The Beginner Bias in Game Critique

The Beginner Bias in Game Critique. When was the last time you saw a game get serious push back from critics for being too easy? How often do you find game critics defending against simplification? How often does IGN take bold stances against popular consensus on the basis of game design (not politics or whatever)? The answer to all these questions is very rarely or almost never. As of late I've found in a number of my reviews, both positive and negative, actually, that my thoughts and conclusions rarely line up with popular consensus. Perhaps I am merely an outlier, but I believe a huge part of this phenomenon is the heavy overwhelming bias in game critique towards beginner players.
Sure expert players have opinions and critiques that they share on discord and on forums that are remote islands, but in terms of the general public conversation every single force right now is pushing relentlessly towards beginner oriented design. Part of this is natural as the gaming audience grows and expands -- and that is cool -- but the problem gaming has in terms of it critical landscape is that the space that should be reserved for expert players is being held hostage by a bunch of casual scrubs. What we have right now is an unholy fusion of the mass of beginner players and a league of beginner critics telling new players exactly what they want to hear. It is an unbalanced relationship because both of these forces are now teaming up and pushing devs to make their games more simple and basic. There is no opposing incentive right now -- even in terms of review scores -- towards making games and easy and pandering as possible.
Then add to that this new moralistic sledgehammer of devs being told that removing difficulty is supposedly required for "accessibility" (I talk about real accessibility in the video) and you have the results that everyone is making video essays about right now -- most mainstream games now are boring and basic. None of these video essayists then take the next step of actually applying the critiques to individual games, but that's a subject for another video ha.
awesome thumbnail created by ‪@boghogSTG‬
Patreon
/ electricunderground
[$2 tier = Monthly Game Review Vote, Name in Credits, Exclusive Monthly Podcast]
[$5 tier = Double Monthly Game Review Vote, By Name Shout-out, Name in Credits, Exclusive Monthly Podcast]
Website: theelectricundergr.wixsite.co...
My Discord Stream Server:
/ discord
Electric Reddit:
/ electricunderground
👕Official Shirt!👕
amzn.to/2XghV9J
Twitch:
/ the_electric_underground
STG Revision 2020 Discord:
/ discord
00:00 Games Can No Longer Afford to be Challenging (Literally)
02:30 KZbinrs Critique General Industry but Softball Individual Games
04:45 Game Critique Only Flows in One Direction -- Towards Simplification
07:30 Critics are Beginners and Beginners are Critics (The Unholy Fusion)
09:50 Gatekeeping WILL HAPPEN Naturally, So Might As Well Do it Right
12:21 We Keep IGNORING Legacy Skill in Game Design
16:03 Accessibility: Difficulty IS Artistic Content
20:27 True Accessibility is Accessing Difficulty, Not Removing It.
23:10 The Exception to Beginner Bias is First Person Shooters
#cozygaming, #ign, #darksouls

[@firehaps]

No other medium has this expectation of accessibility. In fact, it's the opposite. The more impenetrable a work is, the more it's praised. No one is out here telling Avant-garde filmmakers or progressive rock bands to tone it down. A lot of the people who insist games are art don't actually believe it. They actually see them as nothing more than comfort toys.

[@ZorroVulpes]

I agree, game journalists will say "gaming is the only artform you can't finish" but that's absolutely not true, some books are very hard to read. I think it's because there is still a very big negative stigma about games and the people who enjoy them

[@azumashinobi1559]

I've been saying this for a very long time now I totally agree

[@notnoaintno5134]

"The more impenetrable a work is, the more it's praised. No one is out here telling Avant-garde filmmakers or progressive rock bands to tone it down." That's only true up to a point. Like if you consider Tool a prog rock band, yes they're critically acclaimed or w/e, but there's much more musically and technically demanding stuff out there, even in progressive rock, that people don't pay any attention to. It's not that people are getting mad about those bands, they just don't listen to them or pay them any attention.

[@joxerrrrr]

I mean they do but its not normalised the way it happens with gaming. That's the issue when games are still considered by alarge just a fun past time activity and not actual art projects.

[@saikimayu]

I disagree, I think the most successful music, films and books tend to be the least challenging. Everything else sits in its niche. Sometimes those niches explode and become more mainstream, but not to the same level as actual mainstream. Nietzsche is never going to outsell Harry Potter or Hunger Games. No hyperpop or breakcore artist is ever going to outsell Taylor Swift. Film is a bit more of a mixed bag as long as you can get your film to theaters, but superhero garbage dominates and if you don't get a theatrical release (or at least a highly endorsed streaming release) nobody is even going to know your movie exists. I think the main difference in these mediums is that they can be a lot less cost-prohibitive than games, so there is a bigger indie scene. Books and music are essentially zero cost to the artist other than time. Movies require some capital but you can do a lot with very little. You could argue that the same is true for games, but I think it's different. There are the rare cases of single-dev indie games, but there are a few issues there... While the tools are basically free, you need a much wider range of technical skills than the other mediums (except maybe film). It's also much more time consuming to create a game, to the point where the very best a single person can do is a high quality game in a 30+ year old format. I don't know of any games that are single-dev and also 3D that are of any quality and certainly none running on proprietary engines. That's just out of the realm of being a realistic task, but books, music and movies aren't as daunting in the same way. The funny thing to me is that for every single-dev game I've found an interview for, they have ALL said that the music was by far the easiest part. Often those games are acclaimed for their soundtracks too, lol.

[@astreakaito5625]

"KZbinrs critique general industry but softball individual games" This is absolutely spot on btw so I want to highlight it here.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I know right, i'm glad you caught that part cuz once you notice it you can't unsee it ha. It's almost funny once you notice the trend cuz it really will be sometimes video to video where one vid the youtubers is talking about the decline of gaming (which I think it accurate in a lot of ways) but then in the next vid is saying some lame game is a masterpiece ha. How can the industry be declining and yet just keep dropping masterpiece after masterpiece?

[@abbasidanny]

Finally understanding why it's been so hard to find out which games are worth playing (!) after getting back into gaming following a break of several years. I've mainly had to go on personal recommendations from friends with very similar tastes to my own. It's crazy. Apparently, the video game market is roughly twice the size of the market for books - why should it be so difficult for consumers to find reliable information? I suppose, because video games is a relatively new medium and critical discourse around a medium takes time to develop. I think you're doing valuable work to support that, so thanks, and I'll consider supporting you. Glad to hear you're going full time

[@SwanCollins]

Most games have become like modern film, with overblown budgets dedicated to graphical fidelity and set pieces. The autopilot gameplay and lack of challenge ensures everyone will see and praise the game for where all the money went to.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

that's such a good point swan. Yes i do think devs feel that gameplay is often getting in the way of the true art of the game (in their minds) -- the voice acting and cutscenes. Modern devs really struggle with the idea of players just focusing on the gameplay and skipping all their story content ha, so they force it.

[@xgraevskopax]

I agree. I would make the comparison of wanting to be provoked. When I watch a movie I want it to provoke me in some way. I want it to touch me. In gaming I want the difficulty to frustrate me in some way.

[@todesziege]

So they basically reinvented FMV games.

[@321cheeseman]

The accessibility thing is almost always a bait and switch. _Everyone_ is in favor of effective colorblind modes and the like. Stuff that gives a greater part of the population access to the barriers that _are the game._ "Accessibility" is used to get a foot in the door, and then demand that the barriers themselves, the game's actual content, the meat of the experience, be heavily altered for people outside of the intended audience. It's all so tiresome.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

exactly cheeseman its a pretty nasty leverage tactic. Like i say in the video these types of terms need to be STRICTLY defined because right now "accessibility" is so vague that it can mean whatever the critic wants it to mean. So then the term can be used to push for whatever artistic changes the critic wants and it's highly highly effective. Because imagine from the dev's perspective -- it would be PR suicide to argue against adding in some kind of easy change if that change is being pushed as helping people with disabilities. But that's not a fair use of the term at all. I think it should be very strictly defined as systems and changes that help people access the content of the game but the cut off is that the core design of the game itself should be respected. I think that's very fair and if people stuck to that standard this whole conversation would make so much more sense and not be as nasty.

[@TSPhoenix2]

@@TheElectricUnderground It can also be used by developers to avoid having to do the design work required to provide the intended experience to players with different needs. Psychonauts 2 is the poster child for this. Their big "accessibility" feature is the player can toggle invincibility on/off, so players can take their time on the platforming without being bothered by enemies (which I do not need to explain to you how this is basically just a different game). So after not bothering to try and provide players with disabilities an experience analogous to the intended, they then have the gall to say they are catering to "all ages, all possible needs" and then the games press all pat them on the back for it because of course nobody there understands accessibility needs either.

[@AnonymousAnonposter]

Shilling, low standards and toxic positivity. This trinity is affecting all forms of art. The low standards for example fits in many different ways, from bad taste to unqualified people being placed in key positions.

[@mishikomishiko9088]

That's so true!!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah and you see all three of these in game reviews pervasively. Also the nasty part about the unconditional positivity and shilling is that they blend and mix together in really nasty ways. So it is hard to tell if the reviewers are just trying to be nice, or if they are trying to advance their connections and careers, or both ha. It just makes reviews really hard to trust as a metric for design quality -- which is their whole purpose let us not forget.

[@conorkopp6427]

I love your term “toxic positivity”. Too many nowadays have rock-bottom expectations for their games when in the ps1 and ps2 era people had high standards for their games. We still get great games today of course but we haven’t gotten revolutionary games like Metal Gear Solid 1 in a long time.

[@DOGEELLL]

FACTS THE STANDARD ARE DEAD THE GOLDEN AGE IS LONG GONE !! ALL FAULT TO THE CASUAL MASSES THAT BUY AND DEFEND THE ABSOLUTE FILTH THAT IS MODERN GAMING !

[@TSPhoenix2]

@@conorkopp6427 On the other hand, the late 90s era was also the peak of giving fun games a 6/10 for having bad graphics, it wasn't all peaches and cream.

[@FredMaverik]

This continues to be one of the best, if not THE BEST gaming content on KZbin. Great work dude, been following for a long time ago

[@globalistgamer6418]

"I'm enjoying the 'checklist' approach" - That one Reddit user 💀💀💀

[@zenyousapprentice3732]

I love chores

[@cyxceven]

basically what all mobage are

[@HighLanderPonyYT]

Nothing wrong with keeping track of tasks if the tasks are fun.

[@henryfleischer404]

@@HighLanderPonyYT Pretty much sums up how I felt about Halo Infinite's campaign, for most people it sucked because they had played a bunch of Activision open-world games, but for me, someone who does not play that kind of game, it gave it a more military feel.

[@ElAvionDePapel188]

Gamers nowadays do not accept a game putting any barrier in front of them, and they do not accept the fact that not all games are made for everyone

[@goosewithagibus]

That's just consumers in general tbh. Everyone expects concession everywhere they go in order to cater to them.

[@yehgo2]

They are not gamers

[@AnonymousAnonposter]

You unironically call yourselves "gamers"?

[@balther10]

@@AnonymousAnonpostertroll bait

[@HighLanderPonyYT]

They could be made for everyone, some devs are just stubborn.

[@magicjohnson3121]

You were 100 percent right about "proffesional" video game reviewers having zero understanding of Arcade game design or Arcade like design. When you see it, you cannot unsee it. An example is a review i saw for Rainbow Cotton. The guy was complaining that the game was too difficult. He mentioned that there was no rapid fire but other than that he was acting like difficulty is bad. It was baffling.

[@Re-PhantomZero]

Watching shmup reviews on YT is a waste of time, most people don't understand shmups, few channels do.

[@BAIGAMING]

I hope it wasn't my review 😅I don't mind the difficulty, but I just think that Rainbow Cotton should've had unlimited lives option for a home release. If I game over on stage 5, I want to keep practicing stage 5, not repeat the entire game over again.

[@soratheorangejuicemascot5809]

​@@BAIGAMINGdid you enjoy your Yggdra Union playthrough? I am just curious.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah it's a huge trend that arcade style games always get the brunt of this bias. Since they have basically no voice in the greater gaming conversation game journalists can tee up on them with absolutely no push back. Whereas they will tip toe more around more popular stuff because the social media pushback would be stronger and more nasty.

