A Few Thoughts On Difficulty

I just finished Order of Ecclesia, making it the second “difficult” game (besides Mega Man 9) that I’ve completed without finding it notably tough.  Since the likelihood of me getting better at games is essentially nil, I can only conclude that the complaints result more from a shift in gamers rather than a real shift in games - particularly because both Castlevania and Mega Man are historically known as being hard.

So a few thoughts on difficulty, along with some key questions I think they raise, in no particular order:

Most of the people noting this difficulty cut their teeth on NES and Genesis games that were truly hard, prior to growing up and becoming game journalists and commentators.  They often remember these games fondly even though now they view them less happily.  Similarly, their tastes have shifted on issues like game length (preferring shorter games to longer, for example) or motifs (leaning towards sophistication in narrative, characters, and innovation that was not previously critical).  Can an individual fairly evaluate games when audience members have such drastically different priorities and tolerances for issues like difficulty?  Are these even fair criteria to begin with?

I’m playing Gears 2 now and the game seems ridiculously easy to me on Normal.  The checkpoint system saves you each time you’re about to confront a task, meaning that the game is essentially decomposed into a series of mini-scenarios (kill the Brumak, get across the ice lake).  But ironically, the tasks themselves may be difficult because of chance: the ice lake requires you to memorize a pattern but the execution of the driving can often result in repeated and instant kills.   Is there a way to assess difficulty based on skills being tested rather than as an absolute?

In that vein, a classification: some games test physical reflexes - these games reward flawless execution of a specific task.  More sophisticated forms of this game require a series of tasks, forming skill-set groupings like in Mega Man.  Other games test thinking: puzzle games or adventure games require you to think in a certain way to progress (and thus may be more difficult than even the prior games).  A third type of game may reward you for creativity or the ability to juggle objects or concepts.  Basic platformers like later Mario games might squeeze in here, becaus of their varied item set, or Spore, where creativity is its own reward (and hindrance).  A fourth might be termed application games, where the difficulty stems from the player’s ability to apply external knowledge to a simulated environment: sports games, like Madden, fit in here.  Finally, strategy games reward the ability to plan effectively and execute against that strategy. 

I’m sure there are more, and these slots aren’t perfect, but my point is that each rewards different things: it would be bad if Mega Man didn’t punish you for missing pinpoint jumps, because that’s how success in the game is defined.  Similarly, if Civilization required twitch reflexes, that would be bad as well, because that’s not the tested skill: the game should be assessed on whether or not it punishes you for bad strategy.  If it does, it should be reasonably difficult (or at least adjustable)… but making it hard to lose means that you learn nothing from the game, because it doesn’t help you improve your designated skills. 

So there’s my proposal on how to evaluate difficulty on its own terms: what type of challenge does the game purport to offer - and does the game deliver that challenge, requiring a reasonable amount of skill in that area to proceed?   In this way, I think both Gears and Castlevania are appropriately difficult, even though individuals’ mileage may vary.

Giving Thanks

I doubt I’ll be the only one doing this, but given how much we complain about the state of the gaming industry, it’s worth giving thanks for a whole assortment of improvements it’s undergone over the past years.  My gaming life started with the NES in 1986, and despite the assorted headaches, I’ve come a long way. 

A few of the things I’m thankful for this year:

• The sheer profusion of games.  When I began playing my NES, as I saw it, there were a lot of games.   If I could have seen the exponential increase in games that we enjoy today, for all sorts of platforms, I would have been shocked.
• The improvement in quality.  For all that I nitpick the latest releases, there are more AAA games today that at any point in history, and more developers rolling them out into the market.
• The increase in choice.  When I started with my console, PC gaming was still getting its legs underneath of it, and so my choices came down to an NES or a Gameboy (and later, a Genesis).  Today we have three consoles, two handhelds, a burgeoning mobile market and a robust PC universe.  And thanks to multiplatform, I can pick and choose from the best.
• Relatively reasonable pricing.  Sure, I pay $60 for a game that cost $50 a few years ago, but think about the rate: it’s a 20% increase over twenty years.  Had the cost gone up only by 2% inflation over that same period, that $60 game would be $75.  Considering the associated cost increases, I think we’ve gotten a pretty good deal.
• Greater ambitions.  In 1986, people wanted to try the next new thing.  Now we have a whole range of ambitious developers and thoughtful commentators who are trying to make games both fun and thoughtful.  This is a great luxury and one we shouldn’t overlook.
• The chance to play what I want.  Along with the increased market size have come new genres, new franchises, and the chance to be choosy.  The past year or two have been simply amazing in terms of the number of great games I’ve played, and I’m grateful I’ve gotten the opportunity.

