I think a lot of discussions about difficulty in games turns into a 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater' issue - if the difficulty in something rubs people the wrong way, it must be difficulty as a concept, or seeing skill or tenacity or endurance as virtues, that are the problem. But I don't think that's really true. I think some games really do need to be difficult, or slightly unforgiving, or hard to pick up, because it's essential to their essence as the particular game they are. The level of difficulty is how the game enforces its rules on the player, and drives them to make full use of the mechanics and coordination skills it's teaching them. In the same way that the physics in a game [like how high and fast Mario jumps] has to be tuned to 'feel' right, I think difficulty has to be tuned too, and while it's impossible to please everyone, or even ensure everyone can enjoy the game at the 'intended' or rather 'tuned' difficulty, if that DOESN'T happen, the result is even worse. The game is either boring and forgettable, or brutal and unpleasant for the vast majority of players.
I think the real reason there's so much toxicity built up in defending the honor of harder games against people wanting it to be tuned down for them is less about pure gatekeeping and exclusion [although that exists] but is more because those people HAD an experience they really enjoyed, one deeply rooted in how much the game forced them to adapt and master the game's systems. Demanding that that be neutered is not just an attack on them and their prized experience, but a threat to prevent that from happening for anyone else in the future. [recall how upset people still are about the disappearance of the original Star Wars theatrical cut] And if there's one thing gamers love more than anything, it's proselytizing. They're just not very good at expressing themselves.
Which then leads into the 'easy mode' discussion. I feel like the main reason people get worked up about some of the player base choosing a lower, sometimes almost absent, level of difficulty is because when you're discussing the game in a community, it then becomes apparent that not everyone had the same experience. It's like if you recommended a book or movie to a friend, and a week later they wanted to talk about it but had only read the SparkNotes. They 'got the story they wanted' but did they really? Do you feel the same way talking to them about the book? How do you feel when you show someone your favorite movie and you catch them checking their phone multiple times? I think it's a similar level of betrayal when you find out someone has formed opinions on a game you liked without having experienced it 'right.'
Which is not to say there really is a 'right' or wrong way to experience a game - just very different, maybe a little more different than you want to admit. And as other people have said, your skill, your accomplishment, should not be your sole measure of worth, but it's worth considering why those things have so much worth to others, and as you say, deep down, to yourself. I don't think you CAN'T play on a higher difficulty, and I don't think you necessarily SHOULD either - plenty of games are exceedingly POORLY tuned. But [not to get personal, just responding to what you say in the piece] if there's something inside of you saying you chickened out, you went to the gym and jogged around a bit and went home, you looked up a nice recipe and then ordered delivery, that might not be pure pathology. Maybe you just know you could handle a little more pressure than you're allowing. That doesn't make you a bad person or a lesser gamer, but it's worth thinking about [not dwelling on] rather than dismissing.
A lot to unpack in your comment (and I loved reading it, thank you!), so I'd like to focus on two points that you made. I agree that playing a game on easy and playing it on normal or hard *probably* provides a different experience, but I don't think it's a fair comparison to liken it to Sparknotes of a book or phone scrolling during a movie. I get your point, but I also strongly feel that there is no "right" way—no one gets to tell me which experience is the "righter" one, just like I don't get to tell them—and if the alternative to a different experience is no experience at all (i.e. someone doesn't play at all because of whatever barriers), then I'd take the former. Discussing this with readers makes me realize how strongly I believe in having difficulty controls and easy modes, and how important having this choice is.
To your point about listening inward, this was something I tried to express in the piece closer to the end when I said that when I have these thoughts, I try to understand what matters to me in the moment. Sometimes it feels like "chickening out" when I know I can do it and so I press on; sometimes, it's quitting and taking a break or turning the difficulty down. I fully agree with you that introspection is key. The answer isn't always to go harder though; being gentle with oneself is valid too, especially when it comes to entertainment.
Great article! I am not good at most type of games and I couldn't care less when others might think, that I am a bad gamer. However, sometimes I still wish I could turn off the 'Play Time' in Steam for example. But that only lasts a few seconds or so and then I don't mind if it takes me 10 hours to complete something when others do it in 5. I am having the time of my life in many games... that's what counts!
Hey Michael, thank you and welcome! Having the time of your life is all that matters :D
Interesting point about the Steam play time—I never thought about it as an indicator of being "bad" (which is funny given how much I worry about these things apparently). To me, more play time is a point of pride. Dedication, you see!
Something that can’t be overlooked is the context in which we talk about being “good” or “bad” at a game. If you see someone playing Pac-Man and they keep dying immediately because they ignore the games rules, then sure, they’re objectively bad at the game as long as they keep ignoring the rules.
But just because a person can’t make it to the 3rd or 5th maze in Pac-Man doesn’t mean they’re bad at the game per se. There’s just room for improvement. And even so…it’s just a game.
