No mortal is immune to the brief, blinding moment where our seemingly invincible character topples to its knees and all you want to do is see how well your computer can fly. A mighty bronze colossus that once gracefully strode amongst the sea of trembling pixels; the symbol of adversity; the paradigm of all hope for this world’s existential crisis. No matter what the game may be, it has always engineered a way of making you lose all faith in humanity as it snatches life from between your fingers and tosses you back in time to make a vague point on your own futility.
Since the oozingly sadistic age of the arcade cabinet, death and therefore difficulty is a habit that games have refused to discard. Back in the day (that I speak so audaciously of, despite the fact that I did not, in fact, exist) games were hard because dying meant, vicariously, that the CEO of Atari would drive a slightly more luxurious car home to his mansion on Mt Everest. Nowdays when Bobby Kotick returns home to his emerald palace astride the moon, in his golden spaceship, he doesn’t have to worry about how many times the player has clawed their way up onto the arcade cabinet and furiously jammed a few more dollars into its jeering maw. No dear people, the game has changed but the pieces are roughly in the same place, suggesting that there may be more to the translation of game difficulty into the 21st century than mere die-hard conventions.
When a game wishes to impart a certain atmosphere upon the player, it will envelope them in carefully crafted environments and intelligent story-telling in order to reflect the themes that the game wishes to advocate. Essentially, a traditional view of design pertaining to way the game draws the player into the world will usually involve a number of such tangible elements in order to immerse the player. But what about the use of gameplay? Gameplay, although integral to the “game”, has become only an ancillary feature to the way in which the player will feel integrated into the world, and this is simply perplexing. Although it represents the way in which the player will accomplish goals within the game, gameplay is what, and still what should represent the way in which the character would behave in relation to the world; a feature as important to world building as the careful design of narrative and everything that it encompasses. But how can this be broken down? The systems within gameplay aside, one particular idea that took my mind by storm and after four months coaxed me into writing this article; this concept was difficulty.
STALKER, STALKER, whatever. I am going to mention STALKER again. Because I can… and it’s topical. It is quite likely that most who attempted to tame STALKER left its cage with missing arms and shattered pride, and immediately cursed the game due to its difficulty, proceeding to tell everyone how bad it was because it was just so damn unpleasant. But instead of chaulking this down as a failure, I’d like to think of it as a roaring success that only a few choose to recognise. Protip gang: the postapocalypse was not really supposed to be easy. While STALKER was appendix burstingly hard, it held itself with dignity; it was not about to forego its difficulty and sacrifice the experience that it intends to deliver. It was hot, it stayed in the sun. For the sake of the proles, I am now going to draw comparison to an equally shooty, equally post apocalyptic game. Fallout 3.
Fallout 3 never forced its difficulty upon the player.
Where STALKER used its difficulty (albeit, more functionally following some successful mods) as a tool to create a certain world atmosphere, Fallout 3 stuck to its guns and used difficulty as a tool of satire. Fallout 3 was conscious of its gameplay choices and reflected them in its central themes – the creation of a light hearted experience, despite its visceral gore – ultimately taking the polar opposite route of STALKER. Where STALKER used its apparent difficulty to reflect the challenges that would be faced within its universe, Fallout 3 used its difficulty to aid its humour; its irony in a world that was clearly created for your own entertainment.
Yet despite its focus, Fallout 3 has often prompted me to look further afield for mods that would alter the way in which the gameplay behaves, making it a more engaging experience. Perhaps Fallout 3 feels conflicted in its approaches: create a post apocalyptic survival shooter, or dance around the satire tree with your gun in the air and your scotch on the rocks. Where STALKER has a well established tone, Fallout 3 is locked in conflict between the complexity of engagement between the player and enemy NPCS, and maintaining its overall theme and feel; culminating in this ever so slightly awkward melange that leaves just a hint to be desired. If anything, Fallout 3 is the superior example in demonstrating the impact of gameplay on themes, through how “uncertain” design can create thematic confusion.
I’m not convinced that the idea of gameplay complexity through difficulty is something that games have ignored as you could look into just about anything and find fragments of gameplay that support the world they empower. Even if it is just Gordon Freeman’s MIT PhD paying off through cart-pushery and lever-throwery. But on the whole, it is not something that I’ve seen actively addressed, even if it is through something as simple as identifying how difficulty can reflect and strengthen the themes and colour the world.
Or maybe I’m just a rancorous old fool with his mind in too many dimensions and his hands on a computer.