For my first post in this venue, I'm going to pontificate on something that I've been contemplating for a long time. Most would say too long, in fact.
Quick background: I've been playing videogames since I was eight years old, and my first system was the SNES, which was purchased about three months after it came out. Something I noticed pretty quickly about the launch lineup was that the games were pretty challenging. It took me several months to beat Super Mario World, and I threw my controller at the ground in frustration during Pilotwings more times than I care to admit. That said, the challenge was a double-edged sword, in that as I was getting my ass kicked playing these things, I was actually getting better. In fact, I got really good at all sorts of SNES games, and would continue to hone my skills with the N64, PSX, Xbox, etc. Name something really hard from those systems, and there's a good chance I've beaten it.
Fast-forward to the current generation of consoles: we are now in a dramatically different world. Gaming is inarguably a mainstream activity, as evidenced by its overpowering of music and movies in gross revenues. Ex-nerds such as myself haven't just stopped hiding our parephenalia; we're actually going out of our way to show it off. A number of factors have contributed to this, concerning which we've all heard about improved graphics, the lure of online interaction (check out the SFIV post on this blog for more analysis there), and the explosion of casual gaming outlets on cell phones and the internet. What often goes unacknowledged -- even actively ignored -- is that as videogames have become more popular, they've gotten much easier. The casual link is pretty hard to deny, in that your chances of getting someone hooked on a game improve dramatically if they're not constantly throwing down the controller in anger. Makes perfect sense, in fact, and I would argue that without the "dumbing-down" of difficulty that gaming has experienced over the past decade, the expansion would never have happened.
Which is all well and good...............until people go overboard and turn 90% of the games out there into an unmitigated cakewalk. And I'd argue that while we're not quite there yet, emerging trends tell me that we're going to be there soon.
It all started out so innocently, too: instead of making someone play a game through in one sitting, let's establish save points. How about health refills mid-level? Maybe even checkpoints so beating a level within an hour or so is possible, as opposed to mindless trial-and-error sessions. Perhaps items that can be used at will in times of emergency? Better defense mechanisms? So far, so good. I'd argue that it became bad right around the release of BioShock, a game in which you literally cannot die. Ever. Well, at least permanently: once you're beaten, shot, stabbed, whatever, you resurrect in a Vita-Chamber, which never seems to be anymore than a couple of rooms away from where you died. The kicker here is that the enemies are just as injured as when you die, so ankle-biting to death is very possible. I recently saw this trend rear its ugly head again in the most recent Prince of Persia, a game in which it is not possible to die in any way, shape or form. And it ain't just confined to consoles: Blizzard's most recent expansion to WoW has made raiding easy to the point where it has essentially taken all the pride out of beating an encounter. Even more mainstream stuff like Fable II is a tad scary; great game, but you can't die.
Am I overreacting? Yeah, probably: I'll be the first one to admit that not everyone is a glutton for punishment that just would not put down the controller until they beat Devil May Cry III. Or God of War II. That is the special area in which bizarre folks like me dwell happily. But I think that once you completely eliminate the possibility of failure from a videogame, it cheapens the experience. Why do I care about jumping over a pit if I'm saved from every mistake? Why take the time to figure out how to beat a boss if the whole thing turns into button-mashing with no consequences? Conversely, does it help that some developers churn out insanely hard games to compensate, even if those games are hard because of cheap stuff like repeatedly subjecting your character to unavoidable damage? I might be different, but one of the main reasons I play new games (something of a rare occurrence these days, unfortunately) is to feel a sense of accomplishment once I've beaten them. That's why I spent all those long nights raiding in Hyjal Summit and Black Temple (pre-3.0 nerf, thank you very much!). It also is why I literally would not stop fighting Zeus at the end of GoW II until he had been beaten. Sure, an experience is a great thing, but I still love that feeling of accomplishment. It's what keeps me coming back.
And I sure as hell would like to retain an element of challenge in my gaming experience. Sure, Devil May Cry III was ridiculously hard, but it was difficult in an old-school way: if you die, it's because you did something stupid. Granted, I wouldn't want all games to be that difficult, but are death penalties really so bad? Are gamers so fragile that they'll ditch a game just as soon as it starts to make them sweat? The recent "reconfiguration" of Midnight Club LA (*cough*nerf*cough*) suggests that may be the case, concerning which I think there needs to be a distinction between games that are unfair, and games that merely force the player to avoid sucking.
Here's hoping the latter doesn't fade into the sunset.
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