The social pressure to “git gud” has always annoyed me because it wasn’t really a thing growing up playing video games in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. The only exception was maybe fighting games played on a competitive level or Esports where you’re playing against the best of the best for real money (as you already mentioned).
I’ve actually never cared much about playing anything on the highest difficulty. In fact, I always roll my eyes anytime games have content (like videos and other extras) that can only be unlocked by playing on harder difficulty.
That being said, there have been games where I did attempt to play on harder difficulties. Interesting, the reason I did it was because I enjoyed the gameplay mechanics or sequence of button presses and playing it at a higher difficulty allows to me to use those mechanics even more.
But I’ve never attached my self-worth to how “gud” I am at a game. I mean, it’s a video game. I’m 40, married, and a father. Depending on what the game demands of me, I don’t always have the time to invest in doing it at a high skill level just to impress some snob who can’t give me life or take it away.
Right on! Your quote at the end sums it up perfectly. I think I'm going to steal it and also start saying "get a life" when someone drops a low-effort "git gud".
Thankfully, I haven't encountered many games that lock certain content behind hard difficulty—that would be extremely uncool—but there are achievements like that, which saddens me, the lover of shiny badges who'd 100% a game, if only it didn't involve doing something stupidly hard just for the sake of it.
This was such a great piece. When I was younger, I can remember playing Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer all day everyday trying to "git gud." It kind of ruined the experience because it took the joy out of it. Now I'm more of a casual gamer who doesn't mind just sitting back and playing a game on easy or story difficulty. Sometimes I just want to enjoy a good story.
Occasionally I will try to "git gud" at game, but I make sure I don't overdo it. The most recent game I tried to "git gud" at was Tekken 8. I had never been amazing at fighting games, but I actually wanted to put in the effort once Tekken 8 came out. Everyday after work, I would jump into practice mode and practice my combos and figure out what does and doesn't work. Then I would hope online and have a couple matches. I could see the improvement, which gave me more satisfaction after every match, whether I won or lost. Getting good at games can be fun but there are people who can take it too far and turn it into a toxic mentality.
You nail it with not overdoing the getting gud part. If it takes the joy out of gaming, it's not worth it, but if you enjoy the challenge of trying to improve and derive pleasure out of getting better (which, who wouldn't!), then awesome! More power to you to game in the way that you want.
Ahh I think about this constantly, Katya! Every time I seek out tips on how to defeat a particularly tricky boss and see all the unhelpful "get gud" comments. I think about it while playing the old Oblivion and wondering if I should pay more attention to building my character. Am I diluting the experience by playing it on the easiest difficulty and just swinging a sword around? The trouble is, a lot of games don't tell you how to play them. Older games are notorious for having extremely difficult tutorials which can put you off the game altogether. I think we will probably "get gud" eventually and in the meantime, keep enjoying games and being open and welcoming to those who might be considering joining us 😉
"A lot of games don't tell you how to play them"- THIS 100%. As other commenters pointed out, older games are guilty of that, and plus, not every "difficult" game is difficult in a satisfying way.
The diluting experience part, oh my god, it's so annoying to hear people say it. A diluted experience is better than no experience, and why are we being purists about it? It's gatekeeping at its finest. So unhelpful.
Also, you have a great point about being opening and welcome to even newer players. Yes yes yes 🥰
It's funny cause I wouldn't know if my experience is being diluted. I feel like I'm getting the same enjoyment and feelings of gratification when I defeat a tricky boss or puzzle as someone playing on a different difficulty! I've seen so many more terrible takes on this since Life of P revealed they'd included new difficulties with the new DLC. People need to stop concerning themselves with how other people play games. Some of the takes are treading dangerously close to ablest territory, it's wild!
I'm pretty bad at a lot of games but really don't care. People don't like to admit that, like someone will take their gamer badge away, but I'm not bothered. I just play until I stop having fun or lose interest. A side product of having fun is that I'll inevitably get good at a game. But it's just not something I give much thought to.
Besides, you might spend all your time gitting gud at Dark Souls and can crush it, but then get a brutal beat down when you play Tekken or not be able to make the podium in Mario Kart.
Does that then make you bad at games? I just don't subscribe to 'hardcore gamer' mentality.
I love this for you, and this is the attitude I strive to have. I think this is exactly correct that if you keep playing and having fun you will be good eventually, but that doesn't have to be the goal. Fun is the goal!
"Comparison is the thief of joy" is something I truly started to understand the past year.
First off, excellent storytelling! Your intro is very hooky but creates just the right amount of curiosity! I am a big fan of souls and difficult games. But I also understand how the "get gud or else" can ruin the experience. I like souls/hard games cause I've played games my whole life, so the challenge excites me.
.. But expecting that from everyone else especially those who don't have the same experience or time spend on it is just toxic. The important thing is to have fun, and to get that, we gotta be challenged just right. And that's different for everyone.
