One commenter in a review a couple of months back said that they won’t change the difficulty level of a game from the default setting, because that’s how the developer intends players to play the game right out of the gate. Other comments popped up in response, suggesting that the default isn’t always what the developer wants, that sometimes it is the harder setting. Others pointed out that sometimes there’s not a default, and other times, a game doesn’t have a setting that most people consider to be the default: Normal.
Watching this debate made me think of something one of my grad school professors said about authors, that what they mean in a book or poem doesn’t matter, because they are dead to you. Obviously he didn’t literally mean that the authors are always dead, but that you don’t know them, they aren’t part of you, so what does it matter what they intend? Does the same theory apply to developers of games as well? Does it matter which difficulty level they intended gamers to play on? Then again, do they even have that intention when they develop games in the first place?
I asked a few developers about their thoughts on the matter, specifically asking them if they develop games with a set difficulty level in mind over the course of development. Here is what they had to say.
Does this change your perspective on the difficulty choices at all? I’m personally going to keep with my professor’s advice on books and apply it to games.
That said, do you have a difficulty preference when playing?
Dev Difficulty Preference
Frictional Games
Thomas Grip
Creative Director at Frictional Games
For us it is not so much difficulty as it is player behavior. When the player encounters certain situations in the game, we want them to act in a certain way. This often correlates to how "hard" a player feels like the game is though. For instance, when the player encounters a monster we want them to not feel like they can simply run away from it in an easy manner. We want the player to feel like they need to think about their next move, to hide and then execute their plan when they think the coast is clear. In order for this to work, the player needs to have a certain gameplay-related difficulty in managing the monster. We often have some sort of dynamic system in place here so that players that feel more confident get a harder time (thereby pushing them into a more careful mode) and, for already careful players, so they don't feel too frustrated. This sort of thing is not only about monsters though, but can be about items too. In a game like Amnesia: The Dark Descent , it is important that the player wants to search for tinderboxes and so forth. And in order for them to do so they need to feel like it is requirement in order to progress. In order to get players into this mood, there needs to be a certain amount of difficulty in managing light levels and that all items you find seem like a relief. Make it too easy and players no longer care about the items. Make it too difficult and it gets frustrating. Again there are some dynamic systems in place to handle a range of player skills and play-styles.
Paranoid Productions
Richard Rouse III
Director at Paranoid Productions
I'm a big fan of this saying, which may or may not have been said by Sid Meier, "There are three numbers of difficulty levels you can have in your game A) too many, B) too few, and C) four." Of course, that's probably not Sid Meier, because even the first Civilization had five difficulty levels, but I think it's a good rule of thumb anyway. It's particular fitting for action games, as four levels can capture Easy, Medium, Hard, and Impossible settings, regardless of what the game actually calls those levels. I think the default should be the second one, medium. Many players will just pick that because it's the default. Players who maybe haven't played much of a certain type of game before can go down to easy, while players who know they want it harder than normal have options. I also think that hard or impossible should be what the development team plays on most of the time, because the development team always gets better than what a new player who doesn't know the game will naturally be. Of course I don't intend for any of these to be the 'right' difficulty level to play with. It's all up to what sort of experience the player wants to have. My intention is to make something for as many different skill levels as possible, while keeping the core of the gameplay consistent. I actually wrote some of this up in a devblog post a while back: http://churchinthedarkness.tumblr.com/post/147752876069/this-may-be-apocryphal-but-i-once-heard-sid
William Chyr Studio
William Chyr
The man himself
Manifold Garden is a puzzle game that is intended to be played by everyone. While there aren't different difficulty settings to select from in the menu, the game does try to cater to different players in various ways. The opening level of the game is designed so that everyone can get through it. While there aren't text instructions, the level is very clear in communicating what skills the player is learning at each stage.
As the player progresses throughout the game, more of the puzzles become optional. They can lead to shortcuts or secret areas, but are there only for the hardcore puzzle enthusiasts. For someone that is playing the game more for the architecture and less for the puzzles, they can still complete the game with a satisfactory experience.
Flippfly
Aaron San Filippo
Flippfly Co-Owner
We've never designed a game with a difficulty setting the player could change. Instead, we try to make our games easy to get into for anyone, and then design the game to push back against players who really excel. For Race The Sun , this took the form of a multiplier mechanic, where players who wanted to get high-scores would need to take more risks within the game.
Red Barrels Studio
Philippe Morin
Red Barrels Co-Founder
I don’t think about difficulty when I’m working on a sequence. I focus on finding the fun and hitting the right emotion needed for that particular sequence. Once I think I’ve found the sweet spot, then I focus on balancing and clarity. Finally, we use playtests to fine-tune everything.
Proletariat, Inc.
Seth Sivak
CEO and Co-Founder
For every game I have worked on we have considered the difficulty level up front mainly because it is important when designing for a specific audience. A good example is Dark Souls and other games in that genre that are typically known for being brutally hard and the audience wants that. The same goes for something like Binding of Isaac or Darkest Dungeon where the expectation of rogue likes is that they will be harder than your average game with a steeper learning curve and often randomly unfair events.
It all totally depends on the game. For Streamline, we wanted to make the game easy to learn but have a high skill cap which means that good players can really take it to new players. We felt this is what the audience for the game would want an expect so we constantly balance the difficulty to make sure skill matters but also allow for some elements of randomness so even if it is your first time playing ever you could still theoretically win.