Hi, all.

After a long period of downtime (moving across the country) I'm back on the 'net, and itching to get down and dirty with some more design discussions!

I'd love to do some designs... but unfortunately I am only Mac-enabled at the moment. Unless someone happens to want to donate their license for Virtual PC to me... *ahem*

Anyway-- in my list of design topics, the idea that games need to be easy to be fun is one that comes up a lot. Seems like professional designers have tried to answer that question, and it's pretty well split down the middle, in my opinion. Let's take a look at some examples.

But first, let's dig down into exactly what we are talking about here. Are games that are "hard" not fun? Or... put another way... does making a game easy, thus allowing just about anyone to succeed with it, make it more fun? On to the examples.

Let's start with a few examples of popular-but-difficult games, and we can use them to flesh out what I mean by "difficult".

Hard games come in all forms. Probably the "hardest" genre is shooters (meaning shmups, not first-person-shooters). The classic arcade/console shooters really held the bar high. I'm thinking of R-Type, the old Gradius, Xevious, Raiden, and of course Radient Silvergun. These games were (and still are) hard. You die a lot. Sometimes constantly These games require skill, patience, and a lot of hard work. They were addictive because they were hard, and because when you got stuck at one little area, the solution was usually pretty obvious... you just needed to time it _perfectly_. But shmups definitely caused many broken controllers, dents in arcade cabinets, and cursing. They were never the most popular genre, and that's almost assuredly because most people couldn't take the heat and would walk away.

We see this in several recently released console games as well. Anyone who's read my published stuff knows that I have an addiction to the F-Zero series of games. I will continue to buy Nintendo's systems if only because they threaten to release a new F-Zero game for it. The recent release of F-Zero GX (and the arcade version AX) caught some attention in the press for being incredibly hard. Hard in the shmups way. Twitch-hard, with a steep learning curve for each track, and a steep difficulty curve for the enemy AI. This game also featured what I have termed "shooter coma" or "shooter statis"... the state of being whereby you focus all brain power on the moment at hand. Symptoms include tunnel-vision, lack of blinking for many minutes, and absolute focus on your little ship, and the balls of fire surrounding it. Or, in the case of F-Zero, that upcoming turn. You don't have time to think. It must be PERFECT, or you are just wasting your time, and you might as well hit *reset* now.

It's that pursuit of perfection... and indeed... that requirement of perfection that makes these games hard. But let's look at one more.

Ninja Gaiden.. the recent Xbox version. This game, taking a queue from it's predicesors is a hard game. It's hard in the technical sense... like your first run through a fighting game. You have to learn all the controls, and with NG, you have to learn to use the environment. Once you learn these things, you become a killing machine, and the low-level stuff is cake. But the developers did something interesting. They made the enemies tough. Not just harder... bout TOUGH. Like Boss-character tough. And they throw it at you pretty much from the beginning (well, after the Ninja Fortress). The enemies can kill you with just a few moves. You HAVE to be good. So you fight some stuff, learn the moves, and become a Master Ninja. It's all within reach, but it's hard.

Each of the games mentioned above are fun _because they are hard_. On the otherhand, would you continue playing Ninja Gaiden if you got stuck at the horse-rider thing? ...or at the goblet room? I'm going to bet that copies of NG are collecting some dust out there, unfinished, simply because it's too hard. I'll admit to something: I never finished the Diamond Cup in F-Zero GX because it got very very hard. I put a lot of time into it, but it did indeed keep getting harder and harder. So I put it down... and that's a shame. Would I have had more fun if it was easier? That's a tough one. I certainly would have enjoyed "finishing" it... just like, eventually I will enjoy finishing Ninja Gaiden. But if it was easier would the victory be as sweet?

Some companies are saying "yes!"...and then some! Take a look at the MMORPG market. Companies have split the industry into two very different directions. On one hand, we have companies like Sony Online Entertainment (formerly Verant) and Sigil Online (with the original designer of EverQuest) keeping the difficulty bar high. EQ is not an easy game to play. Some would say it's because of it's age, but I suggest that they have updated the game's systems and features without making the game substantially easy. It's "easier" than it was back in the day, as they've "lightened-up" on some of the rules, but the to get to level 65 (and soon 70) it takes a pretty good understanding of the game. Luckily, unless you buy your character from EBay, by the time you reach 65 you'll be an expert. They have made the game more accessible, but not substantially easier.

Sigil is making a game designed to be a little tougher, even. That's no surprise however, because Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler were the original architects of EverQuest. They believe whole-heartedly that games should provide challenge. That players enjoy it more when they overcome tougher obstacles. They are designing their upcoming game, Vanguard: Saga of Heros, to represent the "old way" of RPG gaming. We'll see how it works out, and whether people will enjoy their decision to keep things tougher.