[@magicjohnson3121]

​@@BAIGAMING it wasn't you

[@Emarrel]

All too often any kind of friction or requirement to learn the specifics of a game's controls or internal mechanics ends up getting disregarded as "outdated" or "clunky" with no nuance behind the statement. I've ended up making a habit of not engaging in discussion with these kinds of people since it's clear where their biases lie.

[@dj420praiseit8]

I definitely feel that. I've always loved the way that NES Castlevania and Ghouls n' Ghosts control for instance, but the fact that you can't change momentum or direction while jumping is often seen as an outdated aspect of their design. If you were to change the way that jumping works in those games though, it would eliminate the vast majority of their challenge and depth. If you already look down on games like that, then you could argue that the difficulty of those games is simply based on the controls; and is therefore kind of cheap. But this kind of thinking is backwards. The game itself is built around the jumping limitations. If you were to "update" the way that it plays to accommodate for everyone's expectations of how a modern game plays, not only would you never appreciate the originals design; you'd never get to experience what it's like to actually enjoy those limitations.

[@ikagura]

@@dj420praiseit8 Then why Super Castlevania IV, seen as one of the best non Metroidvania Castlevania game, has a better jump control?

[@dj420praiseit8]

@@ikagura I don't personally like the controls of Castlevania IV all that much. I'd rather play the NES ones (1 or 3), Rondo of blood, or bloodlines. It's not a bad game though, for sure. It's easier to control which has its perks. If you're into speedrunning, then I imagining it might be a fun speed game too.

[@razielbarkrai5596]

I've been ignoring when aspects of a game get criticized for being "outdated" "clunky" "aged poorly". If it's interesting enough I'll play the thing myself and weigh its pros and cons.

[@NihongoWakannai]

​@@dj420praiseit8 no one's saying to just change the controls and nothing else. People want games with smoother controls and thus smarter enemies designed to combat the player with those smoother controls.

[@TheCrewExpendable]

After playing video games for more than three decades, I've come to the understanding that "difficulty" just means "how much you have to practice." Fighting games are "hard" because you have to actually practice them almost like you would art or music. Souls games are considered "hard" because From expects you to actually have to try a level or a boss a few times before you can complete it. Shmups are "hard" because you have to practice. Unfortunately a lot of people just hate the idea of practice and intensely dislike the feelings of frustration that often comes from that. Sad because it means they also don't experience feelings of triumph or personally satisfaction that comes from practice as well. (Of course we are free to choose how much we want to practice. No shame in not playing fighting games because you are a working parent without the time to devote to it, for example).

[@Uncultxred]

Unfortunately, it goes much deeper now that people have been exposed to modern game design for too long. ANY amount of legitimately engaging friction will induce a negative kneejerk reaction from most people.

[@gwinbeer]

Practice? We're talking about practice?

[@TheOtherClips]

The souls practice is in the form of actually playing the game. People like that. That’s why souls games are popular (contrary to what you implied). But fighting games require you to lab alone practicing combos and memorizing frame data which is not playing game in the normal sense of it (where most people consider the game to be in the matches).

[@user-wx8mi1pd6g]

This is definitely linked with the obesity crisis btw

[@ExeErdna]

That's where it's ironic since people aren't willing to try simply don't like those genres yet will on something they do like become a savant at them. It's why people are good at fighting games, at legit gods at shmups and those that learned from the souls ideal and apply it to other games. This is what I noticed is that a lot of people don't have "legacy" retention or at least don't notice it. It's the whole point of us doing homework is that legacy retention. "Do you remember how this works?" It's why games have a skip the tutorial button because too often it isn't for gamers since anything advanced is taught later anyway. We don't need to relearn how to move and jump each time. Most of us are willing to press the buttons.

[@Lore_from_Stars]

bro you are like the only person on the internet ive seen that articulates my thoughts so well on all of this thats worth a patreon follow imo, keep it up dude

[@Esirre]

people complain about 'gatekeeping.' modern gaming is a perfect example of what happens when a niche hobby removes the gates or effectively puts bumper lanes in the proverbial bowling alley.

[@MrDirkles]

It all went downhill when people were no longer ashamed to admit that they play computer games.

[@ryanbailey6900]

The problem is when they put bumpers in every lane and you cant bowl, then tell you you're not being accepting of newer players

[@thenonexistinghero]

Such a shame that gyro aiming still isn't the new standard for console. Dual-analog only is just trash. Gyro to fine-tune it very quickly works extremely well, but dumbass reviewers and ignorant gamers just aren't willing to actually use it. Most certainly doesn't help that Microsoft is also holding it back by not including it in their controller functions.

[@ExeErdna]

@@ryanbailey6900 The problem is they put in bumpers and people STILL manage to go into the gutter

[@Rkiser0592]

Gyroscope is. It where is needs to be and requires you to stay stationary if you want even a little bit of control to it. Honestly it's more of a novelty then anything and I'm pissed r and d time has gone into it ​@@thenonexistinghero

[@james_328]

The most annoying thing is when these people praise making older games easier and say stuff like, “huge QoL improvements!” and “fixed flawed game design!” 🙄

[@Blueberryvibe420]

I hate the "fixed flawed game design" or even worse, when someone gets back to a game discussion board after 6 months asking "if they fixed" something that wasnt even broken to begin with. "BUT MY SUBJECTIVE OPINION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE, I PAYED $60 FOR THIS GAEM"

[@TheElectricUnderground]

EXACTLY. I hope I explained why in this vid why i find this so frustrating. Because it's like these critics will act like they respect the classic games of the past, even recent past like Resi 4, but as soon as the game has a remake that homogenizes the design into playing like the generic 3rd person shooter or whatever, yes all the sudden it's like a golden ticket to smack talk the amazing design of the classic games that they pretend to respect. It drives me up the wall honestly ha. Mostly because it's not like they write this detailed analysis and then ultimately conclude that the remake's approach is better, I'd respect that even if I don't agree. No they just take it purely as a matter of course that homogenizing the game is always an improvement. A perfect example of the beginner bias actually, because they don't even think about it they just immediately jump to saying its better.

[@ikagura]

Making an older RPG less grindy isn't a bad thing tho. Same with faster walking speed.

[@Blueberryvibe420]

@@ikagura I mean movement speed is relative. Sure if the rpg have random encounters and is turn based it doesnt matter. But if the rpg is real time and movement based the game is most likely balanced around your characters movement speed. Then its in fact bad.

[@Gustavozxd13]

​@@Blueberryvibe420 I think he's talking about something like the psp remasters of persona 1 and 2. Unfortunately eternal punishment is the only one I can say is definitively better than the original, since it doesn't do anything weird that IS and P1 did. But something that all 3 remasters did that is objectively better is to make the game generally faster. Faster walk speed around levels and random encounters taking less than half the time to begin for example. The subject of action RPGs has nothing to do with this.

[@donlalo7079]

In the 90's we had something called "Game Over" .. it was great & not so great at the same time 😅

[@thenonexistinghero]

Xenoblade 3 is the only game in the franchise with a Game Over and ah... it's actually really horrible. In every other Xenoblade game you'll just be put back at the last landmark, but in Xenoblade 3 you'll be forced to redo that entire final stretch of the game if you die at the final boss. And that's the only place in that game where it even happens. I don't have anything against game over though, but some games just don't implement it very well. It's also really awful in Octopath 1. The true final boss is the hardest game in the boss by far and that isn't a bad thing in itself, but... for every other boss in the game, the difficulty goes up to about 'hard' and you can save right in front of them. For the true final bosses, the diffculty skips very hard and extreme and basically straight up goes to ultra mega super climax extreme difficulty... which in itself isn't bad thing. But you're also required to go through a boss rush of 8 earlier bosses every single attempt. You can't save after that boss rush, the final save can only be done before it. And it takes about 30-40 minutes to get through them to get an attempt at the final bosses again (which is 2 fights that will easily take 1+ hour combined to beat). And you're pretty much forced to die to that boss a few times because of how specific your setup will need to be to survive because they spiked up the difficulty so high. That's just awful game design. Either make a mega super duper hard boss and allow saving just before. Or force players to redo 40-60 minutes every attempt, but have the boss be maybe medium difficulty or perhaps comparable to the 2nd hardest boss in the game. Don't combine the 2. It's the one game where I recommend of players to just use a guide for a setup for the final boss because of how awful the game design surrounding it is (gotta be honest also though... it's almost impossible to actually get to the final boss without a guide unless you explore every corner of the game a few times so stumble upon the required quests).

[@jurtheorc8117]

Game Over? You mean the Kid Paddle comic book spin-off about a little barbarian video game guy who keeps failing horribly in continuously more ridiculous situations of pitch-black humor?

[@heideknight7782]

Maniac Mansion (the 2nd adventure game from Lucas Arts from 1987) had many soft locks. You could still play the game, but were unable to finish it, because you made the wrong decisions with some of the puzzles (I do not recall a particular example anymore). And there was no indication in the game that you can not make any progress anymore. But at that time this was a common game design, I believe. And the clue is: there was no internet where one could simply look up the solution. So this truly was a hard time for gamers! One had to find the right solutions to the puzzles all on your own!

[@Mogura87]

@@heideknight7782 Maniac Mansion can ble played in many different ways with different outcomes, but each run is fairly short and quick to get through. So even if you did get softlocked after what, 30 minutes, you could just restart with barely any time loss. In adventure games failing could also be a reward in itself, like seeing all the different death scenes in Phantasmagoria. This is opposite of today where major releases with substantial budgets trend heavily towards extremely bloated and drawn out game design with 100+ hours for a completionist playthrough is not uncommon.

[@heideknight7782]

@@Mogura87 Great that you played Maniac Mansion and Phantasmagoria! Yes, Maniac Mansion was in many ways a remarkable adventure game. You could choose combinations of three different characters to play, and with each choice the solution to some of the puzzles were different depending on this (or there were completely different puzzles to solve). And, like you said, it was a time where games offered actual meaningful gameplay without distracting the player with boring filler content like many modern games. So dying or getting stuck through a soft lock was really never a problem for gamers at that time, I think. One of the deaths was actually quite funny, namely the one where you drained the swimming pool that lead to the explosion of Dr Fred's nuclear reactor if I remember correctly (:-.

[@boghogSTG]

"How do I make this beginner friendly" often doesn't even feel like proper game design to me personally, it's like an annoying pre-requisite done for practical concerns - $$$, attention, a sense of duty, a bit akin to marketing. It's not an easy thing to do either - you have to put in a lot of time and effort into beginner friendliness that could have been spent on designing the meat of the game, so it's not surprising to me that you often get games that nail the introductory aspect but then leave you with a feeling of "ok now where's the rest of the game?" In practical terms the two are very different and take an equal amount of skill & effort to design. Beginner friendliness often has to be straight up baked into the game mechanics/levels, instead of just the tutorials.

[@KrystianMajewski]

Surprised to hear that kind of one-sided take from you of all people. Surely, you don't want to say you regret the time you invested into making the extensive tutorial mode in Gunvein?

