Yeah, we all know that games these days are way too easy. games which acutally require brains and skill (like Mega Man 9) are few the far-between.

since we already know this, the topic i want to perk up is; how far is this going to go??? surely games can't get much easier than they already are... regenerating health bars, mr. Super-Powered Space Marine protagonist v.s. skinny bloke with a stick (who happens to be evil), extremely weak bosses (if they even exist at all)...

how easy are games going to become? will they ever become hard again?

I blame the lack of boss fights.
Though the regenerating health seems to be a big factor too. You shouldn't be in the middle of a big firefight then just being able to duck behind a rock while all your wounds miraculously heal.
But once in a blue moon we do get a game that is lovingly hard and I love to death.
*Goes to hug Devil may Cry and Ninja Gaiden*

You know, I'm actually thinking we're having a bit of backlash for this lately. People are beginning to get bored of gaming in general because of an overall lack of difficulty, and indies are picking up the slack. Difficult games are making a comeback.

I know what you mean. Even Death in videogames is becomeing a thing of the past! Both Fable II and the new Prince of Persia (dear god, don't do this to the prince) don't have you die. Sometimes I don't mind it. If a game has a decent story and is still fun I don't mind just kind of loosing all brain function and letting the game take me on a ride. But sometimes I want a challenge, and a lot of games don't want to do it anymore.

I get why its happening. Its Casual players. Game companys thing the easier there games, the more they'll sell. This is crap. No casual gamer is going to buy a RPG no matter how easy it is, plus a "hardcore" gamer isn't going to go and buy cake mania, even if it is incredbly hard.

Indigo_Dingo:
It will continue, until this is a blockbuster game
http://yman242.deviantart.com/art/Shoot-the-wall-103850537

Jesus man...I just couldn't hit that wall! Oh well, at least its not as hard as this...

http://www.mazapan.se/games/BurnTheRope.php

conqueror Kenny:
I blame the lack of boss fights.
Though the regenerating health seems to be a big factor too. You shouldn't be in the middle of a big firefight then just being able to duck behind a rock while all your wounds miraculously heal.
But once in a blue moon we do get a game that is lovingly hard and I love to death.
*Goes to hug Devil may Cry and Ninja Gaiden*

Agree on everything

I agree completely...

I can get through a lot of the newer games without any problems but when I decide to play something like Mega Man 9, I get my ass handed to me on a silver platter...

I think new games have made me soft because I used to be a Mega Man Master...

Erm?
What?
Games are too easy?
Then put up the difficulty...
I dare you to try playing CoD4 on the most advanced difficulty.
Games aren't getting easier they're just making them more accessible for all types of people.

Zeldadudes:
Erm?
What?
Games are too easy?
Then put up the difficulty...
I dare you to try playing CoD4 on the most advanced difficulty.
Games aren't getting easier they're just making them more accessible for all types of people.

They are getting easier. That's where the added accessibility is coming from.

If you want difficult games, you have to run to Shmups or older games.

And CoD4 on highest difficulty is nothing. Go play some ESPGaluda. Or Touhou games.

To be fair, multiplayer gameplay is far more widespread now, and that effectively replaces any need for difficulty in single player. Then there's the fact that being unable to beat a game is the exception now, rather than the rule it used to be.

Indigo_Dingo:
It will continue, until this is a blockbuster game
http://yman242.deviantart.com/art/Shoot-the-wall-103850537

Yay, reference to The Slackerz.

conqueror Kenny:
I blame the lack of boss fights.
Though the regenerating health seems to be a big factor too. You shouldn't be in the middle of a big firefight then just being able to duck behind a rock while all your wounds miraculously heal.

As compared to ducking behind a rock and miraculously healing due to the health pack you found there. Both regenerative health and numbered health function to stop the player being stupid and taking bucket loads of damage. The difference is regenerative health makes you regret it then (when you die), whereas numbered health pulls a dick-move and makes you regret it in the feature, ie. just after a checkpoint when you can't go back.

Drakstern:

Zeldadudes:
Erm?
What?
Games are too easy?
Then put up the difficulty...
I dare you to try playing CoD4 on the most advanced difficulty.
Games aren't getting easier they're just making them more accessible for all types of people.

They are getting easier. That's where the added accessibility is coming from.

If you want difficult games, you have to run to Shmups or older games.

And CoD4 on highest difficulty is nothing. Go play some ESPGaluda. Or Touhou games.

Ninja Gaiden on hard anyone? Ha ha :)

I agree games can be too easy, I miss the original Banjo-Kazooie games, they were both challenging and kid-friendly!

COD getting shot in the leg then managing to sprint.

It's kinda ironic that a game like Prince of Persia in its current reincarnation is being criticized as "too easy" while the original gamw in the series was one of the toughest games of its kind. I remember never even getting past the second level.

I think every game worth playing needs a range of difficulty, from something your grandmother can play to something that comes with a disclaimer and a sales pitch of insurance against hurling your laptop across the room.