Feel free to leave your own thanks in the comments…

Stockpiling

A recent blog mentioned (I can’t find the link any more) how many games they had still in the shrinkwrap, and an NPD study discovered that up to 33% of gamers are behaving similarly.  Yet this behavior seems - at least at first glance - to be completely irrational.  You seem to derive no benefit from a game you haven’t played, and the same game that costs $60 today will be discounted, sometimes heavily, as few as three months into the future.  This is true in gaming even more than other pasttimes, where the hot title of today is the bargain bin stuffer of the future.  A wait of even a few months, when you finish your current backlist, would be financially and personally lucrative.

Why, then, do people buy games they can’t use?

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An Interesting Season

As Penny Arcade so artfully notes, this is indeed a rough month or so for gamers - albeit in a good way.  One odd question, though: it seems like the “holiday season” gets earlier and earlier each and every year.  Normally, we might expect the biggest titles to begin coming out a little after Thanksgiving, in time for the Christmas/Chanukah gift-giving extravaganza.

But each year, it seems like this time window pulls back bit by bit.  One possible explanation for this might be simply rational behavior on the part of game companies: if you expect your competitors to go to the market in mid-December, you’ll avoid competing as directly if you try to make your own game reach its audience a little earlier.  Of course, everyone has the same thought, so the end result is simply to push the crunch slightly earlier in the year rather than actually alleviating it. 

At the same time, this strategy only really makes sense if you think your title doesn’t have a clear likelihood of success.  If you think it can outcompete the other products, you’ll happily throw it up against the competition, and you’ll do so as early as possible.  Committing publicly (and irrevocably) to move close to a given date means that your competitors can see how serious you are, realize that they aren’t likely to outsell you, and move their dates up or back.  You win by default.  To the extent that this doesn’t happen, I can only assume that the risks - of being able to make the designated ship date, of knowing whether or not your property is so clearly stronger than the competition - are just too unknowable or quantifiable enough to justify acting on.

But let me suggest a drastic alternative.  I’ve often complained about the rush to publish in the winter holidays at the expense of barren spring or summer months.  This clearly has negative financial impacts - people can only buy so many games at once and so even a period that results in a lot of sales for a few titles consigns many more to the loser pile.  But the rest of the calendar carries enough extra empty space that it could presumably do just fine if people pushed their ship dates ahead or behind by several months rather than weeks. 

It also makes less and less sense to push things back the earlier it goes.  At some point, you’re so far removed from the holiday period that it no longer pays to keep moving the dates.  Can we consider this as a possibility next year?

Housing Markets And Peripheral Profusion

Given that presumably the market can only bear so many peripherals of any type, I found it interesting that retailers are apparently playing bad cop in this situation and telling publishers that they have no more room for music game peripherals. 

One of the biggest points of confusion in this, or any, industry is that the market is supposed to regulate supply and demand efficiently by making sure that only a profitable level of any good is produced.  But as we’ve seen time and time again, little bubbles develop in which publishers chase the latest “hot” game type (whether Wii sport title, Xbox FPS, or whatever) until people are so sick of them that very few are profitable.  The bubble bursts, people move on to the next big thing, and the cycle continues. 

The parallels to the housing markets are probably inevitable, but it’s interesting to see that retailers can act as an industry emergency brake when it comes to these items.  Normally, the market wouldn’t self-regulate quite so efficiently.

LittleBigProblem *Updated*

I have to admit that I’m more than a little confused about the news that LittleBigPlanet is being delayed because they licensed music that contains “expressions that can be found in the Qu’ran”.  And… nothing.  They offer no explanation as to why this would prevent the game’s release.  They simply say that they are taking “immediate action to rectify this.”  What exactly are they “rectifying”?

I thought… maybe there’s a copyright dispute? But I’m pretty sure that the Qu’ran isn’t copyrighted, and they certainly don’t make any mention of what exactly the issue is that some background music happens to quote “expressions” from the Qu’ran.  The only other explanation I can think of would be that the “expressions” were actually pushing a religious message, but if that’s the case, Sony certainly hasn’t made that clear.

Sony says that they “apologise for any offence this may have caused,” but I think the fact that they’re actually delaying a game for seemingly no other reason that some background music contains some unidentified passages from the Qu’ran.  That’s some nice PR work there, Sony.