I resonate with a lot of this. Like you, I am a neurotic who for years connected gaming proficiency to self-worth, and for years I would therefore pick higher difficulties even if it made the game stressful and anti-fun. Looking back, this seems like insane behaviour: nowadays, I will usually pick normal on a new game, or easy on an old game, because old games are generally much harder, and if I'm playing a game that's decades old it's generally just out of curiosity (if it's new to me) or nostalgia (if I've played it before): neither motive has anything to do with difficulty.
The Souls phenomenon, and the discourse around it, is definitely connected to this tendency to identify skill with worth. I do still subscribe to the notion that difficulty can have narrative worth, in that the player's struggle identifies them with the character and makes them more invested in the journey than they might be otherwise.
However, I think game designers can go way, way too far with this. It's almost sacrilege to say, but I don't particularly like Elden Ring, for a variety of reasons, but in large part due to the excessive difficulty. It feels like a lot of bosses are meant to be beaten in co-op (and as a single-player person I hate the emphasis on co-op), and the difficulty is so high that it actually ceases to have narrative value and breaks immersion, because dying a hundred times in a row to cheap shots breaks the flow of the game, and every late-game/DLC boss appears over-engineered. Also, if I have to keep re-speccing my character, then my character no longer feels like an actual person with immutable traits.
A lot of the time, when I finally beat ER bosses, it didn't give me any satisfaction, because the successful run felt like a fluke rather than skill, and the struggle felt like 'bullshit,' i.e. artificial and try-hard. I don't feel that way about many bosses in From's older games.
Meanwhile, I recently re-visited Papers Please, which is great, and uses difficulty very well - it's hard enough that you feel immersed in the protagonist's struggle to avoid penalties and keep his family fed, and you're pushed to engage in morally dubious behaviour to do so, but also accessible enough that it's manageable for normal human beings (which is, after all, what your protagonist is). This 'difficult but not too difficult' quality is probably what made it such a success.
Okay I think I should request to do an interview with you next, what do you say? What you're sharing is so interesting and resonates with me so much. Equalling skill to worth is the core issue I have with all of this (and what I struggle with myself; you're right, totally neurotic behaviour).
And bad game design plays a role, too; I think it's so easy to blame players when in reality not every game is balanced well or even plays fair. Some difficulty scaling just feels like it's done for the sake of amping up frustration, and that's un-fun and uncool.
Idk if I'd do an interview; just not really my thing, but it is an honour to be asked! I will definitely be touching on this again in some work that is sort of in the pipeline: there are a number of games I want to write about where difficulty is very much part of the narrative formula, without which something would be lost, but as you say, there's a line between good design and bad design, and where that line lies is of course different for different people (which is a good reason for most games to have difficulty settings).
That's absolutely fine, no worries! I'd love to read an essay from you touching on these themes.
Difficulty being part of the narrative is very much valid, but it's rarer than difficulty just for difficulty's sake, as all we seem to agree here. Difficulty settings are GOAT.
May I offer a different perspective? I tend to think about "git gud" as a dynamic balance towards building tolerance for not being broken by video games. Some days, I'll feel like tackling games at harder difficulties and be successful; other days, I just want to experience a story.
So it's less about getting it right at the hardest difficulty or on the first try and more about how long I can keep playing? Because my goal is to keep playing...and a big part of that as you mentioned is joy.
The good gamer is the one that can keep on playing and enjoying the games they play! (I'm not sure this made any sense...it sort of did in my head, then I wrote it down and it makes less sense on paper than it does in my head...but I'm posting it anyway lol)
This way of defining "git gud" is more appealing to me too, for sure. Not being broken by a game and to keep playing it is a great attitude and a succinct descriptor. I'm glad to know that it's not the difficulty that defines it for you. Thank you!
A really great idea for a post here and a topic I've been mulling over writing about too, particularly in relation to the whole difficulty modes debate.
I'd say I'm somewhere in between on all this.
I do tend to turn my nose up at cosy games and phone games but difficulty tends to be the last reason on my list as to why, I just find most cosy games to have a very unappealing gameplay loop, a sickly aesthetic and I dislike how infantilising they tend to feel. I'm definitely on-board with disliking the extreme cases of this though, I do think that mobile gaming 5 minutes on the bus doesn't make you a gamer but for enjoying certain genres exclusively? For not agreeing to an arbitrary list of best games? Those people are terrible.
I think a lot of these ideas about gaming being about overcoming triumph and struggling with it for a while comes from the old days. Broadly speaking, I'd say most games released after about 2005 are very easy compared to what came before but the people who insist you must suffer pay no attention to difficulty design and how good difficulty is created. Classic retro games were difficult because the games hit you with unavoidable deaths a first time player would never escape and because older video games rarely had a save feature that respected your time. This is a very backwards way of making a game difficult.
Modern games often also have a very poor way of introducing difficulty: the damage received versus damage output ratio. Most video games when you crank them up to Very Hard increase the damage you take and decrease the damage you deal, while it's okay for making slight adjustments to your experience cranking to to max usually just means enemies take too long to kill while your character has a glass jaw; it challenges your patience, not your skill.
