IncendiaryDevice
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2014
- Messages
- 7,407
Do you always play on the 'hardest' difficulty setting a game developer provides for their game?
Do you tend to prefer the 'easy' difficulty?
Or are you (*looks left, looks right, speaks in hushed tones*) a Normie?
and, in a similar vein:
Do you only tend to like games where you're permanently challenged to your limits?
Do you prefer games that don't challenge you at all but provide general 'fun'?
Or do you prefer games that gradually elevate difficulty as the game progresses, with lots of comfort zones to help regain your motivation for another challenge?
The current 'news' in gaming is the trend toward pressuring gaming devs to include easier and easier easy settings while the natural equal and opposite reaction to this is for people to backlash popularity towards games that market themselves as "it's so hard, man, like, you're a real man if you can do that game, fuck the pussys, play me". Now, I dunno about you, but I'm a goldilocks gamer, and I'll explain why:
I've tried games that have 'easy' features. Games where you can't even turn off the hints. Games where you experience zero mental challenges and then suddenly find yourself at the end-game credits. [Admittedly, that last example was an extremely short game]. And what I find is that if I don't feel challenged at all then I quit. If a game starts off quite challenging but then descends into easy mode later in the game then it will depend on how much game is left, the desire for completion suddenly outweighing the desire to quit. But, for me, too easy=quit most of the time.
I've also tried games that I've found to be too hard. Games where the only hints are found on google. Games where the exhilaration of completing one small thing results in a problem twice as mind-bending not 1 minute later. And what I find is that after my third or fourth visit to google I start to completely lose any interest in continuing. After all, what's the point of copy-pasting a walkthrough onto your screen? That doesn't feel like gaming at all. I sometimes imagine that I'll do it 'properly' next time and turn the game off, think about the problem for an hour or two and then start it again, all the way through the game, but it never works like that, I don't game with the patience of someone planning to rob a bank in a hollywood movie, I game with a desire to be perpetually entertained, viscerally.
So what I found was that, for most games where there is a difficulty option, I naturally and routinely click 'normal' with virtually zero variation and the games I like the most are the traditional gaming format of having gradually elevating difficulty. I am a Goldilocks Gamer.
Traditionally, games didn't have difficulty settings. They had the 'start game' button and that was it. Traditionally, all games were designed for Goldilocks Gamers. And the game itself was either too hard or too easy or just right, and the art of game design was about getting this balance just right.
For me, and possibly anyone else who games similarly, the current wars about difficulty settings are utterly absurd and don't help at all with encouraging devs to produce 'better' games. For folks like me, any difficulty slider is a decline which distracts devs from their core duty of making a damn fine game.
I say: devs should just make their damn game and let people play or quit by their own standards.
Do you think 'hard' difficulty settings are just as retarded as 'easy' settings?
Or do you think Goldilocks Gamers are just as bad as 'easy' gamers?
Do you tend to prefer the 'easy' difficulty?
Or are you (*looks left, looks right, speaks in hushed tones*) a Normie?
and, in a similar vein:
Do you only tend to like games where you're permanently challenged to your limits?
Do you prefer games that don't challenge you at all but provide general 'fun'?
Or do you prefer games that gradually elevate difficulty as the game progresses, with lots of comfort zones to help regain your motivation for another challenge?
The current 'news' in gaming is the trend toward pressuring gaming devs to include easier and easier easy settings while the natural equal and opposite reaction to this is for people to backlash popularity towards games that market themselves as "it's so hard, man, like, you're a real man if you can do that game, fuck the pussys, play me". Now, I dunno about you, but I'm a goldilocks gamer, and I'll explain why:
I've tried games that have 'easy' features. Games where you can't even turn off the hints. Games where you experience zero mental challenges and then suddenly find yourself at the end-game credits. [Admittedly, that last example was an extremely short game]. And what I find is that if I don't feel challenged at all then I quit. If a game starts off quite challenging but then descends into easy mode later in the game then it will depend on how much game is left, the desire for completion suddenly outweighing the desire to quit. But, for me, too easy=quit most of the time.
I've also tried games that I've found to be too hard. Games where the only hints are found on google. Games where the exhilaration of completing one small thing results in a problem twice as mind-bending not 1 minute later. And what I find is that after my third or fourth visit to google I start to completely lose any interest in continuing. After all, what's the point of copy-pasting a walkthrough onto your screen? That doesn't feel like gaming at all. I sometimes imagine that I'll do it 'properly' next time and turn the game off, think about the problem for an hour or two and then start it again, all the way through the game, but it never works like that, I don't game with the patience of someone planning to rob a bank in a hollywood movie, I game with a desire to be perpetually entertained, viscerally.
So what I found was that, for most games where there is a difficulty option, I naturally and routinely click 'normal' with virtually zero variation and the games I like the most are the traditional gaming format of having gradually elevating difficulty. I am a Goldilocks Gamer.
Traditionally, games didn't have difficulty settings. They had the 'start game' button and that was it. Traditionally, all games were designed for Goldilocks Gamers. And the game itself was either too hard or too easy or just right, and the art of game design was about getting this balance just right.
For me, and possibly anyone else who games similarly, the current wars about difficulty settings are utterly absurd and don't help at all with encouraging devs to produce 'better' games. For folks like me, any difficulty slider is a decline which distracts devs from their core duty of making a damn fine game.
I say: devs should just make their damn game and let people play or quit by their own standards.
Do you think 'hard' difficulty settings are just as retarded as 'easy' settings?
Or do you think Goldilocks Gamers are just as bad as 'easy' gamers?
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