and others' real, personal, and fairly typical, accessibility concerns. That they have not responded even to refuse indicates, to me, that they are only interested in the hypothetical rather than the more difficult reality. That, or they simply wish I would disappear from the thread like they wish I would disappear from games.
I've spent most of this thread trying to explain why a game designer might want to make a game that's difficult and has no (explicit) options that reduce the difficulty, for both creative and financial reasons. And why saying "it's just an option, you don't have to use it" isn't really an answer to that.
But on a more concrete level - I guess I don't really understand the specific problem. The game that started off the present iteration of this discussion, Sekiro, has mods that slow down the game, slow down everything but the player character, give infinite health etc., like the one I linked to above. Plenty of other PC games do as well (DRM that prevents modding is another issue), and there are also hacked saves for console games.
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 10:38 PM on April 11, 2019
>The. Game. Would. Still. Be. Challenging. With. Accessibility. Options. Because. They. Are. To. Be. Used. By. People. For. Whom. The. Default. Difficulty. Is. Extreme. In. A. Way. Not. Experienced. By. Able-bodied. People.
The whole point of dark souls is that this game is objectively difficult for even the best people and there is no recourse. You, as the chosen undead, are still below average in the world and must struggle at great length. The perceptible plot beyond that is nothing. The aesthetic beyond that is nothing. If you take the "struggle with no possible recourse" out of dark souls there is no game left, there is no plot, there is no central thesis, it's just a dude with no face swinging a sword for thirty hours for no reason.
This is not true of literally tens of thousands of other games! Most games have a plot that the developers try to in some way include in the game in a perceptible way, and so would benefit from a wide variety of accessibility options. Dark Souls does. not. have. that. and. would. not. offer. anything. to. anyone. who. has. a. chance. to. not. completely. fail. The entire idea of this particular game is "there is no easy mode" and if you offer any sort of mode that is more accessible than what is most challenging to a particular player, they are sidestepping the only thing this game clearly communicates in order to experience a slideshow of okay wallpapers. This is the reason that I personally gave up on Dark Souls 2 and 3, because I had enough experience with Dark Souls 1 that I wasn't engaging with the central thesis of the games, and the objective lack of any plot at all which can be understood solely through normal play isn't interesting without that thesis. There is, in this one instance, unlike in the instance of Celeste and other games where the developer includes the plot in any discoverable way, no game beyond the failure. The entire plot is "you are failing." The only comprehensible accessibility mode to "game exclusively about failure" is to experience it secondhand.
It's like asking for a more accessible version of Avengers: Infinity War where no relatable characters get hurt. The thesis of the work is that good people get hurt even when they try their best. There'd be nothing left, or at best an unrelated alternate movie with the opposite plot in every scene.
posted by fomhar at 6:14 AM on April 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
The whole point of dark souls is that this game is objectively difficult for even the best people and there is no recourse. You, as the chosen undead, are still below average in the world and must struggle at great length. The perceptible plot beyond that is nothing. The aesthetic beyond that is nothing. If you take the "struggle with no possible recourse" out of dark souls there is no game left, there is no plot, there is no central thesis, it's just a dude with no face swinging a sword for thirty hours for no reason.
This is not true of literally tens of thousands of other games! Most games have a plot that the developers try to in some way include in the game in a perceptible way, and so would benefit from a wide variety of accessibility options. Dark Souls does. not. have. that. and. would. not. offer. anything. to. anyone. who. has. a. chance. to. not. completely. fail. The entire idea of this particular game is "there is no easy mode" and if you offer any sort of mode that is more accessible than what is most challenging to a particular player, they are sidestepping the only thing this game clearly communicates in order to experience a slideshow of okay wallpapers. This is the reason that I personally gave up on Dark Souls 2 and 3, because I had enough experience with Dark Souls 1 that I wasn't engaging with the central thesis of the games, and the objective lack of any plot at all which can be understood solely through normal play isn't interesting without that thesis. There is, in this one instance, unlike in the instance of Celeste and other games where the developer includes the plot in any discoverable way, no game beyond the failure. The entire plot is "you are failing." The only comprehensible accessibility mode to "game exclusively about failure" is to experience it secondhand.