This is becoming a bit of an essay but essentially what I think is that a video game being enjoyable must always come first: above difficulty, above design, all of it. Gatekeeping based on difficulty is stupid, especially as the hardest games ever made are decades old and Dark Souls for example certainly doesn't rank among them, at least not in my opinion. Enjoy, block out the naysayers and eventually you will find genres you're good at or get really proficient at certain games, it's almost never a result of a conscious effort to improve and most of the time the result of wanting to finish a game in spite of a tough obstacle but at the end of the day? You're right it doesn't really matter regardless.
Look at you, blowing my essay out of the park with yours, so well-articulated and nuanced!
Thank you so much for writing it all out.
"Challenges your patience not your skill" - absolutely! This is something that I couldn't figure out but yes, this 100% makes sense. And enjoyment above all is key.
I really appreciate it :) With all the thoughtful comments from seasoned gamers (thank you!!) I feel imposter syndrome creeping in, but that's quite similar to what I was trying to articulate in the essay. My perspective might be amateur but it's mine!
I feel myself avoiding calling you a 'novice' or a 'casual' gamer because those words have come to carry negative connotations (and I'm not sure how you would label yourself, if at all) I don't know why because they shouldn't sound that way and I don't mean them in a negative way at all.
I think your perspective is important because people who've been playing forever like me have a developed instinct for the language of video games; I can pretty quickly figure out how and why a video game and its systems want me to play in the same way that you might instinctively know how to write a word in plural, or give an adjective the right gender.
A lack of this instinct is the biggest gap between seasoned and newer gamers, in my experience. I remember my mum trying to play Mario and unpicking why I knew what to do was quite difficult, you just... know. With newer gamers talking about video games and creating content like you, I think it becomes easier to recognise when a game relies too much on this instinct and we can adjust accordingly. This is why I think a lot of people find Dark Souls hard, for example, it's not that it's an insanely hard game: in the grand scheme of things it's not, it's that the unintuitive 'rules' of playing these games, like dodging towards the enemy instead of away or recognising when it's your 'turn' to attack are missing for many.
That's a very interesting point/question about labels and how I'd label myself. As you say, "novice" or "casual gamer" may carry somewhat negative connotations, and the reason why is, I think, that they imply the existence of "pro" and "dedicated gamers", adding a heightened degree of contrast where it's not that black and white.
I don't mind either label, but they also don't ring very true to me. I don't feel very casual when I game every night for hours; I also feel like I'm not entirely new to video games, having played and learned about a bunch, and also the sense of, "hey, I'm not that bad".
On the other hand, the developed instinct you and I have discussed on multiple occasions already—THAT I definitely have in its nascent stages, at best. THAT I wholly agree that I'm a novice at. THAT is a nuanced way to describe the gap between experienced players and those catching up.
And, the lack of it also makes games fun for me. I'm not aided by prelearned knowledge, but I'm not constrained by it, either. Being at the game conference today, I also think it's quite valuable for developers to see how I interact with the environments they're building and how it can be (un)intuitive for me.
Going back to labels, I once called myself "the perfect amateur". It wasn't about games, but it applies here, because I'm an amateur, but an open-minded one, and eager to learn. Which is pretty perfect, I think.
This is something I've also been thinking about recently but couldn't put it into words. Reading through this made me realize that yeah, I DO care that I'm bad at video games. I do compare myself with others, especially with my closest circle who are generally really good at them. But why should I care? Maybe it'll take me longer to beat Expedition 33 than my god-gamer friend who recommended it to me. Just because he is really good at this game, does that mean my experience is less valuable? He doesn't think that, and neither should I.
I'll try to continue playing games the way I enjoy them. Currently I'm enjoying the challange that the normal difficulty provides in Expedition 33, the feeling of satisfaction I get when I can successfully perform a dodge is amazing (still can't parry properly). But if it frustrates me? I'll tell myself that I'm playing for myself and no one else, then switch to easy.
This comment kinda turned into an introspection lol, but thank you for sharing your thoughts. It reminded me that it is okay to not 'git gud' and just enjoy the ride.
I think this is a good approach. There's probably always going to be a degree of "someone is better at this than me" but that's true about most things in life, and as long as it doesn't overshadow your enjoyment and your unique experience of playing games, then it's all good. Thank you for sharing, too! I know I wasn't alone in feeling this way :)
I think a lot of discussions about difficulty in games turns into a 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater' issue - if the difficulty in something rubs people the wrong way, it must be difficulty as a concept, or seeing skill or tenacity or endurance as virtues, that are the problem. But I don't think that's really true. I think some games really do need to be difficult, or slightly unforgiving, or hard to pick up, because it's essential to their essence as the particular game they are. The level of difficulty is how the game enforces its rules on the player, and drives them to make full use of the mechanics and coordination skills it's teaching them. In the same way that the physics in a game [like how high and fast Mario jumps] has to be tuned to 'feel' right, I think difficulty has to be tuned too, and while it's impossible to please everyone, or even ensure everyone can enjoy the game at the 'intended' or rather 'tuned' difficulty, if that DOESN'T happen, the result is even worse. The game is either boring and forgettable, or brutal and unpleasant for the vast majority of players.
