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“How would the game be worse if it had an easy mode?”
Adding an easy mode changes the experience even for hardcore players because:
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Design intent shifts. Once multiple difficulties exist, developers design around them. Balancing, encounter pacing, even story beats get shaped by the lowest common denominator.
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Cultural meaning shifts. If a work is known as “brutal but fair,” its identity collapses when an easy bypass exists. (Dark Souls without consequence isn’t Dark Souls; Cuphead without punishment isn’t Cuphead.)
Easy mode doesn’t just let more people in; it makes it a different game. Saying “just don’t play easy” is like saying “why not release a PG-rated Terrifier with no gore? Horror fans can still watch the R version, so what’s the harm?”
The harm is you no longer made Terrifier.
(Ill reply to both parts in separate replies)
Subtitles/dubs are translations. They adapt language, not pacing, cinematography, editing, or structure. That’s fundamentally different from altering a game’s difficulty, which changes the mechanics, the thing the art is built from and differentiates it from other mediums.
A better analogy:
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Subtitles are like adding glasses so more people can see the same painting.
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Easy mode is like repainting sections of the canvas so it’s “clearer.” You can call both “accessibility,” but one preserves the work, the other mutates it.
Furthermore, language isn’t a good metric by which to compare analogies because games are also translated.
Accessibility in film delivers the same work to more people. Accessibility in games can cross the line into creating a different work entirely, because the interaction itself is the art, not just the visuals or sound.
Saying “most players never saw the end of Cuphead” isn’t proof of failure; it’s proof of selectivity. Just like not everyone finishes Infinite Jest, but it doesn’t mean Wallace failed as a writer.
Cuphead was made to invoke arcade game feelings. The gameplay is brutal by design. That’s the point.
It’s like watching Terrifier and throwing up half way through, storming out of the cinema and saying “the acting was good but it was too violent, I wish I could watch a version of the movie without the gore”
I can’t tell if you’re being ironic or not lol.
I’ll write my response as if you’re being sincere;
Cabin in the Woods is one of my all time favourite movies, but the entire premise is built around horror movie tropes.
The “gods” mentioned at the end of the movie are the movie viewers themselves. They “demand blood” (watching a splatter movie for the sake of watching people get killed).
It’s a requirement that “the virgin” be the last one killed, but the death is optional (this is a staple of horror movies; the ‘Final Girl’)
One of the literary devices the movie toys with is the idea that ALL the horror movies we’ve seen are part of the same universe, and the guys in the offices are the ones pulling the strings to entertain us.
The entire movie is one giant nudge-nudge, wink-wink for people who love to get meta with horror movies.
If you enjoyed it regardless, that’s fine, but my point was that it would be a bad product if it tried to accommodate for viewers such as yourself.
Studio Ghibli movies should never be dubbed or subbed. You just have to learn Japanese to enjoy them, just don’t watch them if that’s not for you…
I feel this is a false equivalence.
If you wanted to make a movie analogy, I’d say it’s more like a movie having subtle subtext or context which would make it’s message or intent more difficult to comprehend.
Imagine if someone watched The Cabin in the Woods (satire movie about horror movies) and said it was a bad movie because it wasn’t scary.
I think its fair to say that person would have low film literacy at least.
How do we compensate for that? Should movies start offering accessibility features so every viewer can have the ability to know foreshadowing, film cliches, or meta-narrative devices?
I feel like giving viewers an option before a movie to say “i have low media literacy”, which would result in popups during the movie to say “hey, this is a callback to the Hellraiser franchise” would be insulting to the creators.
The film wasn’t made for casual movie viewers, it was made for a specific audience. The creators aren’t obliged to make it more easily digestible.
Edit:
Satire falls apart when it’s spoon fed.
If difficulty is part of the games design, then reducing it is functionally similar to explicitly stating irony to a viewer.
I havent played 3 personally, but I’ve heard the story is kinda botched because its so inconsistent, and the pacing is fucked.
With 1 and 2 you had the anime-bullshit layered between the disney-bullshit.
Apparently with 3, it goes:
anime-bullshit > (disney-bullshit * worlds) > heavy anime-bullshit with loads of exposition.
Detailed completionist checklists.
If I have cleared an area, I want to have it reflected in an overview screen.
If I’m missing an item, I want to know which enemy drops it, where I can find it, or how I can craft it.
If I need to pull out my phone to check a wiki, then the game has failed me.
There’s something to be said for exploration games, and in those cases, the details should be obscured until the player has cleared 90% of the area, or gotten past the boss (or something like this).
I suppose it depends on your exposure to media. The first I heard of Concord was how much of a flop it was.