[@BknMoonStudios]

I partially agree with you, Bog. A game should never dumb down its mechanics but rather teach players what those are and how to work with them. The question then becomes about the method of teaching those mechanics and the duration of the learning process. It is true that creating a quality introduction for beginners is an exceptionally hard task that will take up a lot of time, effort and money that could be used for the rest of the game. However, I genuinely believe the on-boarding process is *_essential_* for the vast majority of players (I'm talking big numbers, like >80% of a game's total lifetime players), and it is something that should never be skipped but rather adjusted/balanced with the rest of the game in mind. I don't believe a separate "Tutorial Mode", a KZbin guide or even a Tutorial Level are enough. It's like trying to memorize all the study material of a semester for a test that will take place in a week. It's too much for all but the most committed of people. I think the issue isn't the existence of these "easy beginner segments" but rather the inability to skip them for the more skilled players who want to jump straight into the challenging parts of the game. This is where Difficulty Modes and Game Modifiers/Toggles are very important. I do believe most games should have a Standard/Beginner Mode and a Hard Mode, but I want to make emphasis that Standard/Beginner Mode should *_NOT_* be an Easy Mode. For the Standard Mode/Default Experience, craft a game that is rich in mechanics and high in challenge, but teach it slowly and progressively over the entirety of the campaign. Make it hard enough so that they need to be conscious and deliberate about what they are doing, but never force them to bash their head against a wall for hours to continue. In other words, demand _learning_ but not _mastery._ Make sure that by the time they defeat the final challenge, they know all the mechanics that are within the game, even if they haven't mastered any of them. Then comes Hard Mode. For those who have finished the Standard Mode, as well as the veterans of the genre, have a Hard Mode _available from the start,_ as well as _toggles to disable all tutorial sections and cutscenes, should the player desire so._ Whereas Standard Mode is designed only require players to _know_ the game mechanics, for Hard Mode it must require players to have _mastered_ them. The Hard Mode final challenge should be something that only those who have "dominated the game" can beat. Doing it this way, you give newcomers an on-boarding process that isn't overwhelming and frustrating through Standard Mode, and you give skilled players a challenging experience that rewards their commitment through Hard Mode.

[@boghogSTG]

​@@KrystianMajewski I don't cause teaching shmups is a personal obsession of mine but at the end of the day what is it for? It's for growing the genre, essentially just spread out $$$ and attention that manifests as some kinda abstract duty, itch, frustration. It doesn't even have to be personal - I want more high budget shmups to PLAY. Imagine if shmups did well financially and you had a decent built in audience - would you find it worth it to spend a ton of effort crafting beginner missions when you could just jump straight to the hardcore stuff? I'd be perfectly content giving the player a slide with a controls/mechanics list and then throwing them into the game's equivalent of Master Ninja cause that's where the magic happens IMO

[@boghogSTG]

@@BknMoonStudios I don't disagree but to me it's a practical concession. Think of it like marketing - most indie devs don't like it, but they *have* to do it because they need to actively promote the value of their games. Tutorials are in the same vein, you're essentially trying to sell your game, or your genre to people with a slight interest. There are devs who really dig marketing AND designing the games, but generally it's understood that the two don't necessarily go hand in hand or correlate. Teaching's a bit trickier to untangle from the game design proper because how deeply connected communication & creating/tuning mechanics and interactions are, but the 2 are still very distinct parts of gamedev to me with the latter being the main meat while the former being more of a "marketing" equivalent

[@soratheorangejuicemascot5809]

Is making a tutorial really that tricky?

[@dingo535]

My friend said it best back when discussing why the original Half Life is so great. “The game doesn’t treat you like an idiot…”.

[@KuroNoTenno]

There are so few games that do that nowadays.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah a lot of the older PC games are more hardcore I've noticed, even unconsciously so. I think a part of this (though it's just a theory) is that in the past PC gamers were already a hardcore market to begin with because the complications with navigating the hardware and operating systems stuff. So you were already DEDICATED to get the game running so the game design itself could cater itself to a more hardcore audience. Shout out to Unreal Gold ha.

[@Mister_Domm]

I prefer Half Life 2 over 1 personally

[@Shrek_es_mi_pastor]

I like it better than the second one honestly

[@ImWatchingYou69]

@@TheElectricUnderground In the 90's, little 7 year old kids were playing legitimately complex games like Alpha Centauri, and even beating the game lol. Modern gamers could never.

[@chunkymilk]

still find it strange how games usually aren’t looked at like movies or books, where you accept wholeheartedly what the creators crafted, and more like products to be digested easily and if not then it’s a problem.

[@HighLanderPonyYT]

That's bc watching/reading is easier than playing

[@chunkymilk]

@@HighLanderPonyYT not necessarily.

[@HighLanderPonyYT]

@@chunkymilk Not necessarily.

[@ikagura]

And you can watch movies at home, pausing when you want and eat what you want as well as carrying books around.

[@lukebytes5366]

Because games are usually a player driven experience. Entire communities have been built around playing in certain, usually unintended ways. Older games were built around that idea while "modern" game design is much more streamlined.

[@orbajo]

You went 13 minutes without showing DDP this time, Mark. I'm proud of you.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I felt a little guilty I will admit lol. My beloved DDP didn't have a single cameo in this vid. Next time i should sneak in a tiny bit of footage somewhere in the background ha. I do have an esprade picture next to me in the on cam footage ha, so that counts a little. I'm gonna start putting secret esprade stuff in the vids here and there ha, i love that game too.

[@GeneGideon]

Only a few minutes in but you summed up Under the Mayo's entire channel. He's OBSSESSED with the "first time player experience" and making sure his hand his held and there's no friction because any inconvenience while playing a game=bad. I swear every time I've ever watched one of his videos I wonder "is this guy a focus tester or something? Why does he care so much?" I'm really tired of people thinking everything is made for them. If you don't like something, go do something else.

[@magicjohnson3121]

Funny that he complained about dmc5 first time playmode being too easy and it only gets good after the other difficulties are unlocked which he is 100 percent right about. He's not consistent.

[@Re-PhantomZero]

Like i said in my comment here, the vast majority of streamers and content creators have no skill, if they do is just at one game or the fps genre. This is why i have so much respect for Mark and this channel, because he knows what he is talking about, he's not boring me with how the story makes him cry and all of that nonsense. You know what makes me want to cry? Trying to beat Touhou and not being able to defeat sakuya 😂.

[@saltsudoku6938]

I think UTM watched too many game design video essays and that's why he's gotten this obsession that games must "teach the player". "Teaching the player" design sounds good on paper, but if you lean too far into it you end up with what I call "binary game design". Where in trying to force the player to do something, you end up making other options underpowered as a result to "force" them to do something. As a result you end up with less options and experimentation.

[@Brandonweifu]

​@Re-PhantomZero "cause he knows what he's talking about" Stellar blade fans:not really but ok

[@TheAutistWhisperer]

Under The Mayo is a tool.

[@rank10ygo]

Only just found this channel but thank you for pointing out how much more gripping "sink-or-swim" design is than a gentle beginner-friendly ramp-up of difficulty. Games that deck me in the face right from the start always compelled me to at least try and hurdle over the challenge but I've dropped many more games that were just too ploddingly paced and boring, filled with that "passive gameplay" that comes from the devs not accounting for legacy skill.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Exactly rank! The problem with the game design discourse is that there is piles of advice and ideas on how devs can make beginner friendly games. But outside of that sphere it seems like devs are losing track of how to make games for expert or even mid-tier players. So now as a player games punish you for already knowing how to play.

[@ScrapsandSlaps]

The most accessible games are the ones that teach the player how they work as they progress. Not ones that make learning optional with dumbed down gameplay. Nor the ones that give vague tutorials for incredibly deep mechanics.

[@Splozy]

Entertainment journalism is an arm of marketing. You are one of the few exceptions to the rule. So it makes sense that these concepts would never be applied.

[@hotworlds]

I hate that accessibility now means "easy mode" and not colorblind mode and fully remappable controls. Especially when games have extremely complicated layers of easy mode settings and get praise for being accessible and then rely on color for gameplay and don't let you remap half of the actions.

[@Maartwo]

Well, maybe they are praised because journalists are only good at pushing political views instead of playing videogames.

[@LogosSteve]

You're easily one of the best and most interesting game critics and essayists out there man, keep it up.

[@Silverset_]

Your criticism of video games is so incredibly important. Thanks for speaking out!!

[@EXWildWolf]

As an inspiring game dev, I will say that I have been noticing a trend in the indie space where games aren't really treated as games, but rather "experiences," whatever dumbass double meaning these pretentious up-and-coming new devs fresh out of college mean by using that word. And how they define it as games "shouldn't be hard, because it ruins the experience of that game's atmosphere and environment." Which is some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard in my life. The difficulty SHOULD reflect the atmosphere and situation of what you're experiencing from the game. And yes, this applies to ALL games. In a game like FEZ, the main point of the game is to switch the world view around in a cozy pixel art environment with serene music playing, The difficulty the player has to worry about is in the puzzles the game presents, and by trial and error how to solve the game's increasingly difficult levels and obstacles along the way. Pretty casual game that's fun and compelling, which is exactly what the game was designed to do. It's the core puzzle aspect that makes the game remembered so fondly and the meat of the gameplay, along with its gimmick. This is also true for more demanding games like Doom Eternal. You're literally a man too angry to die going up against the worst of literal HELL. And it is a game that should reflect that sort of environment. And it does. It's an FPS game that requires you to do more than just "aim at something and shoot." You have to be at the very least competent in moving around, using the right guns for the right situation, managing ammo, watching where you're going and where you'll plan ahead next, and learning what defeats enemies most effectively. And people complain about the platform puzzles in this game, which honestly are few and far between anything that's difficult. Having giant demon gorillas come out of nowhere and just attack the Fez protag out of nowhere or Doomguy getting teleported to a lighthouse post with nothing but a serene breeze and baby birds chirping isn't an "experience" people signed up for. They either wanna be constantly be moving around killing things or figure out how to get that last damn hypercube to get to the secret levels. I think I started hearing about this whole "experience" model back from last generation. And honestly it does feel like games stopped being "games" last generation and are treated more like "experiences." "Experiences" that don't require trial & error, refined skill, deep gameplay, or even critical thinking from the player. "Experiences" that make you do the bare minimum, reward you for it, and make you feel like a king on the throne for doing the most mundane/scripted to win shit you could possibly ever do. I am glad and remain hopeful that most indies don't fall into this same pit trap. Cuz, I like many here in the comments and people subbed to this channel, really fucking hate the way modern game design is. And if we don't do something fast, you are going to get a whole new wave of games that are going to be even more shallow and scummier in gameplay than Stellar Blade.

[@slimynaut]

So many of them just want to make the next earthbound-like hit and sell merch of their wacky characters

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Oh yeah poor indie games are really feeling the heat with a lot of this stuff. I think it's potentially even more scary in the indie space than the AAA space because in the AAA space these studios tend to have the money and marketing leverage to keep the critics in line for the most part (like when IGN delayed reviewing Cyberpunk to give the dev time to patch all the launch issues), but in the indie game space ... oh man. In the indie space if you don't already have a cult audience there to protect your game then if you do anything bold or demanding your game could get slammed by critics into oblivion in a way that might be impossible to recover from. Yeah the indie dev space is really scary right now because it has no protection against the beginner bias.

[@EXWildWolf]

@@slimynaut dawg, the earthbound wanna be shit is so annoying and overdone, it almost makes Earthbound seem like a dime-a-dozen game nowadays.

[@ikagura]

Most of the best games ever made are told to be experiences. Like FFVII.

[@SoShiBias]

I come to your comment as friendly as possible. It comes off as someone who values core gameplay which is typical in the gaming sphere. Same goes to me. But I feel like the discomfort towards the term 'experience' is disproportionate. Semantically, it describes games that are less demanding on gameplay better I think. Games that primarily tells a touching story with simple controls. Games that evoke feelings not by setting up challenges. If you're fine with games that keep pushing the limits of the players, why do you seem repelled by experiences that offers values outside of testing people's finesses? Afaik games being able to offer different things for different folks are always a net positive thing. Maybe I have a wrong understanding of your comment, and you're just specifically pointing out games that feeds out dopamine rushes without a solid game to back it. Unless you don't like how snobby it sounds which, I have no comment on that lol As for 'experience' people sign up for, the market by extension players, don't always know what they want, whattheyreallyreallywant. Furthermore putting something that divert expectation seems like a good idea for some games (like Daniel Mullins games). Tone shift like FEZ protag fighting gorilla and DOOM guy looking at a beautiful scenery is a rather big & risky jump, but even if they actually happened, what matters at the end is are they going to execute the idea well, is it not? If they are played as a joke, for example.

[@theseabass]

Mark sitting in that CRT looks like he's about to drop the hottest pop album of 2004. Jokes aside, great video!