Companies like Microsoft and Turbine Entertainment are betting the other way. Both companies have released games, such as Asheron's Call, and Asheron's Call 2, with a focus on making it "easy" to make progress. Players are rewarded often and with little-or-no consiquences for failure. The idea here is that people like to win. Players want to succeed, they don't want to throw their keyboard and mouse in frustration. Being frustrated by a high difficulty or by failure in the face of victory, is not their bag. They would rather tilt the scale in the player's favor to have them experience the thrill of victory.

It's a sound concept, and for the mass-market I think it's generally applicable. But how many victories does it take before winning doesn't mean much anymore?

That's what I'm starting to think about. In my opinion it's important to challenge the player. I think a steady progression of difficulty is key. I think the way difficulty was handled in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was good. They made you work for, if you wanted to. You could zoom through it (unfortuntely like I did the first time through), but if you really dug through the game, there is a steady challenge there. For RPGs that's key. As the characters become stronger, the challenges must become greater.

I point to Zelda: The Ocarina of Time as a wonderful example of a game that challenges. Not by increasing the difficulty just ahead of the player's abilities, but rather by providing strategic challenges, requiring new thinking, or re-working of older ideas.

I believe that challenge is integral to good game design. I also believe that making a game hard simply to keep players stuck in the game is the wrong way to do it. I believe that making the game playable by everyone, winable by everyone, and enjoyable by everyone is _very very_ hard. Using the lowest common denominator is not a solution, as unfortunately several companies have recently done. I think people should work for the larger victories, but throw a handful of success at the player throughout the game. Keeping your player in a good mood is important. Having a puzzle that is sure to keep someone stuck for a few hours is NOT good. Leave clues in creative places. Make them work for it, but don't make them throw their keyboard.

Balance. It's always about balance, and that's completely dependant upon the game design. Saying "balance" is the cheap way out of this debate, so I'll say it: I like easier games that include several key (and major!) challenges. I don't like being frustrated, and I like leveling-up at a pretty good clip, and getting stronger, and feeling like I can achieve something even with only a 30-minute sitting. I don't like games that require me to work for 4 hours to move on to the next thing. I like smaller victories that lead me up to larger challenges. The larger challenges should provide a strategic difficulty that challenges my brain, not my freetime. I'm willing to work for something good, but you have to entertain me between life-and-death situations.

I'm weak like that. I still love shmups, F-Zero, and Ninja Gaiden -- and when I finish them I relish the victory more than say... finishing Zelda: The Wind Waker. But I sure loved finishing SW:KotOR... a decidedly easy-ish game.

One last thing: length should not dictate difficulty. A game should not be made difficult simply by forcing the player to put time in. This is the problem with many of these new MMORPGs. They make them easier, but that means the difficulty comes from the time it takes to make any _real_ progress.

Get it?

What do you think? Let's hear it!

-lok

I'm with Zodiakos; I want to make games that I want to play. I think that it's very difficult to pour yourself into a game for a week, a month, or three years, however long, if you wouldn't want to play it yourself.

That said, I think difficulty is something that is more in the eye of the beholder than anything else. An adjustable difficulty does help a lot, but I think you also have to look at where the difficulty is coming from. I know that if something is difficult, but it's difficult in a fair way, then it's an awful lot more fun than if it just cheats to be difficult. By way of example:

Some games make up for having very weak AI by basically allowing the computer to know where the player is at all times, even when the player can't know where the computer player is. I've always found this frustrating and stupid; I'm pretty sure computer players in multiplayer Warcraft II worked this way, and I hated it.

On the other hand, shmups that have difficult shot patterns or action games that throw tough but reasonable fights at you, I think have a sweeter (as locke said) victory to them than easy games. It was a much bigger deal to beat a level in Doom's Thy Flesh Consumed episode than in Knee Deep in the Dead, simply because the fourth episode was so very much harder, but it still wasn't cheap.

Anyway, I've just managed to ramble incoherently and redundantly; hopefully I made some good points somewhere. Also, Zodiakos, the idea of a "behind-the-scenes" gallery is awesome, and I may have 'borrow' the idea from you some time. ^_^

Okay, now for an on-topic response.

Fun, for me, is not about dificulty in a game; It is about simplicity of design combined with complexity in strategy. Yes, the Othello school of thought.

My favorite games never tend to be that difficult, but their simple rules combine into infinitly awesome experiences. These games are usually best when non-ais are your opponents. Games like M.U.L.E., Moonbase Commander, Settlers of Catan, Netrunner, MoM, MoO...

Applied to RPGs, this design theory still holds water; games likr FFX and Pokemon had very highly evolved, simple battle systems. Balances and counterbalances. A delicate game of give and take, often in Ro-Sham-Bo style. The games were still a step from perfect, as there were many fight-winning moves in FFX, and a few in Pokemon... I long for the day when even your super-ultra-I'm-gunna-kick-your-ass move can be countered if the enemy has foresight.

...

That's all I got. Leave me alone, I just woke up. ;)

The funny thing is though, is that despite it being easy beyond all imagination, Symphony of the Night is considered by many to be one of the best games on the playstation. Even a game being too easy doesn't necessarily mean it's not fun, apparently. I guess 'fun' is a subjective and hard to quantify property, sort of like 'beauty' and 'love'.

