It seems as though every six months or so the discourse around difficulty settings in video games lights up across pockets of the internet — typically tied to the release of the latest soulslike. These games pride themselves on being a challenging experience in which overcoming the odds through skill and dedication is the ultimate reward for most players. Many enjoy piecing together the lore, exploring the world, or playing with the fashion as well, but it is the sense of pride one gets from overcoming these tough, but fair, obstacles that has made it one of the most popular genres in recent memory.
Naturally, this leads to some debate about whether or not these games should offer any difficulty options, and if they do, like Lies of P: Overture has not so long ago, if playing on a lower difficulty “counts,” is not the “developer’s intent,” or one of a handfull of other reasons that miss the point entirely. There is no argument to be had surrounding difficulty settings and it is time we stopped pretending there is.
One size doesn’t fit all
Difficulty settings are accessibility settings, full stop. We might not think of them the same way we do colorblind or visual indicators for sound cues, but there’s functionally no difference. If an option allows someone to experience a piece of media they otherwise couldn’t, it should be celebrated. Suggesting that lowering the difficulty is somehow cheating or not getting the “real” experience just sounds like gatekeeping and ignores the main reason those options exist. It is there for people who, for whatever reason, could not engage with the game on the default setting. Everyone is at a different skill level before taking into account genre familiarity, time, and any disabilities. You and I might experience the same level of challenge, but on opposite difficulty levels because our natural skill levels simply vary that much.
It should go without saying, but everyone is unique. That is why options exist. Even in cases where someone uses an easier difficulty when they could spend the time practicing to overcome the challenge, why should it matter to anyone else if they decide to lower the difficulty? We all come to games for different things and enjoy them for different reasons.
A newer argument I’ve seen cropping up as of late pivots the focus from people who use lower difficulty options robbing themselves of something to robbing the developers. The term I see thrown around most often is “developer’s intent” and the assumption that the default difficulty, or a game without any options, is the way developers want players to experience the game. While quite presumptuous on its face, I do get the logic. Whatever the normal difficulty is tends to be what the game was balanced for first, with higher and lower options being tuned after the fact. That isn’t always the case, of course, but it seems to be the most common approach. That’s about as far as I’m willing to go with that logic, though.
For one, every major game goes through tons of changes and playtesting to find the right level of challenge. That doesn’t stop when a game releases anymore, either. Elden Ring underwent some major balance changes for bosses, weapons, and abilities. Was the original version the developer’s intent before bosses like Radahn got nerfed, or after? Difficulty is a fluid thing and always the result of the entire team working to find a balance that appeals to the target audience best. Again, this goes right back to the first point where what is easy for some might be overwhelming for others.
We need to stop pretending that difficulty is a one-size-fits-all situation. Even if you believe that a developer wants a game to be hard, understand that “hard” is a subjective term. Me playing on easy might pose just as much challenge to me as you playing on ultra-nightmare, or whatever. Even if we lived in a perfect world where everyone was at the same skill level and there were no disabilities to accommodate, there’s nothing to gain by shaming people for playing a game differently than you. The death of the author should apply just as much to narrative as difficulty in games — we should be free to experience and take away whatever we want from a game.