[@100HourSave]

real

[@conoraq]

A very common statement you see game journos espousing, often word-for-word, is "I'd rather read game criticism written by someone who's a good writer, than by someone who's good at games". There might be some merit to this line of thinking, were it not for the fact that their idea of a "good writer" seems to amount to the ability to write sappy emotional confessionals, rather than any kind of analytical insight. Ultimately though, modern games journalism is built on the expectation of bland positivity towards the games themselves rather than anything too critical, because that's just so much more financially beneficial to the media outlets producing this stuff - If games stop being popular and successful, then the demand for gaming media will correspondingly shrink, so they have a vested financial interest in serving primarily as cheerleaders for whatever the industry is currently doing (eg. mass remakes), while also encouraging games to become as dumbed-down and focused on the mass audience as possible.

[@Jako3334074]

thinking about when i saw that clip of DSP in the GDC talk of God of War level design

[@Jako3334074]

NGL i am also a GGST hater (& kind of a T8 hater (coping)) and it felt weird seeing so many people praising GGST when it made so many gameplay & aesthetic changes i didnt like =w=

[@Jaymez2012]

Discussing difficulty in games will always be an issue in a world where everyone has an ego. Not enough people are willing to drop their egos and acknowledge their shortcomings/inefficiencies with something. The best posts on discussion sites like reddit or Steam forums in games are usually the people that ask genuine questions about a game instead of just making the generic 'GaMe ToO HaRd' post for sympathy and calling it a day. These threads are usually filled with responses of people that just want to genuinely help OP improve at the game by giving them tips and strategies they may have never even thought to try, and it often leads to great discussion about what it means to be 'difficult' for the game in question. It's a genuinely great way to avoid a toxic "gatekeeping" situation because asking questions like: "How do you making fighting this enemy easier?" Shows a willingness to want to learn something, which is something anyone can appreciate. It's just that most people's frustration with a game's difficulty disregards the fact that they actually have to, you know, learn? And since they don't want to even make attempt to learn, it's automatically "badly design", which ends up unnecessarily muddling discussion about a game's design, which is truly the most frustrating part about this topic.

[@bydoman98]

The stigma towards difficulty is nonsensical. Even as a single digit kid, I grew up playing Super Monkey Ball a lot, and even though you can technically unlock infinite continues or tons of lives there, the consequence of excess failure was not being able to access extra stages, and that was one of the key things which kept me going. Clearing more stages with fewer misses meant something, and this strengthened the game's design. Meanwhile, the upcoming Banana Rumble doesn't seem to have a lives counter at all based on what I've seen, which leaves me with little optimism about the rest of the game. The first two Super Monkey Ball games were something special, especially the first one. They existed in a time when, at least as I see it, the industry was shifting away from arcade design in favor of something more flatlined. There's a certain conversation I remember hearing from some peers during lunch at school. One of them started complaining about the game, because of, get this... **gasp** the timer. I couldn't tell you how dumbfounded I was that this was what could make someone hate the game. To put it in words for those who don't know, removing the timer would essentially nullify the pressure of holding balance on a thin bridge while trying to pursue the goalpost. That timer is what forced me to learn how to move the ball more confidently over time. Yes, it's going to be aggravating at first, but soon enough, it becomes empowering.

[@iwanttocomplain]

Alot of retro youtubers have been complaining about timers recently. Like.. A-LOT.

[@321cheeseman]

I can't tell whether you're aware or not, so for clarity: the actual first game in the series, Monkey Ball, is a literal arcade game, and Super Monkey Ball is its GameCube port with some additional content. It doesn't affect your main points at all, but they didn't randomly decide to make a hardcore arcade-style game from the ground up for the GameCube's launch, if that's what you thought. It's in the same sorta boat as Crazy Taxi for GameCube, another launch title (at least in NA).

[@iwanttocomplain]

@@321cheeseman I think SMB is a best selling GC game. Basically disproving the notion that "dated" arcade design is not a pull for home a home audience.

[@321cheeseman]

​@@iwanttocomplain I'm not sure why you're telling me this. Of course they have appeal and can find an audience, I didn't say anything to suggest otherwise.

[@iwanttocomplain]

@@321cheeseman maybe not you but most people say the Dreamcast didn't sell because people were turned off by arcade style games.

[@lifeonleo1074]

My question remains: How does having an option for a less dificult mode subtract from your own enjoyment of a single playet game? If you want to play it on extreem difficulty, do it, if i want to play on story mode allow me to do the same. Everyone should play it the way they enjoy it.

[@asahira7834]

If a game has to cater to everyone, that means that the basic/fundamental mechanics are gonna be very easy and shallow. And when that happens, most difficulty settings just add more hit points to the enemies that you are gonna fight. Making them huge HP sponges. Does killing a boss for 5-10 mins longer, while dodging his easy to avoid moves make it harder, or does it just turn it in to a boring slog of hardcore repetition. God Of War 2018 is a fantastic example of this. Can't even imagine how story difficulty works in that game, after they added it post launch. As the launch versions easy mode was already so easy, that it practically could be mashed trough by a toddler. Guess it just removes the gameplay elements, and you just watch a movie, or they remove every combat encounter and you just walk from point A to B and press a button for the next cut-scene. Not everything is made for you( or me), and that's fine.

[@MrGreaterGargadon]

While I think this has been a fun essay overall I do think it falls into a conceptual trap that treats a given outlet (like IGN) as a monolith rather than a fluid collective. I feel like this crushes a lot of nuance and potential exploration as to why the bias exists. "Because game critics want to be liked" or "They just say what people want to hear" feels like an incredibly hollow and self defeating answer when the video itself shows multiple examples of franchises getting negative and low reviews. Star Fox is a beloved franchise and going out of your way to say that Star Fox 0 is so bad you refused to finish the game isn't something that's going to endear you to many friends. It's insufficient to pin beginner bias on these motivations, or else their motivations would result in different behavior than the examples given. It's also worth discussing if the large websites like IGN or Gamespot are actually the most appropriate place for beginner biased content. In terms of video game related internet traffic, both of those websites are only beaten out by major platform storefronts (Steam, Xbox) or major social media platforms (twitch, discord) so ensuring that their content is approachable to a wide, and potentially even mostly beginner audience may be the most appropriate editorial decision they can make. At the very least if beginner focused content supposedly does have a place, then these websites would be it, and it's the responsibilities of more independent reviewers with their own platform to move away from this bias if at all possible.

[@theconsolekiller7113]

This was a trend I really noticed during the 7th gen. Games have gotten easier every console gen, on average, but the 7th gen was where I really had to set games on the hardest modes to really get that resistance. It was rare that an Xbox 360 or PS3 game would put up much resistance for me on default settings. Its still my favorite console gen, but it wouldve been different if those settings werent included in games. The difference now is that alot of these "extreme" modes are closer to what we got from default difficulties of the 6th and 7th gen. There are exceptions, but extreme modes on average have gotten much easier as well. Starting out with games I mostly could not complete back then , as a kid, that challenge gave me something to work toward and made games alot more mysterious. I started with the Atari 2600 when I was 6, and NES a few years later. When I really like a game, those hardest modes really increase my appreciation of a game and the replay. I dont need every game to be difficult, but I liked it better when games were harder on the default difficulty and then very hard on the hardest modes. Of course now that mystery part is gone since you can look everything up. I think thats a great thing, but it also means that its harder to replicate that feeling now. Agreed. The difficulty is part of the beauty of these games and the core structure. In the early days I didnt complete games because they were too hard, now its often the opposite. I find that growth as a player extremely satisfying. Something that has to be worked toward, but once you become better that world really opens up to you. Its just something thats not immediately accessible and needs to be earned. People often confuse that with some type of elitism but for me its goes back to the core of what a game really is to me. I never saw games as passive media thats mindlessly consumed, like most movies. Games can be that, but the best ones have so much more to offer.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Oh yeah even the hard modes of games have become easy because the devs don't understand how to protect against the weaknesses of their design. So in a lot of cases just turning up the enemy health and the damage the player takes doesn't make the game that much more meaningful difficult, they just make the game more slow and tedious to play ha.

[@theconsolekiller7113]

@@TheElectricUnderground Very true. Theres alot of lazy difficulty settings. The biggest difference in Ghosts N Goblins Resurrection, for example, is that on Legend they remove most of the checkpoints. Some games make you beat them 1 CC , which is a personal challenge you can easily do yourself (Contra Operation Galuga). Never liked the bullet sponge approach either. Like you said, it just means having to play more carefully and slowly.

[@THE_BEAR_JEW]

100% agreed. It couldn’t hold a handle to the 6th gen. Really what saved the 7th gen was that it’s the only generation where there’s a good amount of online functionality but not yet to the point where games are riddled with all the negatives that come with it.

[@theconsolekiller7113]

@@THE_BEAR_JEW Agreed. The online was at its peak for me. After the 7th gen I started playing online alot less. We also got so many great games during that period. The only negative for me was going trough 10 Xbox 360's. I had one console that only lasted a day. I had to keep purchasing best buy warranties.

[@michaelsartwork]

I grew up with the capcom versus series, so I really enjoy the challenge of pressing buttons to do amazing things. The allowance of doing amazing things is even more important to me than the game killing me.

[@iwanttocomplain]

I remember kicking off discussions in 2018 about "New Games Are Easier" and everybody called me grandad. Because I wanted Warcraft 4 and not World of Warcraft. A key moment in executive decision making. A high risk strategy to maintain the servers and get a critical mass of subscribers. But when it worked, the rts was history.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Oh yeah isn't that funny if you think about it that the old man position is wanting things to be challenging --- isn't that a weird inversion of the generational dynamic in art usually. Usually the way it goes is that younger fans of an art form are always looking to push the limits and the older fans are tired and just want something more basic. But since game design is regressing rather than progressing you have this crazy inversion where it's the older players that are commenting on the passiveness of the art form, rather than younger players. At least for now, this dynamic might shift in the future.

[@iwanttocomplain]

@@TheElectricUnderground That's why Game Maker's Toolkit channel are potentially damaging in it's narrow focus and suggestion within the narrative of the video as a whole, that design and technology have followed a linear, inevitable and optimal path.

[@koresoteira447]

I feel entirely this way about modern achievement and tophy systems. Back when the 360 launched, some developers had the balls to put in achievements for game mastery (world rankings, thousands of games played etc). These were the hook for dedicated and experienced players and would mean something when you unlocked them or met someone who had them unlocked. They were actual acheivements. Nowadays, people have a hissy fit if they can't 1000-point a game within a few days because of "I sPeNt MaH mOnEy" entitlement. They are now meaningless.

[@todesziege]

I think this happened with achievements _very_ quickly. And the mere existence of standardized achievements probably contributed to this idea that you should be able to "100%" a game with mere persistence.

[@excusablegold]

Mediums like literature are able to reach such a high level of complexity because books are usually written by a single person with total creative control. videogames used to be regularly created in much the same way a loooooong time ago, but with the increase in staff and budgets comes the necessity of earning that initial investment back with profit. With literature there is usually zero investment other than the author's own time. The structure of the modern videogame industry incentivizes striving for the largest, blandest, least-skilled demographic because those guys are the ones that pay the bills. Of course, the indie scene exists to keep the auteur vision alive, but I don't see them putting out anything as expensive as a Ninja Gaiden or a Devil May Cry with their level of resources.

[@magicjohnson3121]

Also a lot of indies lack the edge of those titles. By edge I mean moments of frustration and overcoming.

[@tournaline3448]

Very interesting and valid point.

[@TorgoHiggins]

I never really thought about FPS in this particular lens, and you're right. It's entirely exempt from so many expectations of modern design. From retro-styled "boomer shooters" to the mainstream to the artistic, they're generally allowed to go balls-to-the-walls from the word go, and often praised for it. Not only that, its classics are almost completely spared any negative retrospective. Just look at the enduring legacy and popularity of Doom, Quake, or Duke3D, all of which are almost as relevant and influential to the genre as they were 30 years ago.

[@todesziege]

The general view among the 'boomer shooter crowd' -- especially up until the subgenre's recent-ish resurgence -- was that modern mainstream shooters (Call of Duty etc) had been entirely 'casualized'. The classics are still paid lip service to though, with the exception of maybe Duke 3D for largely political reasons, unlike the total dismissal that arcade games face.