Hithel:
It's kinda ironic that a game like Prince of Persia in its current reincarnation is being criticized as "too easy" while the original gamw in the series was one of the toughest games of its kind. I remember never even getting past the second level.

And after falling to a spiked death ten or twenty times, you finally reach a room where you go 'OMG! A guy! Can I talk to... - No he just gutted me...'

I think different games have different difficulty curves. Games like Half-Life have done well, getting successively harder as the game progresses. Then you have games like Dead Rising, where, as Yahtzee once put it, you have a difficult curve about midway through the first part that's like running headfirst into a brick wall.

Perhaps part of the problem is that as games have experimented, such as using different mechanics or abilities, they haven't done too much to give you enemies ways to combat them.

Whats up with making games easy? Difficulty sliders are generally there for those who like the game hard. Some people just like to take it steady and blast through the game without repeating the same level over and over.

Mike Fang:
I think different games have different difficulty curves. Games like Half-Life have done well, getting successively harder as the game progresses. Then you have games like Dead Rising, where, as Yahtzee once put it, you have a difficult curve about midway through the first part that's like running headfirst into a brick wall.

Pah, you want a difficulty curve like a wall? Who here has seen the diamond machine in Wallace and Gromit: Project Zoo?

there are still a lot of really hard games. Ikaruga is on Xbox live even some of the guitar hero games on hardest difficulty are really difficult. I will agree that a difficult game by today's standards is child's play compared to difficult inthe NES/SNES/arcade era's

There are two major reasons, I think, for why games have gotten easier and more casual over the past few years:

1) As expensive as games are to develop, you want them to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. There simply are not enough "hardcore" gamers out there to prop up a market for "hardcore" games. Make it too difficult and you're going to fence yourself into "niche game" territory, which is no way to placate the shareholders.

2) More insidiously, hardcore gamers also tend to be tech-savvy people who know how to defeat copy protection and DRM and are thus far more likely to pirate your game. The casuals, to whom it never occurs that torrents and flash carts and whatnot even exist, simply go to Best Buy and purchase a game; your theft rate will be much lower if you develop for that market.

So really, the death of our hobby and our passion as hardcore gamers is more or less entirely our fault, and the sorts of people who whine and complain that the companies are so evil are exactly the sorts of people who are primarily whining that the games are harder to steal.

Simalacrum:
Yeah, we all know that games these days are way too easy. games which acutally require brains and skill (like Mega Man 9) are few the far-between.

Don't you mean insane patience, time, and repitition? C'mon, we were beating games like that when we were 8 and we sure as hell weren't savants. Some of us are older and have less pure bulk time at our disposal so we need our games parsed out into pieces or made easier.

Personally, I think they should just employ "save anywhere" states and keep the games as hard as they want. Sure, many players will ruin the game by saving after every obstacle but that's their falt and PC gamers have been doing it to themselves for years anyways.

i think the new prince of persia is a perfect example of how games are becoming easier. It's litterally impossible to die, you just get saved by Elika any time you happen to screw up. Not to mention there is one combo that you can do in every fight that will essentially end the fight. I remembered how difficult sands of time series was and looking at this new prince of persia is kind of depressing(oh and there are no difficulty settings, its just always seriously easy).

Log Dropper M.D.:

cuddly_tomato:
Whats up with making games easy? Difficulty sliders are generally there for those who like the game hard. Some people just like to take it steady and blast through the game without repeating the same level over and over.

Sometimes difficulty sliders aren't really a good fix. Often times they just cheapen the game by making the enemies have way more health, or by making you do way less damage. In my opinion thats not a good way to make a game more difficult.

Couldn't agree more with you here.

"Difficulty" for some games, is just slapping on more health to enemies, making them have super-fast pinpoint-aim, and making your weapons turn into candy-cotton balls of fluff, and this is quite the wrong way of increasing difficulty.

The best types of difficulty usually involve keeping roughly the same stats/constants for you and your enemy, yet changing the AI of the enemy. Make them more intelligent.
Of course for some games this is easier said then done, as the AI can be what makes a game go from "uber-easy" to "medium" in the first place, thus not leaving any room for improvement. In these cases the whole stat/constant changing is usually needed to give a sense of difficulty, which works, so long as it's understandable.

Sure let the player take 2 shotgun shots to the face. But if another average-joe can take 7 instead, well that's just not really right, is it? It's this ;artificial' difficulty that is the worst, increasing some arbitrary stats to make things longer, instead of changing it in such a way that it becomes more of a challenge.

Like some other people have said here, the regenerating health system is one of the problems, and I've heard people blame Halo for starting this.

But hey, at least it actually made sense in Halo.

I realize this argument is not going to go over well so I'll keep it short.

Maybe you're just getting better at them?

While I think there's a place for unforgiving games where you get three lives, die in one hit and once you run out it's game over. but those shouldn't be every game. I've never finished Super Mario Brothers and I'm fine with that. What if every game was as difficulty. Now I'm sure everyone but me can finish SMB in 15 minutes and are thinking "Kermi, Super Mario Brothers is easy! I finished that shit when I was eight, you limp-wristed nancy-boy. Man up and stop whining about the classics.", but I guess I've always, since childhood, been more interested in progressing through a game then hammering away at a challenge. I do like to be challenged, but I am not persistent enough to play the same level 400 times just to get to the next one which is probably worse. There is a point where I will simply give up.