I think the real reason there's so much toxicity built up in defending the honor of harder games against people wanting it to be tuned down for them is less about pure gatekeeping and exclusion [although that exists] but is more because those people HAD an experience they really enjoyed, one deeply rooted in how much the game forced them to adapt and master the game's systems. Demanding that that be neutered is not just an attack on them and their prized experience, but a threat to prevent that from happening for anyone else in the future. [recall how upset people still are about the disappearance of the original Star Wars theatrical cut] And if there's one thing gamers love more than anything, it's proselytizing. They're just not very good at expressing themselves.
Which then leads into the 'easy mode' discussion. I feel like the main reason people get worked up about some of the player base choosing a lower, sometimes almost absent, level of difficulty is because when you're discussing the game in a community, it then becomes apparent that not everyone had the same experience. It's like if you recommended a book or movie to a friend, and a week later they wanted to talk about it but had only read the SparkNotes. They 'got the story they wanted' but did they really? Do you feel the same way talking to them about the book? How do you feel when you show someone your favorite movie and you catch them checking their phone multiple times? I think it's a similar level of betrayal when you find out someone has formed opinions on a game you liked without having experienced it 'right.'
Which is not to say there really is a 'right' or wrong way to experience a game - just very different, maybe a little more different than you want to admit. And as other people have said, your skill, your accomplishment, should not be your sole measure of worth, but it's worth considering why those things have so much worth to others, and as you say, deep down, to yourself. I don't think you CAN'T play on a higher difficulty, and I don't think you necessarily SHOULD either - plenty of games are exceedingly POORLY tuned. But [not to get personal, just responding to what you say in the piece] if there's something inside of you saying you chickened out, you went to the gym and jogged around a bit and went home, you looked up a nice recipe and then ordered delivery, that might not be pure pathology. Maybe you just know you could handle a little more pressure than you're allowing. That doesn't make you a bad person or a lesser gamer, but it's worth thinking about [not dwelling on] rather than dismissing.
Good luck in all your gaming ventures!
A lot to unpack in your comment (and I loved reading it, thank you!), so I'd like to focus on two points that you made. I agree that playing a game on easy and playing it on normal or hard *probably* provides a different experience, but I don't think it's a fair comparison to liken it to Sparknotes of a book or phone scrolling during a movie. I get your point, but I also strongly feel that there is no "right" way—no one gets to tell me which experience is the "righter" one, just like I don't get to tell them—and if the alternative to a different experience is no experience at all (i.e. someone doesn't play at all because of whatever barriers), then I'd take the former. Discussing this with readers makes me realize how strongly I believe in having difficulty controls and easy modes, and how important having this choice is.
To your point about listening inward, this was something I tried to express in the piece closer to the end when I said that when I have these thoughts, I try to understand what matters to me in the moment. Sometimes it feels like "chickening out" when I know I can do it and so I press on; sometimes, it's quitting and taking a break or turning the difficulty down. I fully agree with you that introspection is key. The answer isn't always to go harder though; being gentle with oneself is valid too, especially when it comes to entertainment.
Great article! I am not good at most type of games and I couldn't care less when others might think, that I am a bad gamer. However, sometimes I still wish I could turn off the 'Play Time' in Steam for example. But that only lasts a few seconds or so and then I don't mind if it takes me 10 hours to complete something when others do it in 5. I am having the time of my life in many games... that's what counts!
Hey Michael, thank you and welcome! Having the time of your life is all that matters :D
Interesting point about the Steam play time—I never thought about it as an indicator of being "bad" (which is funny given how much I worry about these things apparently). To me, more play time is a point of pride. Dedication, you see!
Something that can’t be overlooked is the context in which we talk about being “good” or “bad” at a game. If you see someone playing Pac-Man and they keep dying immediately because they ignore the games rules, then sure, they’re objectively bad at the game as long as they keep ignoring the rules.
But just because a person can’t make it to the 3rd or 5th maze in Pac-Man doesn’t mean they’re bad at the game per se. There’s just room for improvement. And even so…it’s just a game.
The social pressure to “git gud” has always annoyed me because it wasn’t really a thing growing up playing video games in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. The only exception was maybe fighting games played on a competitive level or Esports where you’re playing against the best of the best for real money (as you already mentioned).
I’ve actually never cared much about playing anything on the highest difficulty. In fact, I always roll my eyes anytime games have content (like videos and other extras) that can only be unlocked by playing on harder difficulty.
That being said, there have been games where I did attempt to play on harder difficulties. Interesting, the reason I did it was because I enjoyed the gameplay mechanics or sequence of button presses and playing it at a higher difficulty allows to me to use those mechanics even more.
