For the longest time, video games weren’t meant to be difficult, they were meant to be fun. During the arcade days of the industry, titles would have a certain level of difficulty, but only so that they could get your quarters. Then, once consoles and handhelds became the norm, the difficulty varied, but it was rarely overwhelming. Fast forward to now, and difficult video games are almost a genre in themselves and can be popular depending on how they’re implemented. It’s that section of gaming that Masahiro Sakurai had some interesting words on within his latest video on his YouTube channel.
If you’ve watched Sakurai’s videos in the past, you’ll know that he loved the “push and pull” of gameplay. In this case, meaning that having true difficulty is necessary for a majority of titles because if it’s too easy, people will beat them and never play them again, or they won’t get as involved as they could be.
However, in this new video, he highlights that there’s a “fine line” that game developers have to walk to create difficult gameplay while not punishing players for not being able to defeat the obstacles in front of them.
Think of it like this: have you ever played a video game that was so difficult that it made you rage quit? That’s what Masahiro Sakurai is talking about here. He notes that in several games, there are “skip” options for stages or boss fights that might be too difficult. Or, in a certain game by Hideo Kojima, you can wear a certain hat to make things easier, but it’ll literally make you a chicken.
Sakurai doesn’t like that because it feels like it’s humiliating gamers who “don’t have the right skills” to match what the devs wanted, which is unfair. He feels that whether it’s skipping stages or making the difficulty much easier, players should have the right to work around tough challenges without feeling punished.
For non-FromSoftware examples of these kinds of difficulties, look at Persona 5 Royal, which has an infamous boss fight featuring Haru’s father which is a total pain to beat. Another example is Octopath Traveler II, where the game’s final boss will swap out your main party with your four other characters, and you’ll likely have very underdeveloped characters fighting a terrifying boss as a result.
Sakurai admits that sometimes, “the difficulty is the point,” and that’s fine, to an extent. But most game developers should figure out ways to ensure ALL gamers can beat their titles, and not just the ones who learn to “git gud.”