*Update*

Kotaku has the offending “expressions” that caused the game to get delayed:

1- In the 18th second: “كل نفس ذائقة الموت” (”kollo nafsin tha’iqatol mawt”, literally: ‘Every soul shall have the taste of death’).

2- Almost immediately after, in the 27th second: “كل من عليها فان” (”kollo man alaiha fan”, literally: ‘All that is on earth will perish’).

Does this justify the recall?  Perhaps it seems slightly more reasonable with this… having a message about dying in a sort of happy, family game like LittleBigPlanet may not really mesh well.  On the other hand, it’s not so much a religious message as much as it is sort of a depressing one.  I think Sony could’ve done a much better job explaining this rather than just saying that they needed to remove them because they were in the Qu’ran.

Release the Devil

I’m sure by now that you’ve seen all the great new movies and hands-on impressions of Diablo 3 (here’s one such example).  It looks and sounds like it’s going to be a blast when it’s finally released.

But there’s the problem… For us unpatient folks, Blizzard just takes too damn long to release their games.  It’s actually with some relief to me that they announced that Starcraft II is going to be rolled out as a trilogy, because frankly, the thing probably wouldn’t be released until 2011 or later if they didn’t break it up.

In any case, Diablo III is probably still a long way away.  It’s true that no official release date has been announced for the game, but if I had to wager a guess, I’d say it won’t be released until 6-12 months after the first Starcraft II is released, and that probably won’t be released until late next year.  So my question is, with the demo looking extremely fun and everyone enjoying it, why don’t they just release this small taste of the game to satiate, but also excite, the ever-patient Diablo fans?  They don’t even have to enable online-play… just release a single-player snippet of the game.

Yes, I’m partially joking here, but in all honesty, why don’t companies release small samples of their games a bit early when they clearly have something people like?  Are they worried that an early demo will somehow reduce sales?  I don’t think they have anything to worry about in the case of Diablo 3.

I’m Sure They Appreciate The Help

According to this Joystiq post, Sony is actually rooting for Microsoft to succeed in Japan, if for no other reason than that it promotes HD gaming over Nintendo’s own strategy.  I’m sure that they’re grateful, but does this really make much sense?  I’m not really convinced.

Let me pose a question: how many gamers, who previously owned a Playstation 2, XBox, or other third party device now exclusively own a Wii?  I’m guessing it’s a fairly small amount.  That’s because the basic premise of the Wii is quite smart: that gaming doesn’t require cutting-edge technology to be compelling.  I completely agree, and I think most people would too.  But Sony’s hope presupposes that gamers have been “convinced” by the Wii and that they will stay with this revelation for the foreseeble future.  Most gamers are an ecumenical bunch, and will purchase consoles that they think provide the most fun. 

The genius of the Wii is that it got people who weren’t interested in gaming to participate, in addition to attracting many gamers themselves.  But I think Sony is probably kidding themselves if they think each console is a freestanding argument.  People buy what’s fun; increasing 360 sales say a lot about what people think of the 360, but people aren’t going to make console purchases on some abstract principle.

Silent’s savvy sales strategy or dumb distribution dilemma?

I took a trip to Blockbuster tonight to return Lego Batman (which I do NOT recommend, but that’s for another post) and to see if they had Silent Hill: Homecoming available to rent.  I took a brief look around the store and didn’t see a case for it, so I asked an employee if they had it.  She checked a few places but then concluded that they did not.  Not just that they didn’t have it in stock, but they actually didn’t carry it.

I was disappointed, but figured maybe the nearby, larger blockbuster carried it.  They called and it was the same story: they didn’t carry it.  I thought it was rather strange since the game has been out about a week now and is somewhat of a moderately hyped game in a long-running series, so after getting in my car I called one more nearby blockbuster to see if they had it.  The guy I spoke to knew exactly what game I was talking about as soon as I mentioned it and was actually quite enthusiastic about it, but then went on to say that he was disappointed that, for some reason, they just didn’t get any copies from the publisher.

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$6,000,000 for doing it wrong

Blizzard has won a lawsuit against the creators of bot software for World of Warcraft called “Glider”.  I actually hadn’t been following this before, but personally, I find at least part of Blizzard’s reasoning for the lawsuit to be patently ridiculous.  In the original story, they stated:

“Blizzard’s designs expectations are frustrated, and resources are allocated unevenly, when bots are introduced into the WoW universe, because bots spend far more time in-game than an ordinary player would and consume resources the entire time.”

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