Curiously, it hasn’t been until now that I decided to talk about the topic that inspired me to start doing the GToGD posts. You might’ve heard how “experienced players” like to talk about how “games used to be more challenging and it’s all too easy now”. But, how much of that old challenge was actual challenge and how much of it was just intentional and unintentional bad design? Here’s what I think about it.
First, I’d like to describe what I consider “challenge” or “difficulty” in games. In my opinion, it’s always all about balancing things out. How any rules and limitations on the player are balanced out by abilities and possibilities in the gameplay. About teaching the player before challenging the player, either in a special tutorial/training, or via gameplay. How it motivates the learning process instead of annoying the player.
And most of the early games just lacked that. The very earliest games usually were designed with the arcade mentality, latter just borrowed those ideas without really considering if they should be there or not. Due to that, lots of 80s and even 90s games were designed to kill the player. A lot of games had an issue that I tend to consider inexcusable – it was impossible to complete the game on your first go. Not really hard, not incredibly challenging and almost impossible. But actually impossible. You had to memorize the levels, had to memorize the enemy placement, the traps. It’s fine to have something completely unexpected happen when it doesn’t just kill the player, but in the case of lots of very old titles that was usually added specifically to kill the player. To let them lose a life, lose another quarter to the arcade cabinet. Even if the game was developed for a home console and there were no quarters to give.
Why can’t I turn back? Why can’t I walk and aim? Why can’t I step over this tiny ledge? Why do I need a key for a wooden door that’s barely holding it if I have a grenade launcher?.. All these questions might pop up in a player’s head as they play. But balancing things out can make all these questions go away, leading to a simple “oh, who cares, I’m having fun!”