A recent look back at some nemesis games raised one question over and over again: have games gotten easier recently?  Now, some may inclined to simply make the argument that we, as gamers, have simply gotten better at games on average as time has gone by, but that dodges the issue.  Instead, to really analyze this question, we first have to ask “what makes a game difficult?”

There are, of course, many answers to that question: intricate puzzles, tricky jumps, and twitch timing are all elements that can contribute to a game’s overall level of challenge.  At core of the matter, however, is something more critical.  In general, the difficulty of games can be broken down into two fundamental categories: challenges that, when encountered and failed at, a gamer says “I know what I did wrong there” vs. those that, following defeat, a gamer says “I don’t know what I did wrong.”

The second category, games that leave you unaware of what you did wrong, tend to be the most frustrating types of games out there.  Many older games covered up poor level design and game mechanic flaws with ridiculous difficulty.  Deadly Towers, an old NES game, is a prime example of this: it was incredibly easy to lose at this game, and you usually wouldn’t know why.  Things that looked harmless would kill you, or poor control would make you physically unable to avoid random assaults of enemies.  It was the kind of game that would lead to you hurling your controller through your wall.  There are piles of retro games that fit this category, and I’m sure most people can think of several off the top of their head.

Everything in this image will kill you.

Unfortunately, this type of game persists even through today, though in general the issues are not quite as egregious.  Persona 3, an otherwise excellent game, could lead to many of these moments due to the hero’s death causing you to lose the game instantly.  It was very easy for a player to end up in a battle with the wrong persona equipped and suddenly find themselves at a game over screen without even having the chance to act.  This is not indicative of real difficulty, but more of poor game design.

On the flip side of this are games with real difficulty, the kind that makes a player understand what they did wrong, and how they can go about changing failure into success.  It could be something as simple as a difficult jump, such as the wall jumping introduction in Super Metroid; once the game showed you what to do, it was up to you to practice until you got the timing right.  More complex examples of this range from disappearing block pattern memorization in various Mega Man games to figuring out exactly what kind of skill balance your party needs in Tales of Vesperia to make a tough battle a little more winnable. Even level grinding, though not particularly indicative of good game design, is at least an understandable challenge: just get out there and get some more EXP, and you will overcome.

Does the sound of these blocks haunt your dreams?

Now, the key factors here are understanding and improvement.  Presenting a player with an understandable challenge, having them fail at it and incur a suitable penalty, but providing a way for them to eventually improve and overcome is the cornerstone of “good” difficulty in games.

The issue that is being raised with many more recent games is the removal of failure and penalty from the equation.  If you take away the option of failing, and any associated penalties, then you also remove the necessity for improvement.

Bioshock has been one of the most cited games in discussions about the “simplification” of games, and taking a look at the game’s death system, you can see why.  Throughout the whole of Rapture are Vita-Chambers.  When the player is killed, they are instantly revived at the closest Vita-Chamber.  This, on the surface, is a very common “checkpoint” system, a game standard for many years.  The difference here is that, upon revival, is that nothing is reset since the previous player life.  That is, the player has all of their equipment exactly as they did upon death, all enemies that they killed remain dead, and any enemies that they may have hurt or traps they may have set remain as-is.

Vita-Chambers mean never having to say you’re sorry.

The net result of this is that players, upon encountering a difficult situation or enemy (such as a Big Daddy) have little incentive to deal with them in a clever manner. Since the player knows that they will be brought back to life a few rooms away in the event that they are killed, they can run into to any situation, guns blazing, and see how things go.  If they win, they win.  If they don’t, they just pick back up right where they left off and finish the job, no matter how many tries it takes.  First of all, this takes away any sense of tension on the part of the gamer; losing doesn’t matter, so why worry about it?  Secondly, it means there is no incentive to deal with challenges creatively, as brute force will eventually win the day.

Other recent games have followed this trend of removing failure penalties.  Prince of Persia featured your sidekick character Elika who would save you from any failed jump you made, as well as revive you should you fall in battle.  Again, with no penalty for failure, players had little incentive to worry about trying to get things right on the first try.  Why bother thinking about how to make a jump when you can instead simply hurl yourself out there and see what happens, knowing failure doesn’t matter?

Much of this trend of removing penalty has been done in the name of making games more accessible to a larger audience.  Others would say that since a gamer paid their $50 or $60 dollars, they should expect to be able to get through a game with no problems.  While both of these arguments do have merit, there is a larger issue: satisfaction.

For most gamers, beating a game that didn’t present any challenge will usually leave them feeling unfulfilled, a  sense that their victory was a hollow one.  Facing difficulty, understanding it, and then overcoming it is what truly gives most gamers a sense of achievement.  If they find games that don’t provide that, they will seek it elsewhere. Conversely, making games that are overly difficult by poor design will alienate a lot of newer gamers, and only the truly masochistic will play them through.  Striking that fine balance is an art, and one that every designer struggles with.  Unfortunately, in the modern gaming business world, the call for rapid development means that carefully balanced difficulty is often left on the cutting room floor, as it were.

So, in answer to the original question as to whether games are easier these days, the answer is “yes” overall.  Some of these easiness is due to better quality of controls and programming, and (general) improvements to design (which is a good thing), but part of it is also a willful choice on the part of designers.  The removal of tangible penalties from many games, or the inclusion of systems the forgive or allow a lack of quality play make things easier by their very definition.  Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is something that comes down to individual preference for the most part, and whether it is ultimately sustainable to keep games easy is something only time will tell.