[@daveinthemicrowave]

Found you channel from you RE4 remake video, you have quickly become my favorite gaming channel and you got me to try Shmups(really liking it so far) a genre up until now I've been pretty dismissive about. I've been open to old and experimental games for quite a while but for some reason that didn't extend to arcade games. Thank you for breaking that mental barrier for me.

[@Gio-qu7qe]

You have got to be my favorite youtube channel of all time. I randomly found your video about learning how to play Tekken/3D games cuz I had never played a 3D fg before Tekken 8 and I thought it was a fantastic video and shared it around. LITTLE DID I KNOW, you drop nothing but nonstop banger after banger videos. As somebody who primarily plays 3rd strike and GGXXACR, the comparison between Strive and SF6 (especially cuz of the frequent twitter discourse in the street fighter scene) is fresh in my mind and I enjoy talking about it with other people. This video is genuinely brilliant and makes me seriously consider becoming a patron (which is extremely rare for me), because almost nobody out there is spitting like you.

[@jb3947]

Every video you make about subjects like this becomes my new favourite video on the topic.

[@RRR-h9s]

I get so tired of people complaining about difficulty in some niche indie games. Like bro, why are you not even using 50% of the tools that the game provided you?

[@daniel8181]

The beginning is a little bullshit, there is nothing wrong with the start of a game being designed to teach systems, even dark souls doesnt just drop you into a boss fight expecting you to win, it lets you slowly get used to the controls, then kicks your teeth in with a boss that lets you know you arent getting help forever.

[@AFnord]

I would have to disagree with a fare few points points in this video. Just a bit about where I'm coming from first: I've been playing games since ~1989-1990, and I've done a short stint as a game reviewer for medium-sized publication. Games are not necessarily beginners friendly these days. With years of knowledge of how control schemes work it's easy to conflate easy with beginners friendly. But the games that stand out as "beginners friendly" are for the most part not really aimed at beginners, though through lengthy tutorials they try to make sure that beginners can play them. They're aimed at adults, with jobs, who don't want to have to worry about failing over and over, who just want to get an hour of feeling like a "badass" before they need to go back to their chores. Hand a beginner a controller and the game Shovel Knight (or heck, Super Mario Bros on the NES) and compare it to the same beginner trying to play the latest Assassin's Creed. The AC games are easy, easier than Super Mario Bros by far (and the original SMB isn't that hard), but they're not nearly as beginners friendly. Regarding reviewers, there's always going to be bad people in any profession, and when you put your stuff out for everyone to see on the internet, the bad stuff is going to be circulated, and brought up as examples, making it look like it's a more widespread issue than it really is. Most reviewers I met during my time were experienced gamers who enjoyed challenging games. With that said, you also have to consider the context of how a review is written. First of all you're writing for a general audience, unless you're writing for a niche publication, and you need to keep in mind that a good portion of your readers won't be nearly as well versed in gaming as you are, so you need to keep things pretty simple. Reviews are also written with a tight deadline, so this puts more complex and unfamiliar games at a natural disadvantage, as the reviewer can't dedicate the time they really should to learning all the ins and outs of the system in order to give the best possible review. We have seen monstrously complex games getting overall good review scores in more recent years though. A game like Victoria 3 would be hell for a reviewer without a lot of genre knowledge to cover, because of how incredibly complex it is, yet its review scores from critics are quite positive. And finally I do feel like a lot of the criticism about modern gaming and how easy it has become is akin to complaining about summer blockbusters not really challenging you. The AAA space isn't interesting in challenging you, they're basically the gaming counterparts to the MCU movies, or Independence day, they're accessible entertainment that, with a few exceptions, tend to just expect you to turn off your brain and enjoy the ride. But there's a huge amount of games that are not given the massive budgets of the AAA games that are a lot more challenging, even to veteran players. Just look at the success of complex strategy games like Europa Universalis, Panzer Corps, Humankind or the Total War games (and if you think those are too easy, check out Shadow Empire, it's actually pretty excellent despite its poor graphics). These are games that requires dedication to learn, and yet they're met with open arms by enough people to make targeting this niche a sustainable business model. These games were not nearly as big 10 years ago, and only had a few entries 20 years ago. There are new games out there for experienced gamers, but if you're mostly looking at what companies like Ubisoft, Activision or Nintendo are serving you, and ignoring the large mid-budget space, it won't seem like that.

[@magicjohnson3121]

Mark is referring more to action games. They've definitely been dumbed down and any game that goes outside the mold gets criticised heavily e.g Wanted Dead, Gungrave etc .

[@megamob5834]

Exactly the reason legacy players loved mega man 9 and more casual fans lamented it’s “punishing” difficulty

[@mzza]

That one "8bit" looking ninja game you had on the background was a great pick. I remember reading reviews about how it was a legit callback to old game design, but holy shit was it boring. It was 5 hours of just going through the motions until I got bored out of my mind and never finished it. Don't even remember the name of the game.

[@agamer2000]

The game is called The Messenger

[@Dr._Jazz]

You know what I kind of miss that I can't help but think is also a byproduct of this bias? MANUALS! Old games often didn't have tutorials in-game because it was assumed that players would READ THE GODDAMN MANUAL to learn how to play first and spend the first few hours teaching THEMSELVES how to play the game. I might be in the minority, but I really miss having manuals for all my games in the box. And, many of them were really great references: if you forgot how to do something (like you hadn't played in a while), you could just look it up in the manual instead of having to dig around online. I feel like many of these cumbersome tutorials could also be done away with if we bring back game manuals.

[@magicjohnson3121]

Most people won't admit it, but they're filthy casuals.

[@Re-PhantomZero]

Most people? 😂 The vast majority, and not only they are but they want to make games more casual, they will openly attack anyone who tries to advocate for preservation of difficulty and challenge.

[@thenonexistinghero]

I used to beat a lot of games on the hardest difficulties, but difficulty design in modern games has become pretty f***ing trash. Honestly I have a kinda hard time starting on the hard mode in a game these days and get all the way through it without being bored (there are some exceptions though). That said, I don't buy all that many games anymore from major companies. If I do it's usually a Nintendo game, but other than that I mostly just buy indies these days and some from smaller companies like Falcom games.

[@halcyonways1476]

@@thenonexistinghero Play final fight lns v04.1 it's free =D

[@lanceelopezz223]

wat r u casul?!

[@NothingAtAll2461]

Everyone is a casual for most things they play.

[@bulb9970]

Isn't it weird how game reviewers don't need credentials for anything? Movie critics don't just spawn out of nowhere, they come from an academic background and build their recognition for years. But since there's no course for "gaming journalism", most of these reviewers are just regular journalists that just so happen to find job opportunities in gaming spaces. Very rarely you can see insightful takes from them. And honestly, this also applies to a lot of youtube reviewers and video essayists out there. There are some outstanding ones undoubtably, but you can also find many that are just teenagers that know basic editing and don't offer meaningful content. Maybe the push for acessibility in games comes from the rise of accessibility in reviews. If everyone is a critic in the internet, then games are forced to appeal to everyone. But it's impossible to make a product that appeals to everyone without making it safe and removing their sauce. That's why indie artsy movies are seen in higher critical regard than whatever slop Marvel is making to crack millions.

[@BaldyMcNosehair]

Agreed and it would be great if finding the actual *good* games criticism was easier to do

[@AdobadoFantastico]

Nah credentials are bullshit, it won't improve anything it'll just change the shape of the problem. It's up to you to be literate and inform yourself. If credentials matter to you then use that as your validation criteria. There will always be a majority of criticism that's nonsense. Remember, even if they're good at playing games they still haven't crossed the bridge of making them so most people doing most games criticism are wildly ignorant regardless of skill level. The bigger deal is that it's easier for a film critic to be informed on how a film is actually made and what decisions/tradeoffs are actually being made.

[@Shrek_es_mi_pastor]

Fuck the critics, easy as that... For me it's more interesting to see what a developer thinks of another game.

[@henryfleischer404]

@@Shrek_es_mi_pastor The developer thinks their game is the best and you should play it, according to the publisher

[@ChucksSEADnDEAD]

Back in the old days gaming journalists had no relevant credentials. They used to be people from all walks of life who happened to be working at a publisher or editor room and were into videogames so the decision to start doing game reviews in a section or creating an entire magazine dedicated to them mean they were called up to be part of the project. It's in the late 2000s and further that getting a degree in journalism became almost a requirement as they wouldn't hire anyone off the streets.

[@justtmw]

Very refreshing, thank you! One recent example that stood out to me was remake of Persona 3. This game is truly an "updated for modern audience" experience. Where the original game was bold and experimental, both in game design and themes, the remake is incredibly safe. Where the original had 1 quick tutorial in the beginning and asked you if you want to skip it, the remake treats you like an absolute idiot and bombards you with tutorials almost for the whole game without an option to disable them. It literary teaches you 3 times in a row about opening a simple treasure chest. Original wasn't very hard game by any means, but it was challenging enough to push you to use all its mechanics and make dungeon crawling meaningful, while also amplifying the atmosphere of neverending claustrophobic tower filled with monsters that want to turn you into a mindless husk. Remake removes any sense of challenge from the game and basically breaks itself halfway through, when you just start one-shotting bosses left and right. It's still not a bad game (you need to try really hard to turn Persona 3 into a bad game), but it's so watered down and in a lot of places uninspired that I still don't understand how it was received so positively

[@cartoonvideos5]

The AI making absolutely foolish decisions in the original because you can't manually control the other party members is not "difficulty" at all, it's called horrendous and primitive artificial intelligence, it's all up to RNG. If the game is too easy max the difficulty.

[@justtmw]

​@@cartoonvideos5 when someone talks about "bad AI" in FES, it's always obvious that they never bothered to learn the mechanic. AI is very competent if you now how to manipulate it (which is the entire point of tactics menu), there are spesific annoying cases like Yukari refusing to cast mass heal because you have couple hp more than is required to trigger it, but it doesn't happen very often. "It's all up to RNG" of course it is if they stay on Act Freely the entire game. And I obviously maxed the difficulty, why would I even talk about it if I didn't

[@cartoonvideos5]

@justtmw Ah the "Tactics menu" cope from purist fanboys. I knew you weren't talking about P3P and I knew you were disguising your "difficulty" as bad RNG and primitive AI. "I didn't hit the 1% chance to get a Rathalos Sky Gem, I should have just used the Tactics menu and raised it to 2%" My friend played FES and he completely agrees that the AI is dumb and tactics menu is a cope from purist fanboys. He said fanboys will try to use the Tactics menu cope. But it does not work half the time and it is all up to RNG, you are wrong and are just lying. If you found the max difficulty too easy, than maybe you should stop following a guide or stop playing video games and get a job. Or you can go play Jack Bros. Now Jack Bros, that's a game that requires expertise.

[@justtmw]

@@cartoonvideos5 bro got so mad about video game out of nowhere and tells me to find a job lmao. Guess I shoud've just typed "Skill issue" and didn't bother to actually respond

[@cartoonvideos5]

@justtmw Well it's pretty obvious you don't have one. I don't see anywhere "Where I got so mad" and you are now using words like "bro" and "skill issue" which means I have indeed used points you cannot refute and you have now run out of arguments and are resorting to regurgitated internet buzzwords with no meaning. I accept your surrender. Persona 3 Reload is the best version in that case.

[@hefferwolff3578]

Thanks for bringing up the issues that most youtubers and journalist dont have the GUTS to talk about

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah and I don't really understand why. Well one reason is that if your opinion doesn't line up with general consensus right now you are mostly dismissed as a nut case ha. So I suppose that pushes a lot of people to try to stay within that window adjacent to IGN's views mostly.

[@revvvedrez546]

I’m ready, let’s go!! new Electric Underground is here!

