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Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

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Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#11

Post by xiaoma »

I wish he'd picked a different example.

Megaman II was the very first action game that I beat in a single sitting. I went to my friend's house on a Saturday afternoon, plopped down and went on to destroy the thing over the course of a few hours, winning with who knows how many lives left.

I found the argument to be pretty persuasive in general, but every time I saw the name Megaman, I thought come on, what kind of person would need an easy mode for that game!!?

Ninja Gaiden, on the other hand frustrated me for the better part of a summer. It desperately needed an easy mode. That game is to Megaman as Megaman is to You Have to Burn the Rope.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#14

Post by ynniv »

I disagree with the author's fundamental assumption that games (and mountain climbing) are fundamentally about experience, and that pretty much undercuts everything else in this article. To say that climbing Everest is about experiencing nature is actually absurd. People climb Everest because it is an accomplishment that is as much about personal triumph as it is about experiencing nature. If the trek is modified to require no personal growth, it is no longer the same trek. The author's cool approach to the subject allows him to convincingly deconstruct the hardcore perspective, but when I look at what remains after he's done, I am not convinced that it is gaming.

TL;DR: The logical extension of the article is that someone who watches a real-time movie of people climbing Everest has a similar experience to those actually climbing Everest, and should be allowed to claim that they too have climbed Everest. In my opinion the author does a disservice to us all by making a convincing argument of this.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#15

Post by barrkel »

xiaoma wrote: post #11

I wish he'd picked a different example. Megaman II was the very first action game that I beat in a single sitting. I went to my friend's house on a Saturday afternoon, plopped down and went on to destroy the thing over the course of a few hours, winning with who knows how many lives left. I found the argument to be pretty persuasive in general, but every time I saw the name Megaman, I thought come on , what kind of p…

This article was explicitly a response to the comments he got on the article about Mirror's Edge, which is perhaps a better example:

http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2010/01/mirrors-edge-what-went-w...

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#16

Post by pyre »

pmichaud wrote: post #6

This is actually pretty thoughtful: the thrust of the piece is about status signaling, and how easy mode diminishes the status of the people who beat the game when it was hard. He compares it to climbing Everest, which "hardcore" mountaineers claim is being cheapened by making it safer and more accessible to less experienced climbers. Something which should be good if the ostensible reasons for participation are true…

I don't think that Everest was the best example (though it did get the point across). Part of enjoying the splendor of Everest is having a decent respect for the harshness of nature, and the danger of the climb. If you just put a cable car up there that takes you to the top, then you hardly have the same awe and respect for nature. It just becomes a tourist attraction.

This has nothing to do with status (at least my opinion doesn't). The same thing happens with many of our natural wonders when we turn them into tourist attractions. Even as far back as the 1800s, Europeans were disgusted with the way that Americans had turned Niagara Falls from a natural wonder into a tourist trap.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#17

Post by potatolicious »

Goronmon wrote: post #10

I actually do have a reason for disliking the inclusion of easy-modes in video games. It takes development time away from making a quality challenging gameplay experience. Unfortunately, since the casual market is larger than the hardcore market, it is smart for the developers to focus on the easier modes that cater to this casual base of players. The end result is that hard modes in games generally feel more liked s…

I disagree - you're assuming that there's something fundamentally different about the easy mode (different AI, for example), but that simply isn't the case for most games.

Most "easy" modes really just multiply the damage you do to enemies, or nerf the damage they do against you. Look at, say, Call of Duty, a game that can be incredibly challenging on harder difficulties, but has a mass-appeal easy mode - the easy mode really just makes you a cushion for bullets, and there's nothing wrong with that. How enemies respond, how the AI works, everything remains the same.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#18

Post by Goronmon »

potatolicious wrote: post #17
Goronmon wrote: post #10

I actually do have a reason for disliking the inclusion of easy-modes in video games. It takes development time away from making a quality challenging gameplay experience. Unfortunately, since the casual market is larger than the hardcore market, it is smart for the developers to focus on the easier modes that cater to this casual base of players. The end result is that hard modes in games generally feel more liked s…

I disagree - you're assuming that there's something fundamentally different about the easy mode (different AI, for example), but that simply isn't the case for most games. Most "easy" modes really just multiply the damage you do to enemies, or nerf the damage they do against you. Look at, say, Call of Duty, a game that can be incredibly challenging on harder difficulties, but has a mass-appeal easy mode - the easy mo…

I would argue that Call of Duty is exactly the kind of game I am talking about. As someone who has beat both CoD2, Modern Warfare 1 and 2 on Veteran difficulty, I can say for sure that most of the difficulty is due to the exact reasons I mentioned. More enemies with more health and better accuracy. Beating the game on Veteran was more about figuring out hacks to the game mechanics (knowing when to rush through enemy fire to reach the point that stops enemy respawns) than due to any true challenge with the combat.

One of the few examples of where good challenge was added was the point in the first Modern Warfare where you have to make a long distance sniper shot. On the harder difficulty settings, the wind and other factors were more pronounced, making the shot much more difficult, but in an interesting and challenging way instead of a more frustrating way. Unfortunately the rest of the game was filled with enemies with x-ray vision and what seemed like heat-seeking grenades.

Re: Status and Signals: Why Hardcore Gamers Are Afraid Of Easy Mode

#20

Post by lmkg »

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #12

Doctor Professor is wrong. Including Easy Mode is a catastrophic design flaw. It should be a choice between Normal Mode and Flaming Death Mode. Marketing, people. Marketing.

This jogs my memory of another game designer saying how some gross percentage of people always choose 'normal' difficulty, making difficulty modes somewhat redundant anyways. Since all of the people who need the easy mode will play on normal, it probably should be called normal.
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