If you’ve had an ear to the ground of the video game community over the last couple of weeks, you’ve likely heard a few conversations that have caused more of a stir than they should have. The first surrounded the oft-debated idea of difficulty in video games when the official Xbox Twitter account made what should not have been a hot take, but boy did it ever turn out to be. Double Fine studios then went on to add fuel to the fire with this tweet about their upcoming game Psychonauts 2.
If you beat Psychonauts 2 with the invincibility toggle on, you still beat P2. https://t.co/OinBv1nuNr
— Double Fine (@DoubleFine) July 9, 2021
Over the last few years, there has been a trend in video games where the concept of “the harder the game, the sweeter the victory” became the mantra for publishers like FromSoft who redefined the concept of “hard games” with Dark Souls and its successors. And it’s not just limited to new games – for years amateur and hobby developers have been creating harder and harder versions of older games like Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country through emulation and you can even see the echoes of that in lots of content for the Mario Maker games. Now there are gamers out there that enjoy the challenge of learning a really difficult level by playing it over and over and over again and making tiny corrections to their course, but it shouldn’t be surprising that this isn’t the case for everyone. And unfortunately, this attitude has emboldened a small but vocal section of gamers to feel they can be elitist jerks and gatekeep the hobby from more “casual” fans. And Double Fine continued to push back on that mindset with the following series of tweets.
All people should be able to enjoy games. All ages, all possible needs. It's an ongoing and important process for our industry and a challenge we need to met.
End of the day? We want you to have fun, to laugh, to experience a story that affects you. On whatever terms you want.
— Double Fine (@DoubleFine) July 9, 2021
Even more recently, Bioware released some data that had been collected about the decisions that they made during their playthroughs of Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Of course, this is a series of video games infamous for its ability to let you experience the game on your own terms, even if it didn’t end according to the ultimate satisfaction of a lot of gamers. The data showed that about 40% of players simply selected the default options that were given to them and jumped right into the game by playing as a male Commander Shepard with the Soldier class. And video game websites had a FIELD DAY calling out players with cringe-inducing headlines such as this one from Rock Paper Shotgun’s Imogen Beckhelling.
The article then goes on to at length talk about the writer’s “problems” with that decision
And I have to know, in a game where you’re able to play as techno wizards and space sorcerers, why did 40% of you decide to play the class in which your only special skill is “has several guns”?
I’m talking to you, soldier players. The majority of Shepards ended up being shooty shooty men over having glowing blue alien powers that let you throw people across a room. 40% of people decided to play Mass Effect: Call Of Duty rather than be a tech expert that can literally launch fire at people. Baffling.
I won’t lie – this whole thing got me fired up in a way that I wasn’t expecting. Who are we as gamers to call out another person for making a decision that they obviously enjoyed? They put in 60+ hours of game time with that decision to finish the trilogy of games after all. And to do it in a series that so greatly values the ability and empowers you to make those kinds of decisions? It’s hypocritical at best.
Those of us in the realm of tabletop games have faced a lot of very similar criticisms about the games we choose to play and why, especially after 5th Edition came out. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read “5e is easy mode for Dungeons and Dragons” or something similar. I’ve seen so many people ask, “In a game where you can be anything, why would you choose to be a human fighter?” I’ve seen people insist that if death isn’t always an option at the table, then the game is boring or you’re playing it wrong.
And I’m tired of it, folks. Real tired. I’ve been gaming in some capacity or another for roughly three decades. I know that there are others out there that have many more years and hours logged than I do, but in that time I’ve been blessed to play a lot of different games with a lot of different themes and feelings from classic dungeon crawls to playing merchant privateers where our power was based on how well we played the economics game and accumulated wealth to more slice of life games as characters that weren’t quite heroes… yet. And all of this was done with 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons rules. And never once did we not enjoy ourselves or feel that we were playing the game wrong.
Long story short, the hobby is changing. It’s become mainstream. It’s no longer “uncool” to play a game like Dungeons and Dragons. We have voices coming into the hobby that have never existed before and are being given the honor of seeing what they create. And we should be celebrating that. Will it always be our cup of tea? Nope. I’m a firm believer that sometimes the game you want to run isn’t a good fit for the system that you want to use to run it. Indie games with tighter focuses and thematic elements exist for a reason. And I will offer opinions and options if asked – but at the end of the day if it’s not my table, no one’s being hurt, and everyone’s having fun with what’s being played, then you do you. I’m not perfect and sometimes I fail in this. But ultimately, I’m happy that you’re happy, and while I may question the means you use to get there, I won’t question the end result of having more games being played at tables around the world, even if I don’t always understand the fun.
So – what do I want you to take away from this? It’s simple.
So what if it’s “easy” or “boring”? In a hobby that prizes letting you step into someone else’s shoes and be that person for a period of time, don’t unfairly criticize others for doing that on their own terms and how they want. Instead listen to why they’re playing the way they are. Maybe you’ll learn something about your own blind spots or be better able to articulate the reasons that you play the game the way you do.
Simply put – do better. Be better. And that will by it’s very nature make for better tables for everyone.
Ben Erickson