It's like asking for a more accessible version of Avengers: Infinity War where no relatable characters get hurt. The thesis of the work is that good people get hurt even when they try their best. There'd be nothing left, or at best an unrelated alternate movie with the opposite plot in every scene.
posted by fomhar at 6:14 AM on April 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
Even if that were true of Dark Souls, and I vehemently disagree that it is... that is not the plot of Bloodborne. That is most definitely not true of Sekiro, which does actually have a more straightforward plot and storyline than the Souls games.
posted by Roommate at 6:48 AM on April 12, 2019
posted by Roommate at 6:48 AM on April 12, 2019
And, like, nobody is saying "I should be able to beat this game on my first try without dying once." Just that, for many people, it is physically impossible to progress in the game *at all, ever* without some sort of (completely optional, if you don't need them!) accessibility options. And boy howdy would it be nice if developers started thinking about that more.
posted by Roommate at 7:03 AM on April 12, 2019
posted by Roommate at 7:03 AM on April 12, 2019
I was just listening to an interview with the developers of Darkest Dungeon, which is a game with an explicit warning up front that it is hard, you are going to suck at it, and that is the point. They added a couple of difficulty modes somewhere along the line, partly because of their beta strategy. Being in early access for a year meant that they were testing large chunks of the game with die-hards who knew everything, and so they didn't have an accurate idea of how the game played to new people - and they accidentally made the game not just hard but super grindy, which was not their actual intention. Their overall vision for the difficulty didn't change, but because of the way games are developed, they literally could not tell if their vision was being realized as intended before launch. (This is absolutely consistent with all my experience working in game dev.) So color me extremely skeptical about the "preserving the purity of the developers' vision" line of argument. Game development is an art, but it's an art with a lot of resemblance to the proverbial "infinite monkeys with typewriters coming up with Hamlet".
And this is also why I am 100% in favor of as many accessibility modes as can be budgeted for. Not just because I've worked with AbleGamers and various other orgs over the years, and worked on games that are the lifeline for people who find online gaming the most accessible method of socializing available to them, but because I know perfectly well that every person playing a game is having a different game experience.. This is inevitable. People react to sound cues differently, visual cues differently, have different emotional reactions to story beats, have different levels of difficulty with different interactions, find different aspects of a game to be the most interesting and important ones. There's no reason to structure a game to rule out as many of these experiences as possible - that's just limiting the number of people who will find meaning and enjoyment of your game. I mean, in Darkest Dungeon, there are three difficulty modes, and the community has gone on to invent several more just to continue to deepen and extend the experience. Should they not be allowed to play a zero-light, no-Vestal game just because that wasn't exactly what the developers intended? Fuck that, man. Games are supposed to be interactive. That's the point.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:16 AM on April 12, 2019 [4 favorites]
And this is also why I am 100% in favor of as many accessibility modes as can be budgeted for. Not just because I've worked with AbleGamers and various other orgs over the years, and worked on games that are the lifeline for people who find online gaming the most accessible method of socializing available to them, but because I know perfectly well that every person playing a game is having a different game experience.. This is inevitable. People react to sound cues differently, visual cues differently, have different emotional reactions to story beats, have different levels of difficulty with different interactions, find different aspects of a game to be the most interesting and important ones. There's no reason to structure a game to rule out as many of these experiences as possible - that's just limiting the number of people who will find meaning and enjoyment of your game. I mean, in Darkest Dungeon, there are three difficulty modes, and the community has gone on to invent several more just to continue to deepen and extend the experience. Should they not be allowed to play a zero-light, no-Vestal game just because that wasn't exactly what the developers intended? Fuck that, man. Games are supposed to be interactive. That's the point.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:16 AM on April 12, 2019 [4 favorites]
You could even name all this in a lore friendly way, eg eagle eye, future sight, cat reflexes, unerring accuracy.