Currently, games are balanced well for me. Penalties for death and failure are not overly harsh (though there were times when I lost hours of progress in Fallout 3 and this frustrated me beyond comprehension), but the game is challenging enough that I am engaged and can enjoy myself.

Simalacrum:
Yeah, we all know that games these days are way too easy. games which acutally require brains and skill (like Mega Man 9) are few the far-between.

since we already know this, the topic i want to perk up is; how far is this going to go??? surely games can't get much easier than they already are... regenerating health bars, mr. Super-Powered Space Marine protagonist v.s. skinny bloke with a stick (who happens to be evil), extremely weak bosses (if they even exist at all)...

how easy are games going to become? will they ever become hard again?

I get why its happening. Its Casual players. Game companys thing the easier there games, the more they'll sell. This is crap. No casual gamer is going to buy a RPG no matter how easy it is, plus a "hardcore" gamer isn't going to go and buy cake mania, even if it is incredbly hard.

Except that they are selling more games, and to a publisher they're not "Casual players" - they're customers. They're buying RPGs, racing games, puzzle games, FPS games, you name it. Hardcore gamers are very much the minority of the people spending money - something Blizzard understands very, very well. A lot of full time working parents who play games - with or without their kids - aren't going to struggle with high difficulty games. They don't have time. In the corporate view, they're more likely to pay for all the games they play - the have the cash and no interest in waiting for a torrent or hacking their console. They're not going to complain about DRM. Contrary to opinion, sales figures show that they are buying a lot of games. Me, I didn't find Mega Man hard, I found it annoying. Getting a a committee to actually function is hard, raising a child is hard. Even the hardest games aren't hard.

I suspect that we're going to start seeing more relevant difficulty scaling (EDIT :: see Toner's post above) on a lot of games. Fable III could have had a fatality mode, for example - at least die and reset at the cavern. Your spouse can be killed - why not the dog? A lot of casual gamers were hardcore, once, and if they can build loyalties with a difficult game, they'll have you in 15 years when you're playing more casually too. They'll want to hook both ends of the market, and there's a lot of ways to scale a game.

This also opens up a niche market well suited to indie developers (nod to Indigo_Dingo) - hardcore, unforgiving games. There are several means to distribute them now, and I expect to see an upsurge. I might even play a couple - I like the occasional difficult game. I like the Pixeljunk games, even if I'm getting a plate of ass handed to me every time I try. I also love the Lego games.

You can ask and observe the same things about music, movies, television, and books. There's easily accessed stuff good for everybody, and the more difficult stuff that only some of us are going to enjoy. I read weird books with strong science themes (or science textbooks), watch independent films my girlfriend doesn't like, and for easy-going entertainment I play video games. Somebody much like me might enjoy The Hulk movies but prefer the more difficult, arduous games. In any event, you get blockbuster money by being more appealing to more people - and that means more easily digested.

The only way we'll see more hardcore games is if the hardcore gamers start outspending the casual gamers, en masse. Not gonna happen.

the main reason for this is that video games as a hobby, pastime, etc. are becoming more mainstream. the developers know that making a super hard game that only hardcore nerds will like doesnt usually sell too well. this is why they invented difficulty levels, so just play a game on the hardest setting.

mydogisblue:
Like some other people have said here, the regenerating health system is one of the problems, and I've heard people blame Halo for starting this.

But hey, at least it actually made sense in Halo.

I don't see why regenerating health is even an issue. It allows developers to build encounters knowing you've gone in with full health. How many games did you play in the 90's where you were creeping along, low on health, ammo and out of options and then some giant assfuck enemy appears to ruin your day? All too often for me. You'd have to play the same area over and over, looking for a way to advance, or be better prepared next time. It wasn't challenging, it was boring.

Regenerating health might be easier for the devs and the gamer, but this doesn't make it evil in and of itself. Some games use it wrong - honestly, Resistance is hard for the first level before you get alien healing powers, then it becomes cake. Maybe that's how it's meant to be played - kind of like how Destroy All Humans is piss-easy because you're an alien with advanced technology fighting a bunch of dumbass humans in the mid 20th century.
But unlike Resistance, I bothered to finish Destroy All Humans because it was entertaining.

I just think it is the fact that game designers think that they are too clever and are doing things that no one else has done before being very original. When in fact we have seen it all painfully before. That and some where along the line they forgot the whole work=reward equation. Where if you solve a difficult puzzle to get to this chest that is floating on its own little island that it should have some kick ass item in it, not some mundane piece of trash that I am just going to sell back at the shop.

But how far will it go? It will continue until people are totally fed up with games and start going outside, playing sports, and interacting with people face to face. Or in other words when sales start to drop like a flaming lead fruit cake.