But I’ve never attached my self-worth to how “gud” I am at a game. I mean, it’s a video game. I’m 40, married, and a father. Depending on what the game demands of me, I don’t always have the time to invest in doing it at a high skill level just to impress some snob who can’t give me life or take it away.
They say “get gud”. I say “get a life”.
Right on! Your quote at the end sums it up perfectly. I think I'm going to steal it and also start saying "get a life" when someone drops a low-effort "git gud".
Thankfully, I haven't encountered many games that lock certain content behind hard difficulty—that would be extremely uncool—but there are achievements like that, which saddens me, the lover of shiny badges who'd 100% a game, if only it didn't involve doing something stupidly hard just for the sake of it.
Thanks for sharing Jamie!
This was such a great piece. When I was younger, I can remember playing Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer all day everyday trying to "git gud." It kind of ruined the experience because it took the joy out of it. Now I'm more of a casual gamer who doesn't mind just sitting back and playing a game on easy or story difficulty. Sometimes I just want to enjoy a good story.
Occasionally I will try to "git gud" at game, but I make sure I don't overdo it. The most recent game I tried to "git gud" at was Tekken 8. I had never been amazing at fighting games, but I actually wanted to put in the effort once Tekken 8 came out. Everyday after work, I would jump into practice mode and practice my combos and figure out what does and doesn't work. Then I would hope online and have a couple matches. I could see the improvement, which gave me more satisfaction after every match, whether I won or lost. Getting good at games can be fun but there are people who can take it too far and turn it into a toxic mentality.
Thank you Taylor! (Also welcome!)
You nail it with not overdoing the getting gud part. If it takes the joy out of gaming, it's not worth it, but if you enjoy the challenge of trying to improve and derive pleasure out of getting better (which, who wouldn't!), then awesome! More power to you to game in the way that you want.
Tekken 8 looks insanely hard to me!
Also, that article that infuriated you is a thinly veiled "get gud" 😒
Ahh I think about this constantly, Katya! Every time I seek out tips on how to defeat a particularly tricky boss and see all the unhelpful "get gud" comments. I think about it while playing the old Oblivion and wondering if I should pay more attention to building my character. Am I diluting the experience by playing it on the easiest difficulty and just swinging a sword around? The trouble is, a lot of games don't tell you how to play them. Older games are notorious for having extremely difficult tutorials which can put you off the game altogether. I think we will probably "get gud" eventually and in the meantime, keep enjoying games and being open and welcoming to those who might be considering joining us 😉
"A lot of games don't tell you how to play them"- THIS 100%. As other commenters pointed out, older games are guilty of that, and plus, not every "difficult" game is difficult in a satisfying way.
The diluting experience part, oh my god, it's so annoying to hear people say it. A diluted experience is better than no experience, and why are we being purists about it? It's gatekeeping at its finest. So unhelpful.
Also, you have a great point about being opening and welcome to even newer players. Yes yes yes 🥰
It's funny cause I wouldn't know if my experience is being diluted. I feel like I'm getting the same enjoyment and feelings of gratification when I defeat a tricky boss or puzzle as someone playing on a different difficulty! I've seen so many more terrible takes on this since Life of P revealed they'd included new difficulties with the new DLC. People need to stop concerning themselves with how other people play games. Some of the takes are treading dangerously close to ablest territory, it's wild!
Exactly! The way people care about what other people do in single-player games... Good call on mentioning ableism, that bothers me to no end as well.
And I didn't even know Life of Pi added difficulty levels, GOOD ON THEM!
I'm pretty bad at a lot of games but really don't care. People don't like to admit that, like someone will take their gamer badge away, but I'm not bothered. I just play until I stop having fun or lose interest. A side product of having fun is that I'll inevitably get good at a game. But it's just not something I give much thought to.
Besides, you might spend all your time gitting gud at Dark Souls and can crush it, but then get a brutal beat down when you play Tekken or not be able to make the podium in Mario Kart.
Does that then make you bad at games? I just don't subscribe to 'hardcore gamer' mentality.
“…or not be able to make the podium in Mario Kart.”
Oh yes, Mario Kart will humble many a haughty gamer. 🤣
It definitely humbled me more often than not! 😂
I love this for you, and this is the attitude I strive to have. I think this is exactly correct that if you keep playing and having fun you will be good eventually, but that doesn't have to be the goal. Fun is the goal!
Bingo!
"Comparison is the thief of joy" is something I truly started to understand the past year.
First off, excellent storytelling! Your intro is very hooky but creates just the right amount of curiosity! I am a big fan of souls and difficult games. But I also understand how the "get gud or else" can ruin the experience. I like souls/hard games cause I've played games my whole life, so the challenge excites me.
.. But expecting that from everyone else especially those who don't have the same experience or time spend on it is just toxic. The important thing is to have fun, and to get that, we gotta be challenged just right. And that's different for everyone.
