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Matthew Addison's avatar

Please do write more of these thoughts articles they're really good! I really think you have done a good job of highlighting the conflict I feel about difficulty settings in games. I always play games on the harder difficulties even for a first play through, but that's because of what I enjoy put of games. I like the challenge. But that's just me, and having adjustable settings wouldn't affect me at all I would just ignore them and battle on. Ultimately I think it's good they exist for others who want different things from games and still want to experience the same game as others and not be locked out of the conversation.

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InGameScientist's avatar

Thank you for your thoughtful and balanced insights on this often contentious discussion! I have a few thoughts of my own too.

1. I think part of the conflict you feel comes from your motivations to play a game (this is top of mind for me because I wrote about research into motivations for playing games a couple of weeks ago). Players who are hunting for achievements will likely appreciate the choice that a game like Elden Ring gives them in adjusting the difficulty on their own terms. On the flip side, making these players adjust a difficulty slider might “tarnish” their hunt for achievements. Players who want something else out of games (like just experiencing the story) will likely have no problems adjusting sliders to experience the story. I think individual player motivations often get overlooked or forgotten in this heated discussion.

2. Part of why I think this discussion gets heated is because sometimes people forget that accessibility isn’t one dimensional. Difficulty is one aspect of accessibility, but not the whole story. For example, if sound prompts are a big part of how you get through an encounter, no amount of difficulty slider adjustments (to reduce incoming damage etc.) will help someone who cannot hear. Instead, they’ll need a visual cue replacement. I am (fortunately) not disabled, so I don’t have a full understanding of what all the accessibility options could/should be, but if you are curious, I would highly recommend following Steven Spohn on Twitter/X as he is a big advocate for accessible gaming!

3. Finally, for “difficulty is the point” games, I think again, there’s a bit of a one-dimensional take on it. What is difficult can be different for people of different abilities. But that difficulty is usually programmed into games one dimensionally (for example, a series of well-timed controller inputs) and rightly so, since it would be almost impossible to think of all the different ways a player might experience difficulty, and then incorporate that into a game. What I feel like is missing is some thought to how someone could remap controller input difficulty into a different type of difficulty. That’s the limit of my understanding and knowledge though, so I’d love to hear some of your thoughts!

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