I have released a video on the meaning of difficulty in games, and wanted to provide a summary of the contents.
Difficulty
In-Game Knowledge
Relates to how important knowledge is for success, how frequently it comes up, and how much players are required to know.
- Intended
- Learning about hidden dangers
- Shortcuts
- Secret codes
- Information like the effects of potions or crafting recipes
- Unintended
- Not knowing about a tool required for dealing with an enemy
- Denial of information that is critical to progress
- Required prerequisite knowledge that has nothing to do with the genre
- Unfair
- Inconsistent rules
- No logic, or rules and logic arbitrarily hidden from the player
Discovering Mechanics
Relates to identifying how things work in the game, and discovering systemic interactions.
- Intended
- How many actions/verbs are available
- Complexity of interacting systems
- Unintended
- Not knowing how the lock-and-key systems work and getting blocked by one
- Unfair
- Taking away required tools or abilities
- Enemies following different rules than the player
Setting Goals
Relates to identifying possible goals, and choosing which goal to pursue.
- Intended
- Many possible win conditions
- Having many options for what to do next in an open world game
- Unintended
- Not knowing what to do next in a game with a linear quest line
- Confusing quest texts that don’t get recorded anywhere permanently
- Unfair
- Deceptive goals, where implied win conditions are different from what are actually checked
- Challenges that are entirely or arbitrarily unwinnable
Planning
Relates to deciding on which steps to take in order to reach a goal, and accounting for unknown variables.
- Intended
- Complexity of the mental model required to plan what to do next
- How many strategies or actions are available
- How much optimization is possible
- Unintended
- Not being allowed to plan due to time or action constraints
- Players not knowing they are supposed to hit an impassable wall, causing wasted attempts to get around it
- Unfair
- Being unpredictably locked out of progression
- Not being able to tell what part of a plan led to failure
- Outcomes being determined by uniformed, yet permanent, decisions
Execution
Relates to the speed, precision, and sustained accuracy needed for input.
- Intended
- Requiring dexterity
- Rhythm
- Snap decisions.
- Unintended
- Mis-clicking in a game that is about planning
- Having many ways to make costly mistakes
- Unfair
- Arbitrarily robbing the player of control
- Not respecting, or changing, the users input
Not Difficulty
Decoding Output
Relates to understanding the game state, or processing visual or audio output.
- Intended
- Hard-to-spot items in a hidden object game
- Unintended
- Changing camera angle unexpectedly
- Text being too small to read
- Lacking accessibility features
- Not having localized content
- Unpredictable and unexpected challenges that punish the player severely for failing them
- Not telegraphing attacks appropriately to the player
Encoding Input
Relates to determining what inputs are valid, or knowing what buttons to use.
- Intended
- Forcing the player to feel as disoriented for thematic reasons
- Unintended
- Physically unable to use certain controls
- Not knowing what button to use
- Being unable to rebind inputs to something more usable for the player
Luck
Relates to chance and randomness.
- Intended
- Randomized events
- Card draws
- Loot drops
- Random world generation
- Pre-decision luck
- Unintended
- Bad RNG that prevents the player from completing goals, blocking progress arbitrarily
- Post-decision luck
Time
Relates to how long activities take, or using time as a currency.
- Intended
- Grinding
- Unintended
- Turning enemies into “bullet sponges”
- Dragging out gameplay with tedious tasks or cooldowns
- FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)
- Taking away progress as punishment
Working Memory
Relates to working with information without losing track of what the player is doing.
- Intended
- Using inductive reasoning and spatial thinking to solve problems
- Puzzles
- Unintended
- Forcing the player to remember, calculate, or track things without giving them tools to help
- Asking a person to hold more than 7 things in their head at once, or pay attention to two things simultaneously
Punishment
Relates to discouraging a behavior, or enacting penalties. It can be measured with questions like: how many mistakes can a player make before a failure state? How long do they have to sustain skilled play? How much progress is lost upon failure?
- Intended
- Creating an oppressive atmosphere for thematic reasons
- Unintended
- Positive feedback loops that render games unwinnable
Psychological Difficulty
Relate to being hard to play emotionally, upsetting, depressing, annoying, etc.
- Intended
- Creating an oppressive atmosphere for thematic reasons
- Unintended
- Being upsetting and driving players away
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