Thank you for your kind words especially on my writing! Means a lot coming from an editor and an excellent writer 😀
Getting challenged "just right" is the best feeling and what makes gaming fun. Agree 💯!
I resonate with a lot of this. Like you, I am a neurotic who for years connected gaming proficiency to self-worth, and for years I would therefore pick higher difficulties even if it made the game stressful and anti-fun. Looking back, this seems like insane behaviour: nowadays, I will usually pick normal on a new game, or easy on an old game, because old games are generally much harder, and if I'm playing a game that's decades old it's generally just out of curiosity (if it's new to me) or nostalgia (if I've played it before): neither motive has anything to do with difficulty.
The Souls phenomenon, and the discourse around it, is definitely connected to this tendency to identify skill with worth. I do still subscribe to the notion that difficulty can have narrative worth, in that the player's struggle identifies them with the character and makes them more invested in the journey than they might be otherwise.
However, I think game designers can go way, way too far with this. It's almost sacrilege to say, but I don't particularly like Elden Ring, for a variety of reasons, but in large part due to the excessive difficulty. It feels like a lot of bosses are meant to be beaten in co-op (and as a single-player person I hate the emphasis on co-op), and the difficulty is so high that it actually ceases to have narrative value and breaks immersion, because dying a hundred times in a row to cheap shots breaks the flow of the game, and every late-game/DLC boss appears over-engineered. Also, if I have to keep re-speccing my character, then my character no longer feels like an actual person with immutable traits.
A lot of the time, when I finally beat ER bosses, it didn't give me any satisfaction, because the successful run felt like a fluke rather than skill, and the struggle felt like 'bullshit,' i.e. artificial and try-hard. I don't feel that way about many bosses in From's older games.
Meanwhile, I recently re-visited Papers Please, which is great, and uses difficulty very well - it's hard enough that you feel immersed in the protagonist's struggle to avoid penalties and keep his family fed, and you're pushed to engage in morally dubious behaviour to do so, but also accessible enough that it's manageable for normal human beings (which is, after all, what your protagonist is). This 'difficult but not too difficult' quality is probably what made it such a success.
Okay I think I should request to do an interview with you next, what do you say? What you're sharing is so interesting and resonates with me so much. Equalling skill to worth is the core issue I have with all of this (and what I struggle with myself; you're right, totally neurotic behaviour).
And bad game design plays a role, too; I think it's so easy to blame players when in reality not every game is balanced well or even plays fair. Some difficulty scaling just feels like it's done for the sake of amping up frustration, and that's un-fun and uncool.
You're not alone re: Elden Ring!
Idk if I'd do an interview; just not really my thing, but it is an honour to be asked! I will definitely be touching on this again in some work that is sort of in the pipeline: there are a number of games I want to write about where difficulty is very much part of the narrative formula, without which something would be lost, but as you say, there's a line between good design and bad design, and where that line lies is of course different for different people (which is a good reason for most games to have difficulty settings).
That's absolutely fine, no worries! I'd love to read an essay from you touching on these themes.
Difficulty being part of the narrative is very much valid, but it's rarer than difficulty just for difficulty's sake, as all we seem to agree here. Difficulty settings are GOAT.
May I offer a different perspective? I tend to think about "git gud" as a dynamic balance towards building tolerance for not being broken by video games. Some days, I'll feel like tackling games at harder difficulties and be successful; other days, I just want to experience a story.
So it's less about getting it right at the hardest difficulty or on the first try and more about how long I can keep playing? Because my goal is to keep playing...and a big part of that as you mentioned is joy.
The good gamer is the one that can keep on playing and enjoying the games they play! (I'm not sure this made any sense...it sort of did in my head, then I wrote it down and it makes less sense on paper than it does in my head...but I'm posting it anyway lol)
Of course, your perspective is always welcome!
This way of defining "git gud" is more appealing to me too, for sure. Not being broken by a game and to keep playing it is a great attitude and a succinct descriptor. I'm glad to know that it's not the difficulty that defines it for you. Thank you!
A really great idea for a post here and a topic I've been mulling over writing about too, particularly in relation to the whole difficulty modes debate.
I'd say I'm somewhere in between on all this.
I do tend to turn my nose up at cosy games and phone games but difficulty tends to be the last reason on my list as to why, I just find most cosy games to have a very unappealing gameplay loop, a sickly aesthetic and I dislike how infantilising they tend to feel. I'm definitely on-board with disliking the extreme cases of this though, I do think that mobile gaming 5 minutes on the bus doesn't make you a gamer but for enjoying certain genres exclusively? For not agreeing to an arbitrary list of best games? Those people are terrible.
I think a lot of these ideas about gaming being about overcoming triumph and struggling with it for a while comes from the old days. Broadly speaking, I'd say most games released after about 2005 are very easy compared to what came before but the people who insist you must suffer pay no attention to difficulty design and how good difficulty is created. Classic retro games were difficult because the games hit you with unavoidable deaths a first time player would never escape and because older video games rarely had a save feature that respected your time. This is a very backwards way of making a game difficult.