[@FlamezOfGamez]

I found your point on the removal of the Super Mario Bros. Wonder timer to be… misplaced. Like, it truly is a vestigial remainder of the arcade era. 2D platformer and games with collectibles have been ditching the timer since the NES era, not to pander to players’ desires, but because it just simply doesn’t make sense to add as a mechanic, especially since these timers were often so generous as to be irrelevant in the first place. The fact that the Mario series was still doing it as recently as Super Mario 3D World is the oddball out. And games still do use timers when they’d actually be mechanically relevant, like the escape sequences in Pizza Tower. I agree with some portion of your video, but I feel like in my mind, I’m just going to replace have of the examples your brought up with ones that feel more applicable.

[@Jekuma]

@@micshazam842 Not true. Quite a lot of traditional platformer games for example still use IGT because there are other factors like score menuing, loading screens, etc that are hard to control in some places or are outright just not competitive (classic Sonic games punishing you in a real time speedrun setting because of the time bonus taking FOREVER to be counted if you beat a stage fast).

[@JT-xn9ei]

Channels focusing on Recommendations/Retrospectives tend to have better critiques than new-release reviewers since they're not as pushed for time. They usually also have backgrounds mostly playing within a certain genre which is a plus.

[@ccego449]

If you claim to think that games are art, but also think that making a game easier won't take away from the experience, then no, you don't think games are art. You think they're a vessel for art, but are not art in and of themselves.

[@M4Dbrat]

It's Kojima's "I'm not making art, I'm making a museum"

[@DrChadBroman]

Gamereviewers mean art as in "story of a middle class suburban teen who comes to term with his queerness (and hates his father)"

[@perfectkaiser2489]

People who say that to be trolling right? games are art so it has to be easy. this is such a dumb statement. actually, if games are art they should make it in the vision that they wanted it to be whether it caters to a specific audience that can have that difficulty and they design and challenge around that or they can have a narrative experience just gameplay that just moves the story along as a example dark souls, cup head, hades, lies of pie, returnal, ninja guiden, speed run games, puzzle games, shooters and frankly all would not exist with your mindset . because they were designed from the ground up to be a certain difficulty. from the game stages and ai to the atmosphere and music. and many modern games suffer from this core midset being more streamlined and die out because it was boring and uninspired and most importantly take away the artistic vision of what made the video game great to begin with. You are contradicting yourself without even realizing it. You just using art as a crutch to bacally say "all games should be easier for me because it needs to be catered for all" which is why we get gaming is boring videos. because anything that is mass appealing, catering , and trying to be inoffensive to all lacks any depth.... KILLING ARTISTIC EXPRESSION! just be honest. people just want to be selfishly catered to but don't use art as a excuse cause that is the opposite of what you are advocating for.

[@dandre3K]

@@perfectkaiser2489Dark Souls is easy

[@M4Dbrat]

​@@perfectkaiser2489 He actually says the exact opposite of what you're responding to, he's merely talking about people who do actually think like that

[@gavi888]

I find rougelites an interesting phenomenon, they seem like one of the few prescribed "genres" (I consider them a format) that are allowed require legacy skill since they're designed around repeat runs. Or maybe more aptly, they're one of the few types of games allowed be designed around repeat playthroughs in the first place. You think when a reviewer plays an arcadey game they're going to play it more than once? Eh. Now how many times do you think reviewers are going to play a run of Hades 2 before writing their review? Hm.

[@Ricardo-0]

Close to Dragon's Dogma 2 release, I saw a lot of posts of people going back to the first game to try it out. That made me really happy, since it's one of my favorite games, but at the times I'd come across some of the weirdest takes imaginable. Like someone saying all vocations should be able to dodge roll, an ability exclusive to Strider and its variants. How there should be no restrictions to what equipment a vocation can use. How, because of all this, the game "aged poorly", when in reality, they were just confused by the fact that a third person RPG didn't necessarily play like a Souls game. Games are supposed to be these rulesets you learn about and interact with. They have their own unique ideas and systems. But now it feels like variety is only allowed from genre to genre, and inside those every release has to conform to what rules people are used to.

[@bijnahonderdeuro]

Dunno. A lot of the Ulyesses argument is about prestige, which I have a problem with at a fundamental level. I don't play hard games to wax poetic in an exclusive book club, I play them because I enjoy the challenge. Media doesn't get better by being more obtuse, it becomes better by being more engaging. It is not the same thing. That said, I can absolutely level with a desire for designing for legacy skill. While I don't mind the existence of a lower difficulty in dark souls, I do mind when that becomes the intended experience. Challenge is engagement. We do lose it if that easy mode sucks up resources or influences design decisions. Still, we could do with a more constructive mentality. Getting in shape is hard work, but when you shame people for starting from zero, they stop coming to the gym. Same applies for how we respond to skill issues.

[@ikagura]

I agree, it's just an entertainment medium. Most people would not give a darn if someone finished Ghouls N Ghosts.

[@Maya_Ruinz]

A lot of food for thought here but I think ultimately the industry has sailed into waters to which it requires catering to anyone who will pay. Game critique itself just doesn’t matter in an industry about getting people to play and pay for longer periods of time not about building skills to overcome the boss.

[@sagelord77]

Really appreciate the content you do and you sharing your opinions on stuff like this. Feels like people who view games the way you and this community do are a dying breed, but it resonates with me a lot.

[@ThomasMatthewByrne]

Great video Mark. I think it could be argued that one of the root causes of the erosion of difficulty in games is the achievement/trophy system implemented by some of the big console makers from the mid-2000s onward. Tying a game to an online checklist of tasks to artificially 100% it meant that the old cheat code tradition had to be scrapped so that players wouldn’t undermine the new online scoring system linked to their profiles. To me, cheats in games are actually a valid means of providing accessibility to newcomers so that they don’t just shelve a particular title in frustration and never pick it up again. They allowed for the less skilled player to have some enjoyment without focusing too much on their inadequacies at the outset and thus, improve over time so that they may eventually remove the bicycle stabilizers and win by skill alone.

[@orazul]

It might be a unpopular opinion or a hot take, but back seat gaming used to fix some of this. I'm sure there are good pratices and rules to follow, but watching someone play the game used to teach and promote the game. I would also add that cheats also helped. I remember that even counter stike 1.6 got boring, so we would use the server commands to add infinite ammo, infinite money, low or no gravity. Or for day of defeat we would have a only sniper round, only heavy machine guns, etc Streaming allows people to watch other people run through the game but I think in person makes it more social. Even chess gets more exciting when there are 2 people facing off and they have an audience.

[@verygoodfreelancer]

game reviewers are literally just promoters and unpaid PR people of game studios. they’re there to make readers feel good, and keep access to publishers titles by saying what they want to hear. also, they have to review things so quickly they don’t usually have any time to get a handle on anything beyond surface level mechanics, much less make any real critiques of the mechanics.

[@magicjohnson3121]

100 percent. You need time to appreciate a game. That's why you get games being praised on release then years later everyone says the game sucks.

[@Bu1lock]

I feel like there's depth in a lot of games that goes to waste because the difficulty isn't there. Without challenge, you have no real reason to engage with the game's mechanics and actually learn how the game works. If I can beat the whole game with the starter pistol then why would I use anything else? There are so many posts complaining about how games aren't fun anymore, and it's mostly long-time players. They keep playing games at the same level of challenge and get bored. Of course you're not enjoying it, you don't have to try anymore. We only grow when we're pushing ourselves.

[@Shrek_es_mi_pastor]

I feel like only games with a modding scene can afford to get hard as hell, because of what you just said

[@lukebytes5366]

If your objective is to beat the game instead of play it, that problem will occur regardless of difficulty. It'll just change from a starter pistol to a grenade launcher or sniper rifle. There are more way to utilize mechanics than through the sheer requirement of them.

[@Bu1lock]

​@@lukebytes5366I'm not sure I agree with you here. In FPS specifically, difficulty can encourage you to use more of the tools at your disposal. Some situations require a sniper rifle, some require a shotgun. If everything works, there's no real need to strategize or switch up your approach. Sure, you can do it anyway but I don't think it's as engaging unless the game gives you a reason to. To me, games are all about getting into a flow state and that kinda requires you to be at the edge of your ability. I do think you can go too far with challenge, and that having modes that match the player's skill is important. That allows people to work their way up the ladder as they improve.

[@redlinkAS]

Looking forward for the next review with God Hand.

[@sladejosephwilson2300]

This is part of the reason why I rarely play modern games. Most of my gaming hobby focuses on retro gaming and fighters. Also I dig the VF4Evo soundtrack that you added in the video.

[@scottpilgrim2]

I have legacy skill, experience and fast adaptation. I hate game journalists.

[@squirrelsyrup1921]

Noticing is a legacy skill

[@aydanjesson9748]

I was just listening to your interview on The No-Frauds Club and was very interested by what you had to say there about difficulty, the gaming press and gamification! Excellent interview! I started gassing out of open world games and putting way more hours into roguelites a while back, I think cause of the gameplay density principle you've talked about. Roguelites also tend to suffer from being too easy at the very start of a run before things ramp up and lead to long runs and wasted time. Probably because of this, I have the most hours in Spelunky, Nuclear Throne, Don't Starve and Slay the Spire (via Ascension) compared to others. Later I started feeling the urge for short retro games and got into Mario 1 and SNES Mario Kart in time trial mode. Now I'm just starting Mushihimesama based on your beginner recommendations video and so far it's a lot of fun!

[@juliahenriques210]

Don't know who will read this buried under hundreds of comments, but here go my tldr two cents from inside the industry: expectations. It's all in the expectations. 1 - Demographic shifts and consumer behaviour drive commercial decisions, which in turn limit design choices. The higher your budget, the broader your potential audience must be. Overall, games that are cheaper to make can afford to raise the skill floor and make difficulty a core feature more often. 2 - The main factor in developing legacy skill is player time. As audiences get older and pay for their own games, they become more selective and have less time to play. It leads to lots of monogaming, lots of in-depth skill in your core genres... and never developing skill in other genres whatsoever. If something new grabs your attention and you want to branch out, you'll have to climb that ladder again, and it'll take months of 1 to 3 hours every couple days instead of, say, a single winter break playing 6 to 8 hours a day. If you don't love it, you'll drop it. 3 - Player time is also taken by other content, like streaming, KZbin, social media, and that's time they're not actually playing. People play, actually play, significantly less today than they did 20 years ago (which was 2004), even though they engage with gaming content a lot. Top difficulty for most today is lived vicariously through watching people who've put in the hours we couldn't in order to develop that skill because life happens, with work, bills, kids, pets, taxes, health issues, the whole deal. 4 - Most developers, while recognising the irreversible commercial shift towards beginner focus, tend to be experts themselves in a couple genres, so they feel the low ceiling pain just like everybody else. If they could, they'd rather cover a broad spectrum of difficulty in their games. Sometimes it's straight up difficulty modes. Other times it's "soft handicap" for experts such as off-meta play or elite optional content, or "soft easy mode" for casuals, such as intentional supermeta builds or a couple intentionally viable cheesy strategies within the core loop. If you want the challenge, you'll play Souls melee, you'll avoid top planes in Ace Combat, you won't overtune in Gran Turismo, you won't trade in Path of Exile. As long as off-meta is kept viable, hardcore players will use it to set their own difficulty. 5 - Expectations. It's the publisher's responsibility to adequately communicate what their game is and who it's made for. If you just say from the start that difficulty is a feature, not a bug, whoever complains about it will just sound like an idiot or a moron. If you make it clear that difficulty is not a main feature, whoever gets your game won't expect it to be Silver Surfer. I can talk about it for hours, but it just so happens that I'm in the crunch for a dlc and... yep. No time to play, and no time to elaborate further. vov

[@Tarextherex]

This is like the third time you’ve thrown strays at Metroid Dread, have you played it or did you just disregard it because it has a parry and it was made by a Western studio? Because that game isn’t even close to represent the issues with modern game design. While it’s not a game that you can get lost in (a lot of people, newcomers especially, still did apparently) and I still prefer Super, Dread is still a great game, it’s a Fusion sequel so it focuses more on action/horror/story opposed to exploration. Idk about their Castlevania games but MercurySteam understood the assignment on that one, they took that series right where it was left off. The game isn’t without faults but overall it was still a triumph, it was basically an AAA 2D game that has qualities from various other sidescrolling games out there, from cinematic platformers to run and guns. It’s a great feeling game with amazing boss fights, you got basically some CAG-like humanoid bosses in Metroid now. It has great player expression, it’s fairly difficult so it feels good and justified when I can do shit like ledgecamping with missiles like it’s Smash in certain encounters. The game even explicitly acknowledges sequence breaking at one point. Of all the recent iterations of long running series out there, Dread is the last one that comes to mind in terms of being hurt by modern design trends Btw I did like Star Fox Zero but the actual problem with that game had nothing to do with the controls, most people criticizing it weren’t “usual Nintendo Mario fans” either. The problem is that it’s just not good of a package as 64, it has less unique planets and it’s less replayable, its length is in an awkward spot where it’s too long to be an arcade game and too short/not varied enough to be a linear action game. Sadly what most people remember from that game are the vapid criticisms from idiots that disregard motion controls Good video overall, I’m glad you mentioned how people hide behind “accessibility” when discussing this. I’m not optimistic about anyone understanding the difference between accessibility and difficulty though, because even the devs are fully behind that nonsense. Look at the “accessibility options” announcement video for Dead Cells. While there are some actual accessibility options, there are still multiple ones that basically trivialize the game, yet are justified with “everyone should be able to enjoy our game”. There are people on wheelchairs with multiple disabilities competing in fighting games since years, yet this false equivalence is still present

[@lamegamertime]

I have to disagree about Dread's difficulty, once I finished normal mode in Dread I played through hard mode and was very disappointed. With a game like that you need to be a bit more creative with your difficulty options than just slapping on extra damage to every enemy. It only felt different in the bosses because now you had to avoid more attacks.