Hmm, well I think what I was getting at is that for many people what is critically important is the distinction between the "text" of the game, and extra- or meta- textual elements. So, for example, if you talk to a Souls fan about how you want to start Dark Souls, you'll learn two things:
1. Dark Souls is "ironman" mode only-- if you kill an important NPC, or use up an important consumable, there's no reverting your save. This is an important design decision in Dark Souls.
2. You should regularly back up your save in case a hacker in multiplayer corrupts your save.
These two points would seem to be in conflict if you imagine that the fan is primarily motivated by policing how other people play: how can they both praise Dark Souls for not letting you revert your save and then tell you how to revert your save? But this conflict is resolved with the understanding that they are praising the text of Dark Souls for not letting you revert, while acknowledging that you can of course go outside the text.
So getting back to hypothetical accessibility options, I think giving them lore-friendly names is in fact the opposite of what you want to do, because that positions them as within the text, and part of what fans find appealing about these games is specifically that in their text they do not make concessions to player comfort. But outside of the text the games of course have to make plenty of accommodations-- to resolution, to input methods, to audio levels, to brightness, etc.
The more clearly accessibility options are positioned as extra-textual, the more they're accepted: difficulty selection is part of the text, the options menu might be, settings files are probably not, the developer console is almost certainly not, and mods are definitely outside the text.
posted by Pyry at 7:20 AM on April 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
Hmm, well I think what I was getting at is that for many people what is critically important is the distinction between the "text" of the game, and extra- or meta- textual elements. So, for example, if you talk to a Souls fan about how you want to start Dark Souls, you'll learn two things:
1. Dark Souls is "ironman" mode only-- if you kill an important NPC, or use up an important consumable, there's no reverting your save. This is an important design decision in Dark Souls.
2. You should regularly back up your save in case a hacker in multiplayer corrupts your save.
These two points would seem to be in conflict if you imagine that the fan is primarily motivated by policing how other people play: how can they both praise Dark Souls for not letting you revert your save and then tell you how to revert your save? But this conflict is resolved with the understanding that they are praising the text of Dark Souls for not letting you revert, while acknowledging that you can of course go outside the text.
So getting back to hypothetical accessibility options, I think giving them lore-friendly names is in fact the opposite of what you want to do, because that positions them as within the text, and part of what fans find appealing about these games is specifically that in their text they do not make concessions to player comfort. But outside of the text the games of course have to make plenty of accommodations-- to resolution, to input methods, to audio levels, to brightness, etc.
The more clearly accessibility options are positioned as extra-textual, the more they're accepted: difficulty selection is part of the text, the options menu might be, settings files are probably not, the developer console is almost certainly not, and mods are definitely outside the text.
posted by Pyry at 7:20 AM on April 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
There's definitely a distinction there. For the people that are against the idea of developers adding these options, what if instead there was an industry wide drive to have internal game settings in a text file, or made available to a third party Accessibility Tool that let users edit them in a standardised way? Effectively sanctioned modding, but with the benefit of a known hook for the developer to change other things in response if they wanted to.
posted by lucidium at 9:36 AM on April 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by lucidium at 9:36 AM on April 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
Are you all right if people with certain disabilities can’t play the game so that (a subset of; no game is perfect) those who are able to play it theoretically get the best version possible? But to answer your question: yes, absolutely. I’m also okay with buildings having elevators even though stairs-only would be meaningfully healthier for able people.
This is a really strong point and I've been reconsidering my opinion on this.
I think the reason I have such a strong reaction to this discussion is that I'm a convert. I was certain I didn't like the kind of game Dark Souls was and the way it would demand me to play. So I didn't play until 4-5 years after it came out I decided to give it a try. And I ended up really loving a lot of things about it that I thought I would hate.