Modern games often also have a very poor way of introducing difficulty: the damage received versus damage output ratio. Most video games when you crank them up to Very Hard increase the damage you take and decrease the damage you deal, while it's okay for making slight adjustments to your experience cranking to to max usually just means enemies take too long to kill while your character has a glass jaw; it challenges your patience, not your skill.
This is becoming a bit of an essay but essentially what I think is that a video game being enjoyable must always come first: above difficulty, above design, all of it. Gatekeeping based on difficulty is stupid, especially as the hardest games ever made are decades old and Dark Souls for example certainly doesn't rank among them, at least not in my opinion. Enjoy, block out the naysayers and eventually you will find genres you're good at or get really proficient at certain games, it's almost never a result of a conscious effort to improve and most of the time the result of wanting to finish a game in spite of a tough obstacle but at the end of the day? You're right it doesn't really matter regardless.
Look at you, blowing my essay out of the park with yours, so well-articulated and nuanced!
Thank you so much for writing it all out.
"Challenges your patience not your skill" - absolutely! This is something that I couldn't figure out but yes, this 100% makes sense. And enjoyment above all is key.
👏👏👏
Happy to write a comment you enjoyed reading :) Keep up the good work too, I really enjoy the perspective you bring to this space at the moment.
I really appreciate it :) With all the thoughtful comments from seasoned gamers (thank you!!) I feel imposter syndrome creeping in, but that's quite similar to what I was trying to articulate in the essay. My perspective might be amateur but it's mine!
I feel myself avoiding calling you a 'novice' or a 'casual' gamer because those words have come to carry negative connotations (and I'm not sure how you would label yourself, if at all) I don't know why because they shouldn't sound that way and I don't mean them in a negative way at all.
I think your perspective is important because people who've been playing forever like me have a developed instinct for the language of video games; I can pretty quickly figure out how and why a video game and its systems want me to play in the same way that you might instinctively know how to write a word in plural, or give an adjective the right gender.
A lack of this instinct is the biggest gap between seasoned and newer gamers, in my experience. I remember my mum trying to play Mario and unpicking why I knew what to do was quite difficult, you just... know. With newer gamers talking about video games and creating content like you, I think it becomes easier to recognise when a game relies too much on this instinct and we can adjust accordingly. This is why I think a lot of people find Dark Souls hard, for example, it's not that it's an insanely hard game: in the grand scheme of things it's not, it's that the unintuitive 'rules' of playing these games, like dodging towards the enemy instead of away or recognising when it's your 'turn' to attack are missing for many.
That's a very interesting point/question about labels and how I'd label myself. As you say, "novice" or "casual gamer" may carry somewhat negative connotations, and the reason why is, I think, that they imply the existence of "pro" and "dedicated gamers", adding a heightened degree of contrast where it's not that black and white.
I don't mind either label, but they also don't ring very true to me. I don't feel very casual when I game every night for hours; I also feel like I'm not entirely new to video games, having played and learned about a bunch, and also the sense of, "hey, I'm not that bad".
On the other hand, the developed instinct you and I have discussed on multiple occasions already—THAT I definitely have in its nascent stages, at best. THAT I wholly agree that I'm a novice at. THAT is a nuanced way to describe the gap between experienced players and those catching up.
And, the lack of it also makes games fun for me. I'm not aided by prelearned knowledge, but I'm not constrained by it, either. Being at the game conference today, I also think it's quite valuable for developers to see how I interact with the environments they're building and how it can be (un)intuitive for me.
Going back to labels, I once called myself "the perfect amateur". It wasn't about games, but it applies here, because I'm an amateur, but an open-minded one, and eager to learn. Which is pretty perfect, I think.
Heh, another essay in the form of a comment :)
This is something I've also been thinking about recently but couldn't put it into words. Reading through this made me realize that yeah, I DO care that I'm bad at video games. I do compare myself with others, especially with my closest circle who are generally really good at them. But why should I care? Maybe it'll take me longer to beat Expedition 33 than my god-gamer friend who recommended it to me. Just because he is really good at this game, does that mean my experience is less valuable? He doesn't think that, and neither should I.
I'll try to continue playing games the way I enjoy them. Currently I'm enjoying the challange that the normal difficulty provides in Expedition 33, the feeling of satisfaction I get when I can successfully perform a dodge is amazing (still can't parry properly). But if it frustrates me? I'll tell myself that I'm playing for myself and no one else, then switch to easy.
This comment kinda turned into an introspection lol, but thank you for sharing your thoughts. It reminded me that it is okay to not 'git gud' and just enjoy the ride.
I think this is a good approach. There's probably always going to be a degree of "someone is better at this than me" but that's true about most things in life, and as long as it doesn't overshadow your enjoyment and your unique experience of playing games, then it's all good. Thank you for sharing, too! I know I wasn't alone in feeling this way :)