I played Warlords of Draenor, and prior expansions, and I don’t remember any controversy.
No Man’s Sky was a huge story, but coming from a studio who made Joe Danger, I don’t know that any expectations were justified, whereas The Witcher 3 was supposed to be proof that CDPR would stick the landing.
Gotta give CDPR credit, they’ve consistently patched the game after what is arguably the most disappointing launch in gaming history.
Most other devs would have seen the ROI and pulled the plug less than a year after launch.
Phantom Liberty was amazing, it seems like half of the content was in different endings alone.
The perk overhaul was amazing too, it really encourages a dynamic play style, as opposed to the prior perk system which essentially forced you to dump 20 points into Cold Blood, and choose one main attribute tree.
Though, the new system essentially forces 20 points into tech, which is fine because your cyberware is the basis for every build.
Though, every character should get Reflexes to 15 because air-dash changes the game into Spider-Punk.
In theory I agree, but live service games need to be sustainable somehow. Subscriptions are one method, but create a barrier to entry past the trial phase.
I don’t think about the Hoyo model as gambling (it is), as the vast majority of successful pulls happen between 74-80 pulls.
In any case, I don’t disagree with you, but simply pointing out the obscurity claimed in the article is false, the system is transparent and fair, compared to other games which are far more deserving of being regulated.
Can’t disagree with that, but knowing there’s certainty removes an element of exploitation.
Most players don’t pull duplicate characters (though you can if you want to supercharge your favourite characters). Hoyo’s business model essentially relies on whales who have too much money; not trying to nickel & dime the vast majority.
There is a paid battle pass (which becomes worthless once you’re at endgame), and a supply pass (which gives more character pulls). Both are unnecessary, but buying at least one of them seems fair for the level of polish their games have, considering it’s free to play.
Don’t get me wrong, I think loot boxes are predatory, but compared to models which are totally RNG based, Hoyo’s model isn’t nearly as problematic.
For what it’s worth, the Hoyo “loot boxes” are quite fair because of the pity system:
- Every 10 pulls you’ll get one if the featured 4* characters
- Within 90 pulls you’re guaranteed to get a 5* (though you’ll almost certainly get it between 74-80 pulls)
- When you get a 5*, there’s a 50% chance of getting the featured character
- If you lose the 50/50, the next 5* will be the featured character.
- The pity system persists through each banner.
Each patch, free players will have enough resources to guarantee one of the featured characters and their signature weapon (provided they do their daily tasks and clear the content).
I’ve been playing Star Rail since launch, never purchased any premium currency. It’s certainly the fairest form of gacha I’ve seen.
It kinda sucks that Hoyo is being targeted, when the system is so transparent and forgiving. There are MUCH more predatory systems out there.
Even this is a stretch to be honest. Their games aren’t easy to mod. Minor updates break shit. You need to consider mod load order. You need to “clean” the base files before loading in any big mods.
Their games are made of fucking speghetti code and they don’t care. They could fix it, but they don’t. They could clean their own base game files so this isn’t necessary, but they would rather force people into the ecosystems of Creation Club.
There are some films I enjoy which are objectively bad, and that’s okay.
If people want to enjoy Bethesda games, it’s fine, each to their own.
However, if you want to talk about game design, there is a lot of evidence which supports the claim that Bethesda don’t know what makes a (objectively) good game anymore.
Unfortunately, Bethesda are the only ones in town who are capitalising on “Bethesda style games”. (With the exception of a few, like The Outer Worlds, and Cyberpunk 2077).
Bethesda’s strong suit is their physical world building - but everything else has been getting worse.
The running joke is that the players mod the game to fix after launch. Except it’s not a joke, and it’s really not funny when the devs actually expect the community to fix their game. They could simply pay someone to implement every single fix from the UFO4P and UESSP, but choose not to. They do not care about quality.
I don’t think Ubi went “woke” but it does seem kinda disrespectful IMO.
Imagine if in Assassins Creed Origins, the main playable character was white. There would be an uproar.
For what Assassins Creed is worth (and it isn’t a lot, and hasn’t been for a long time), the stories are about the history of the country, as much as the people within it.
To take the perspective away from a native citizen betrays that intent. If Ubi wanted a “fish out of water” character, they should have continued to elaborate on Desmond’s story.
Does borderlands really “need” some bleeding edge engine?
Its not a terribly complex game? And nobody gives a shit if its a bit janky.
Borderlands, like its movie, is the kid who gets an ant farm for his birthday, pulls out the tubes, shoves one end up his ass and starts sucking the farts out with the other.
Yes, its entertaing, but nobody expects it to be high-class.