But if it had an easy mode, I never would have realized that this sort of game could be rewardingly difficult rather than just pointlessly difficult. I would have chosen Easy mode, played through the game like I do Darksiders and missed most of what makes this game different from Darksiders (which is more than just the combat -- also all the intricate ways the level design works with the difficulty, the need to replay sections of the game, the repeated deaths and subsequent challenge of recovering your souls). Dark Souls managed to convince me to try something that seemed like a pointless struggle to see what I thought I wanted from the game and in the process discover that I liked it.
Obviously this experience is only available to a certain subset of players. People who already know they like this sort of thing don't need it -- they always choose the hardest difficulty anyway. And people who just can't play the game at that level of difficulty can't find anything rewarding from playing it at that level of difficulty.
So yes, it seems wrong to me to say that there should be some games that are deliberately inaccessible to some players. But it also seems wrong to me to say that there should never be any games designed to convince some players to try something new that they would enjoy if someone gave them a reason to try it.
There are lots of good games with Easy modes. You could go your whole life never playing a From game and never lack for good Easy mode games to play. But if you say every game must have an Easy mode, you're saying that there should be zero games that exist to rope some players into trying a particular thing they wouldn't otherwise try. And that seems to me to be a bigger loss to the world than for there to be a few games that are too difficult for some people to ever play.
posted by straight at 2:04 PM on April 14, 2019 [3 favorites]
This is a really strong point and I've been reconsidering my opinion on this.
I think the reason I have such a strong reaction to this discussion is that I'm a convert. I was certain I didn't like the kind of game Dark Souls was and the way it would demand me to play. So I didn't play until 4-5 years after it came out I decided to give it a try. And I ended up really loving a lot of things about it that I thought I would hate.
But if it had an easy mode, I never would have realized that this sort of game could be rewardingly difficult rather than just pointlessly difficult. I would have chosen Easy mode, played through the game like I do Darksiders and missed most of what makes this game different from Darksiders (which is more than just the combat -- also all the intricate ways the level design works with the difficulty, the need to replay sections of the game, the repeated deaths and subsequent challenge of recovering your souls). Dark Souls managed to convince me to try something that seemed like a pointless struggle to see what I thought I wanted from the game and in the process discover that I liked it.
Obviously this experience is only available to a certain subset of players. People who already know they like this sort of thing don't need it -- they always choose the hardest difficulty anyway. And people who just can't play the game at that level of difficulty can't find anything rewarding from playing it at that level of difficulty.
So yes, it seems wrong to me to say that there should be some games that are deliberately inaccessible to some players. But it also seems wrong to me to say that there should never be any games designed to convince some players to try something new that they would enjoy if someone gave them a reason to try it.
There are lots of good games with Easy modes. You could go your whole life never playing a From game and never lack for good Easy mode games to play. But if you say every game must have an Easy mode, you're saying that there should be zero games that exist to rope some players into trying a particular thing they wouldn't otherwise try. And that seems to me to be a bigger loss to the world than for there to be a few games that are too difficult for some people to ever play.
posted by straight at 2:04 PM on April 14, 2019 [3 favorites]
Steven Spohn of AbleGamers has an article up on Digital Trends that explains his position on Sekiro being more accessible.
posted by subocoyne at 10:02 AM on April 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by subocoyne at 10:02 AM on April 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
Here's Brian David Gilbert talking about how Celeste forces you to improve.
posted by lucidium at 3:58 PM on April 18, 2019
posted by lucidium at 3:58 PM on April 18, 2019
Sekiro tames the Blazing Bull, pumps up that arm
posted by tobascodagama at 8:14 AM on April 23, 2019
posted by tobascodagama at 8:14 AM on April 23, 2019
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What are its treasures? Is there a cool cutscene at the end?
I assume that's a reference to the story or new areas, bosses, etc. I've never really seen beyond the first two areas of Dark Souls III because I keep hitting my head against that first boss. Oddly enough, I never had this problem with Dark Souls I or II, but III is a game that just frustrates me and I can't seem to nail the movements/memorization required to evade the first boss.
It's very frustrating because I assume there's a really interesting game beyond that boss/gate that I want to explore and engage with.
posted by Fizz at 8:43 AM on April 9, 2019 [5 favorites]