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