Let's face it, no progammer/game designer finishes a game with the intention of it being unfun (unless you are Derek Smart). Despite all precautions a person can take while creating their game, the determination of whether it's interesting, good to look at, and enjoyable to play can only be made after the game is somewhat complete. However, we, the verge community, and indy game designers in general, have one leg up on the commercial world - they work on deadlines, we have until the day we die(and maybe longer, if a family member takes on the responsibility). If the game we are creating turns out not to be fun, we can go through it and change it until it no longer resembles it's original form, if that's what it takes.

"Easy" is more likely to be fun than "hard". The original Sonic on Genesis was very easy, but is a classic game loved by everyone unless they don't. But R-Type is a classic too, and who in the world ever completed a game like that without cheating?

There was a Mega Drive side scrolling shooter called "Gaires" (jap only, I think) back in the day, and I spent quite a while playing it, and getting only as far as the second level. Then I found a cheat to provide invincibility, and completed it using that cheat. It was fun doing this, if just to see the rest of the game, but it also made it pointless to ever play the game again, because it proved to me that completing the game without cheating would be an actual impossibility, so why bother trying? I can confidently say that I believe no one has ever completed it legitimately.
That's an example of ruining a game by making it fun but also making it too hard. Whuch I think must be the worst combination of funness/difficulty, because at least if it's no fun you don't care if it's too difficult.
It's often said that a game has a shorter lifespan if it's easy, and that players will lose interest faster. Using the above example of Sonic again, I still occasionally play this game, 13 years after I first played it, despite it being very easy. This is because it's fun. Whereas I've not touched Gaires since.

But with RPGs the story is the most important thing. No one plays an RPG for the enjoyment of endless random battles, after all. The happy medium is the Holy Grail for RPGs, because (as Blues mentioned) you don't want to bog down the story by getting the player stuck at stupidly difficult bits that take either luck or weeks of levelling-up to pass. But you also don't want to make it too easy for them, because sailing through an RPG with ease makes it all too easy to ignore the story completely (Grandia II). Providing a challenge, making the player work, but not against all the odds, makes it a more rewarding experience, and involves the player more with the game.

Although, you can make the game pretty easy to complete, but still evilly-difficult to complete fully. FFVII being a prime example, in which you could fight the likes of Ruby Weapon and Emerald Weapon, but in no way had to. What the hell was that all about anyway? I never got close to beating those bastards, so I don't know what happened afterwards.

Oh, and one thing that makes RPGs less fun: showing enemies' HP. Like with Shining Force, it takes all the satisfaction away from defeating a boss if you KNOW you're going to be able to do it. It's not good or realistic to be able to think: "He's got 70 hp, and I know my special attack does 20 hp damage, so all I have to do is use my special attack in the first two rounds, then heal, then get my wizard chum to cast "inferno". And there's nothing he can do about it". Planning such as this takes away all the suspense, and it's always much more rewarding to defeat a boss just as you're beginning to think he's going to live forever. And something else that's not fun: bosses that heal themselves. Developers! If your bosses don't have enough HP, give them more HP to begin with, you morons! Don't annoy the player by making it seem as if their efforts have been to no avail because the boss can heal endlessly! Or if you do give them the ability to heal, at least make their MP (or whatever) visible or something. But preferably neither.

Here endeth my rant.

Quote:Originally posted by resident

For the record, a one credit finish of R-Type is eminently feasible, and I know of a gent who has completed it in a single life.
Heh, don't we all? :)
And I know of someone who won the lottery, but the odds were still 40 million to 1. :P

Also, I wasn't trying to say that making a game easy makes it good... I meant that it's more likely to be enjoyable if it's easy than if it's impossibly difficult.

Exactly, that's what I mean. The happy medium = the perfect difficulty curve.

But if you have a good game, you ruin it by making it too difficult. Only a very strange person indeed enjoys spending £40 (or whatever) on a game where they constantly die, never progress, and get extremely frustrated simply because they aren't good enough at it. There's can be no enjoyment in that. Whether or not a game is fun is not decided by the level of difficulty, but it is influenced by it. All I am saying is that it's easier to ruin a fun game by making it too difficult than by making it too easy.

I am polluting this thread with a one line reply.

Quote:Originally posted by ThinIce

I am polluting this thread with a one line reply.
Long texts make my head hurt.

I think with the "bosses healing" thing I mean with more of a PS/FF style battle system. I don't know what FF Tactics is like, but with a Shining Force style battle system it obviously isn't a problem.
I can't remember what it was called, but I played a SNES rpg ages ago where you would attack the boss for a few rounds, and he would attack you... Then in one fell swoop he'd heal himself, undoing all your work over the previous rounds. To me, that's just plain annoying. And this would happen time and again, presumably until his magic points ran out. I'm not against hard battles at all, they're absolutely necessary and desirable in every RPG. But bosses that can heal themselves up like that annoy me. Still, that's a matter of individual preference. I just happen to prefer bosses that don't cheat. :)