[@TheSmartestBilly]

Another Fuego Video! The Electric Underground never disappoints!!! I love it when you brought up the reading comprehension of high literature. I used that same analogy on a co-employee when we were arguing why red dead redemption 2 stinks as a video game. I told him great video games are like "Crime and Punishment" while playing Red Dead 2 is equivalent to reading super-hero comic books. I explained further to him that video games are art and, like all other various art forms, there exist a level that separates itself from mediocrity/trash. This employee concluded that video games are different from those various art forms because games are meant for everyone. So I suppose he doesn't see games as a true art form. Bad video games are really the perfect avenue for bums. Ironically enough, TRUE video games have never been accepted in today's society. Instead, lesser quality stuff had to be made to entice the casuals to give gaming a try. It's the same with movies. I hear from people all the time how they're big movie guys, but anytime I bring up an Andrei Tarkovsky, Kubrick, or an Ingmar Bergman, it's met with "who's that?" or "that looks boring," "but have you seen the new megalodon movie!" The masses just lack passion for the arts. They are constantly seeking ways to pass the time, and because there are so many of them, the gaming and cinema landscape is just flooded with generic bullcrap.

[@Ghenry]

You a real one for vouching for Star Fox Zero. Bought that game day 1 and thought it kicked ass. Thank you.

[@ianchaurero3023]

I verbally shared your findings with some retired aerospace engineers. They fully agreed that the same industry trends applies to aerospace industry. The beginnings have become the experts.

[@ToolShopGuy]

My 2nd time playing Mario Wonder with my 3 kids, they asked to turn it off to play Mario 3 for NES. One of my proudest Dad moments

[@morgana4525]

i really like your point at 16:00 and it what ive been saying for alot of time. video games are art and the difficulty of a game, wether or not its fixed are directorial choices and used to ensure creator's artistic envision.

[@blackjew6827]

A game for everyone, is a game for no one.

[@VuNguyen-fv5jl]

Man, you put my feelings into such cohesive words about the state of modern gaming. Can’t wait for you to go full-time with KZbin

[@ExeErdna]

In game design I'll rather reward the player that plays the game and is willing to keep playing. Than appeal to a fairweather that maybe play once get gunshy somewhere and move back to their bread and butter game. As you play you should get more, each roadblock should be a test of mastery, exploitation and thinking. A lot of people don't think when really that's why they're bad at games because all games require you to think, adjust and adapt.

[@TheOtherClips]

There’s a middle ground you’re missing here. I agree that games like dark souls should remain as they are. There’s a place for them. But there are so many games these days that most players won’t choose something that’s not fun to them. But I do agree that there’s too much safety and lack of imagination in game design and too much pandering to beginners but I don’t think the conclusion is to pander to experts, at least not for most games. The expert games exist but they’re never going to be mainstream anymore. That’s something you need to accept. UNI2 is there if you want it but the people have spoken and most people don’t want to spend hours learning combos just so they can actually play the game and have fun. And again I think it comes down to the amount or choice players have. If you can’t hook them in 2 hours your game is getting refunded on steam.

[@azimulhoque1497]

I do find it interesting how the Zelda series has course corrected into becoming somewhat immune to these issues due to how freeing the mechanical depth is with the few connected systems the game has. You create your own difficulty through engaging with the mechanics of the game so your fun will vary. Not saying the games are hard (especially with how easy menuing is), but there is a clear design intent that's uncompromising.

[@lukebytes5366]

I think it works because most Zelda games encourage you to collect and do as many things as possible, not just the stuff required to beat the game. The player isn't just free to do anything, they're in a mindset that makes them want to do everything.

[@azimulhoque1497]

@@lukebytes5366 I think it also comes back to the fact that you can go fight the final boss when you want however you want. It adheres to the game being more of an adventure than anything.

[@davelockman8965]

I was lead designer on games that literally won awards for accessibility and once again I agree with everything you’re saying and you’ve nailed it. This problem is only going to get worse in mainstream games as well. I was called crazy by so many devs for sharing the same opinion on RE4 remake. It’s legit depressing.

[@superpowerman4354]

Best Video Yet! Finally! We need to bring back Gatekeeping!

[@HighLanderPonyYT]

Nope

[@jman2856]

Sure if ya want to be a fucking asshole.

[@yxlplig33]

Anyone that would complain about gatekeeping belongs outside the gates. Close them.

[@HighLanderPonyYT]

Then the ppl inside go surprised pikachu face when there's nobody to play with.

[@ikagura]

Gatekeeping newcommers is the best way to kill a franchise because it wouldn't sell except for a minority of older fans. And they forget they also were noobs when they started the game. Also gatekeeping from whom? Who will be the best and most legitimate to be the gatekeeper to begin with? It would be as mature as "no girls allowed" in front of a cabin like kids.

[@AshleysBallistics]

I find it hilarious that new games are aiming at beginners but the actual pool of sales isn't moving much meaning gamers with legacy skill are buying this swill... 😑

[@Adam-jr4lx]

most gamers are between 8-24 years old so most skilled gamers just stop playing video games.

[@WayToTheGrave]

Spectacular video, one of the best I've seen on gaming in a long while. I basically quit playing them (with the exception of danmaku, fighting games, and old FPS games) because of the totalizing dominance of this consumptive impulse sheering off interesting mechanical systems. I am sick of waiting for a decade so that the odd (good) Devil May Cry release comes out.

[@sibbyeskie]

A big part of this might be that there is a lot of depression gaming going on. A lot of lifelong gamers, even with standards in prior times, are finding themselves creep into ennui. Just mindlessly vacuuming up the next hyped release in the same way our parents watched low value evening TV. It’s just what you do to pass the time. A lot of people may prefer substance in principle, but have conditioned themselves to accept junk food gaming because that’s just how it is now and nobody wants to look up and see their actual life being drained and wasted.

[@Arunnejiro]

Everything you said really needed to be said. Modern day homogenized game design , and why it happens doesn't get talked about enough. In fact there are far more people who say innovation is impossible because everything's been done before. This spills into other things like anime as well unfortunately. Its a shame how games like kengo or samurai western haven't been continued or those styles of games haven't been innovated upon at all. It seems like people hate anything that is slightly different than the usual. This is something that I was frustrated with. I have a guilty gear video in the making, and i commented on lord knight's video that they neutered gg strive and he, along with others disagreed with me. Dmc3 in my opinion is the hardest dmc, and most games have gotten signifigantly easier, which is a problem. I was also pretty mad when I heard that ac 6 was dumbed down. What do you think about Resonance of Fate?

[@lordenglish8002]

I feel like you lack a good explanation of what "difficulty" is in games. From your reviews, it seems to me that they are mostly focused on "mechanical" difficulty, as in being able to memorize and consistently perform certain complex mechanical inputs. But as you are probably aware, as a player of shmups, difficulty does not equate any mechanical difficulty. Yet it seems you conflate these two a lot. Game design is not limited to videogames, look at chess. If you have all the moves down once, you get the game. But the difficulty ceiling is incredibly high even though the mechanical needs to play the game is only limited by you knowing the moves and being able to pick a figure up. What I am trying to say is that difficulty is a lot more multi faceted than your video makes it out to be, where ironically it dumbs it down into a very black and white approach. In terms of your comparison to literature, I think you are missing the point a bit. Most of the "most difficult" texts out there, see Kant for a famous example, tend to be difficult because of their multifaceted ways of interpretation and lack of precision, intended or not. It has very little to do with how "good" you are at reading, it won't do you much good in that context without having extensive knowledge of the discourse going on in academia. This does not even begin to scratch the surface of what other mediums of art are trying to say without really *any* kind of barrier of entry. Movies need you to sit down and watch, just like fine art needs you to be able to see, just like architecture needs you to live as well. But considered as the best do tend to be the ones that get to people who have no prior knowledge of any of these topics. For a famous example, look at Duchamp's Fountain, a piece that even after 100 years is still getting people in an insanely strong and meaningful way, yet lacks any kind of "skill" in being made outside of being able to purchase a toilet. Sorry that this turned into a kind of ramble, I just hope I was able to broaden your viewpoint a bit, or at least make you think a tiny amount.

[@lamegamertime]

I'm gonna be honest, I don't see where you're coming from on that first point. This guy has pointedly called out games that rely too heavily on mechanical difficulty (e.g. parry combat) and ignore tactics, while praising games with tactical depth. No clue how you got to this conclusion, maybe we watched different videos, or maybe you're misconstruing certain tactical elements in games with mechanical ones. I think, on the contrary, your definition of difficulty is sorely lacking, given what you're saying about it. "You don't need to be good at reading, you just need to have context."

[@lordenglish8002]

@@lamegamertime You seem to be misunderstanding what I am saying. Parry mechanics in the sense that he is talking about here are basically just button presses, compared to mechanical difficult parries like in 3rd strike where you have to use your joystick in relation to other positions you need to take. in that sense, the parry is mechanically much less demanding, and that is what I mean. A lot of his criticisms boil down to a comparison of easy vs hard inputs, the reason why I mentioned shmups in that regards was exactly because they are highly difficult without difficult mechanical inputs such as motion inputs for example. In terms of texts, the difficulty of the texts I mentioned it not mediated by your ability to "think", which is why you might be conflating them in your comment and calling out my lack of including "thinking". My point is that no matter how good you are in parsing these texts, there are no correct ways and no one way to read said texts. The only barrier here is the mileage you need to "understand" certain points, but even then there is no consensus on what those mean necessarily. I don't call it a barrier of entry because you *can* just read the book, but how much you understand or get out of it is mediated by something not inside of it. And because of the fountain, the point was that you literally don't need any knowledge to understand the piece, because the knee jerk reaction to it is exactly the point.

[@lamegamertime]

@@lordenglish8002 My suspicions are confirmed; you are conflating tactical difficulty with mechanical difficulty. A directional parry IS a tactical element of the game, not a mechanical one, because it relies on positioning (literally a tactic). There is no "mechanical difficulty" whatsoever to pressing an extra button, which is why when TEU made a video about MGR's parry he focused intensely on the tactics of the parry and its relation to other mechanics. Your argument that "if you take away anything from a piece of media then it didn't have a barrier to entry" is fundamentally flawed. It's flawed because it still applies to difficult games. A person can play a game, fail, never play it again, and that'd still be a take away! Even if they sat on the main menu and left! By your definition, even the most hardcore games do not have a barrier to entry. Because how can there be a barrier if you don't establish the end goal? I know what you're really getting at here is that art is subjective, but you're practically saying that video games aren't subjective.

