Written by Jacob Butler

Thumbnail & Banner Photo by Louie Castro-Garcia on Unsplash

Throughout the many years since their inception, video games have become more and more popular. Though video games started as a niche activity enjoyed only in arcades, the industry grew, developing more powerful and portable consoles and creating thousands upon thousands of beloved games. Now, video games are everywhere. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn't at least tried a few games on their phone, and characters like Mario and Sonic have become household names.

This surge of popularity brings with it new questions about how video games should be made. As more people find themselves interested in video games, there becomes more demand to make games that appeal to a much broader market than initially intended. Video games are almost entirely based on challenging the player in one or several ways, forcing them to develop their reflexes, hand-eye coordination, timing, memory, and understanding of the game's mechanics to progress. However, some players find this far easier than others. People who are unfamiliar with video games as a medium and people with certain disabilities can find engaging with certain games and their mechanics nearly impossible, and this inaccessibility can breed frustration towards the game.

Photo: Super Mario Bros. Wonder by Nintendo EPD

To many, the solution was obvious: Add an easy mode. Easy modes generally simplify games by removing certain mechanics, increasing the health and damage of the player character, or providing extra items, powerups, or abilities, which certainly works for some games. Super Mario Wonder, for example, has certain characters who are immune to the game's enemies. It also has a series of collectible badges that can drastically change how the game is played, and both of these features allow players to customize their experience to better fit their playstyles and aptitude for the game.

The issue arises not through the idea of an easy mode but through the growing sentiment that all games should have one. Famously difficult games like Darksouls regularly face demands to make the game easier, while other games are praised heavily simply for including an abundance of accessibility options and difficulty settings. This focus on making games simpler and more accessible can not only damage a lot of video games but also overlooks what makes games unique and fun in the first place.

But how could the inclusion of an easy mode damage a game? The more options available in a game, the better, right? Unfortunately, it's a bit more complicated than that. For one thing, video games aren't designed in a vacuum. Much like in any other industry, most video game companies are bound by release schedules and have limited time and resources to spend on each project. Every hour a development team spends creating extra player options could have been spent working on graphics, developing the core gameplay, or creating new content. While some companies, like Nintendo, will often devote time and resources to make accessible games, they have the added incentive of making their games predominately for children. Games like Darksouls don't have that same market, so there's a much higher possibility that sacrificing parts of the game to make an easier difficulty could lose them more players than they’d gain.

Of course, not all easy modes are created equal; for every game that spends ages carefully balancing a new difficulty, changing several features, or adding systems to accommodate for disparate skill levels, there are many more games that will just make players have more health and deal more damage without putting any extra effort into changing how the game itself plays. This method makes creating easier difficulties a much more straightforward and efficient process.

However, it comes with its own set of challenges as well. Many games have mechanics that can't be made more accessible by changing minute details. While changing health and damage numbers may work for a fighting game, RPG (Role Playing Game) or a First-Person-Shooter, it won't do anything for a steal-based game, where characters have to avoid enemies rather than fight them, or for puzzle games like Portal, where a character's stats are completely irrelevant to the challenges present in the game. Even in the types of games, this system would work best in, it's still not ideal, as modern games have become progressively less inclined to stick to one genre and often include puzzles, stealth segments, and other unique mechanical challenges in their game, which means developers would have to either find some way to drastically alter these segments as well, or end up creating a game with wildly inconsistent difficulty, which can harm the gaming experience. Creating a functional easy mode would be nearly impossible for many games, depending on the time, resources, and genre of game the developers are dealing with.

It's not only unpragmatic to implement easy modes into many games, but often, this insistence on making games more accessible completely ignores the purpose of video games as a medium. There's a reason some people will choose to play a video game over watching a movie or TV show, and that's because they want to engage with the gameplay and the challenges that the game presents. Some people like solving puzzles in their games, some like testing their reflexes, some like games that require hours of careful thought and planning to succeed, and some want to sit back, relax, and play a more straightforward game with some nice visuals or a cool story. No matter what someone wants to play, there's a game that can accommodate them. Certain video games don't appeal to certain people, and some may be too difficult for everyone to engage in equally, but that doesn't make the games themselves any worse. I have a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around most strategy games, but I would never want those games to be made simpler or more tailored to my interests. There are thousands of other games I can enjoy and there are plenty of people out there who love Strategy games and the challenges they present, even if I find them inaccessible.

Games like Darksouls are extremely difficult, and for many people, the game isn't fun to play. Still, the few who commit themselves to learning the mechanics and overcoming the challenges are rewarded by the incredible rush they get every time they beat a boss and get to progress, and when they beat the game, other gamers can recognize the skill and patience it would have taken them. Players who've completed the game will often talk about how long it took them, how hard it was, and what bosses they struggled with most. The extreme difficulty of Darksouls creates a shared experience of the game among its player base and is part of what makes it such a popular and well-liked game. Making an easier mode would change the game entirely, not only because of what resources it may take to develop but because of how it would impact the players' shared experience of the game and completely alter the type of game it's trying to be.

Video games aren't made to appeal to everyone; they wouldn't be able to even if they tried. We must refrain from forcing developers into changing games to fit our preferences instead of accepting that video games are made for all kinds of different people, each with their own experiences, skill levels, cultures, and interests. There are so many video games I absolutely adore and many more that I'd never want to play, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Video Games Do Not Need an Easy Mode

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