[@lordenglish8002]

@@lamegamertime maybe I just don't get it but your definition seems very arbitrary. in that sense I fail to see how one is "tactical" and one is "mechanical", that distinction in itself seems very arbitrary. The parry in stellar blade does not lock you into an animation for example, is it now suddenly not mechanical but tactical? that would go against your point tho. generally I fail to see the meaningful distinction between these 2 types of difficulty you are mentioning, which might be why it seems I am conflating them. Regardless of that, it does seem that TEU is mostly focusing on things like "mechanical inputs" in this particular video, as most criticism levied against difficulty in videogames does surround said thing, see fighting games for example. As for the second point you miss what I mean, I don't mean the takeaway is important, but the fact that they just saw a toilet is the whole point of the piece, it already did the authorial intent it wanted to. Not that that is the end all be all, but there are different modes of subjectivity in relation to art. Regardless, thanks for the long and thought out response! Not everyone takes their time so I do appreciate it!

[@lamegamertime]

@@lordenglish8002 Well the reason why a directional parry _specifically_ counts as "tactical" is because, due to being directional, it is not omnidirectional. If enemies surround you, suddenly your parry is useless because you can only parry one direction at a time. Meanwhile, in a game like Assassin's Creed IV, your parry is omnidirectional and it hardly matters whether you get surrounded in combat. (And it's not just about getting surrounded, this also applies to enemies coming from unlikely angles.) Compare this to, say, chess. In chess, your pieces are limited in how they're allowed to move. Because of this, you can use the position of your pieces to "trap" your opponent's. If every piece moved like the queen, the tactics would mostly fall apart.

[@ZorroVulpes]

I think it's because even though there are people like us who appreciate games as an artform, a lot of people who play video games are just bored ambitionless people. A lot of people in the gaming community are only in it because most gaming communities will accept you if you played the game regardless of social skills, so people with zero social skills seek out gaming communities even if they didn't play the game. Lastly, the gaming community as a whole is sort of a cesspit for mental illness. I think this combined with the negative public perception of video games and the people who play them create a demand for games that are the least like video games (that we grew up with). Mobile "forever" games are as far away from NES classics as you can get while it's something that is still technically a video game. They don't want to play video games, they want to feel like they are in the group of people who plays video games.

[@cancer4cure483]

I know how to juggle and throw knives. Learning this is WAY harder, than learning a video game. It's kinda like a threshold or barrier, once you breach it a lot of tasks that use to be hard become completely trivial. So yeah, difficulty in videogames matter, as so in real life.

[@ikagura]

"So yeah, difficulty in videogames matter, as so in real life." For real life I agree but games are entertainment, I don't see why comparing both.

[@cancer4cure483]

​@@ikaguraI throw knives for entertainment, do you think I hunt with them or something. Doing hard things effortlessly is hella satisfying. As Mark said - people complain about difficulty at first, and then complain about games being too boring, failing connect the dots.

[@michaelsilver5862]

@@cancer4cure483 Yeah but not everyone wants to do hard shit for funsies, or do it all the time, or thinks that one kind of hard thing is as satisfying as another might. You think throwing knives is difficult and fun, I couldn't care about it less. A satisfying challenge for one is pointless tedium for the next.

[@cancer4cure483]

@@michaelsilver5862 then go play pokemon or something, who is stoping you?

[@cancer4cure483]

@@michaelsilver5862 there is enough baby games for people like you already.

[@GojiGuy]

Just wanted to say that comparing game difficulty to literature is actually a really refreshing and apt comparison!

[@heideknight7782]

I think that saying that difficultly is art does not yet nail it. Every game developer can make difficult games (if they wanted to). But it is an art to make a difficult game that is fair at the same time. Fair here meaning that the game respects the player as being a human with certain limitations in the skills that need to be developed to beat a challenge in the game. An example: Tetris is a fair game until level 40 or so, basically until the pieces drop so fast that a human can not react fast enough anymore to rotate and position the pieces. To solve this problem, however, players developed the hypertapping technique and now the best Tetris players can go to much higher levels than before (so the hypertapping makes it fair again). And now it is even possible to play Tetris until the killscreen appears (Blue Scuti was the first player who was able to reach level 157 in NES Tetris). One of my favourite game developer, Fromsoftware, always made action RPG games (like the Dark Souls series (mentioned in the video)) which in my opinion are difficult but fair at the same time. And the remark in the video that some fans even created own challenge runs to make a game even harder is particularly true for Souls and Soulslike games. This proves that the games are fair (and engaging) at a normal level, because nobody would do challenges for a game that is unfair originally. However, for their last game, Elden Ring, Fromsoftware actually tried to solve the following problem: how can we develop a Soulslike game that keeps up with (or even raises) the difficulty of the previous games, so that the hard core fans of our game series are satisfied, but still can make the game attractive also for new players (and particularly casual players who do not like to learn difficult bosses for hours). The solution was: they developed a couple of very difficult bosses for the game 'but' at the same time gave the players many more options in the combat than in any of the previous games. Things like weapon arts that can be attached to a weapon and that cover a whole range of movesets, weapon buffs and even magic spells. And some of the stuff is so op that one can completely bypass learning the bosses by using them. So there is an easy mode on the table for everyone who struggles with the game (particularly the bosses). But one can still do insanely difficult challenge runs in this game (some of which I have seen on streams). I think this was a quite clever approach by Fromsoftware to offer any degree of difficulty possible in the game to the player without actually using a difficulty mode in the settings. But aside from this example I think, too, that game developers nowadays too much focus on making their games attractive for the casual players who either do not have the time or who do not want to develop certain skills to overcome challenges a game could offer. They do not have the courage anymore to make difficult games is the problem I think (probably also caused by the fact that the gaming industry in general is in a crisis at the moment). And sometimes game developers even make a finished game easier when the players complain about the difficulty on social media (example: Hexworks did this for Lords of the Fallen by a number of patches after many players complained on Reddit that the game had too many enemies in certain levels). So clearly no good times for gamers who seek for challenges in modern video games. It is good that this video discusses this issue and I hope that it reaches a wide audience.

[@chasepalumbo2929]

New Electric Underground critique let’s gooooooo

[@tottalynotimportant6224]

Its might be a bit out of topic but i wonder what are your thought on System shock 1 and the Remake of that game

[@mariana-s7t]

I love your video essays. Thx for the new playlist

[@DeathXtremeHaseo]

Being fair here, some devs/studios have no idea how to properly balance games; Normal is a cakewalk but then Hard is 5x stats on every enemy and giving enemies hyper armor or something. Maybe sometimes it's a particular system that becomes annoying. Recent example is RoR being way too easy on Dusk so I switch to Twilight and enemies are 3x as tough, AI is more aggressive while your Ally AI becomes passive af, parries are tight, damage window is smaller, game becomes more reactive than active. Example: On normal with a basic katana, I can usually do 3x [] then [] skill to pretty much break enemy to critical them, sometimes doing a parry inbetween when they try to attack or do a super; on Twilight however, that same combo only does 1/4th of their Ki gauge, even their simpler moves can gain hyper armor, parry window is smaller so I miss my parries more. So the best way on harder difficulties is to let the enemy engage first and then punish them which isn't fun (sometimes enemies just sit there blocking and don't attack). Main problem is actually the parry system after delving into it (I also hate games that the parry is separate from block and not simply a perfect block then counter.) Turns out there are 4 factors that affect parry: enemy patterns/timing, difficulty, weapon, weapon stances. You can easily learn patterns so that's not an issue and diff changing window is annoying but eh. However parry depending on the weapon/weapon stance is what changes the game from having an active participation in the fight to just becoming reflex based; you can't engage the enemy first in most cases because they will hyper armor through your attacks and you can't cancel into parries fast enough due to slow weapon/slow stance. Not to mention if you're fighting multiple enemies, they will mostly attack you in rotation forcing you to block and get ki broken (again the parry isn't instant so you have no window to try to parry in between the hits). Funny thing is they had a really tight but simple parry system with Wo Long, so despite it being a much harder game, it was also a way more fun game because it didn't force you into a playstyle. In fact, since EP mentioned speedruns, that is a big factor on deciding what games to get/seeing how to play effectively. Game is like a month old and I've barely seen RoR speedruns uploaded (just on Dawn difficulty, but I guess it being a loot dependent game plays a factor but then I've seen quite a few speedruns on Nioh and Wo Long which also are loot dependent so what's the difference?)

[@joelruys9604]

To capture Dark Souls' "prepare to die" marketing, we need a new hard game where the marketing straight up calls you slurs. That's how the next wave of difficulty-appreciation is borne

[@tehteh9893]

Gamer moment

[@Gonzalo_105]

like daikatana?

[@cyxceven]

Some print ads in the 80s/90s almost did exactly that.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I think so ha. Maybe slurs might be a bit overkill, but yes I do think the fact that dark souls taunts the players on death is really important. It's important because its the game formally recognizing how difficult the game is and communicating to the player that "Yes, This is Supposed to be Hard!" So as silly as it may sound, absolutely having difficult games taunt the player and mock them is really valuable and important.

[@joelruys9604]

@@TheElectricUnderground The mythological demon has a purpose!

[@starshkr46]

Something like this occurred to me when playing Super Ghosts n Ghouls. It's a very good game and yes it is hard, but it is hard in a way that is very manageble as you keep learning it, it's just that it throws everything right at your face from the very beginning. And if that is a good game, then other games can also be good with that kind of design, right? But I guess that barrier of entry can be psychologically hard to overcome. Also, considering that Inuyasha shirt, thoughts on Yashahime?

[@Neawn-by5pi]

I'll admit I've fell for the "arcade games are quarter munchers" narrative before despite me growing up with those kind of games, it wasn't until I found this channel and it encouraged me to not only play more arcade games especially SHMUPs, but to also analyse any game I play (almost to an autistic degree). I finally became able to understand why I gravitate towards hard games, because challenge is literally the whole point of video games, easy games are boring and I've not been able to enjoy or even care about casual games anymore as they have hours of nothing and only a few minutes of actual fun. Difficulty IS art.

[@Blueberryvibe420]

Lets not pretend they wernt also designed to be quarter munchers. Gaming companies are businesses, their goal has always been to get as much money as possible. Its just that back in the days the tried to make good games and also make the big bucks. While now they try to impress us with superficial things like pretty graphics and "being accicible to anyone" to make the same big bucks (instead of good level/gameplay design).

[@Neawn-by5pi]

@@Blueberryvibe420 the thing about the "quarter munchers" term is that, yes, it's true that games were always meant to make money and that's how arcades made money, but people who use that term always use it in a derogatory way. To claim that arcade games had bullshit "unfair" difficulty that is basically designed to steal your money when that's not true. Because if an arcade game was outright bullshit and unfair and just wants to rip you off, you wouldn't give it another quarter and go to play something else instead therefore games like that fail, and if the game was too easy it would also fail because you'd beat it 1cc no problem. That's where you realise that for an arcade game to be successful, it had to have a golden difficulty curve that hooked the player, and what do you know all successful arcade games were designed exactly like that. That's the appeal of 1cc runs btw. The very term "quarter muncher" when it came to arcades was started by game journalists giving any arcade game they play low scores because of the difficulty, and as we all know those journalists want anything but to play a video game. It was never about actually acknowledging how the arcade market works.

[@gurriato]

There are plenty of legitimate examples of quarter munching in arcade games. Most erotic games are pretty much impossible to 1cc, American trash like NARC completely foregoes any semblance of good game design, Sega made racing games that gave you an automatic transmission option and then made it impossible to clear them that way, and the most fundamental quarter munching strategy of all, memorization based gameplay, makes player skill irrelevant in many titles.

[@Neawn-by5pi]

@@gurriato yes but again, most of those are bad games to begin with, and those usually fail horribly. I'm gonna assume the erotic games were successful. If they were, that's obviously not gonna be because of the gameplay and Sega might make more than others simply for being a household name.

[@ikagura]

SNK bosses were too much