The Problems With Raising The Difficulty - A Response To A Blog By Greg Kasavin

Greg Kasavin is one of the busiest men in the video game industry. He's seen it all from the journalist side, the producer side, and most recently the development side. In his spare time he maintains a blog where he shares his thoughts on stories in video games. It's pretty deep stuff. Most recently, Greg put up a post about power fantasies, the concept of playing as a character who is superior to yourself. He cites games such as Halo, God Of War, Mass Effect, and many others as examples of power fantasies, games where the player character is someone who is far more skilled than anyone else. In essence, a power fantasy is "the idea that if only you were a better more capable person."

I left a comment on the post mentioning something that I believe contributes to the issues with a power fantasy that Greg outlines, specifically the "risk of creating emotional disconnect or sense of inadequacy in the player." I said that difficulty levels are something that almost always contribute to the aforementioned issue, but I wanted to take the time here to flesh out my response.

"Risk of creating emotional disconnect or sense of inadequacy in the player." A smartly written sentence and idea that carries much meaning. However, I feel that Greg left out a key component, and that involves difficulty levels. They are in the majority of games being released nowadays, regardless of genre or type. By increasing the difficulty in a power fantasy game, such as Halo or Mass Effect, what is the player really doing? In essence, they are creating this emotional disconnect, and essentially forcing inadequacy on themselves. As a result, their character who is supposed to be powerful, superior, and often heroic suddenly becomes poor at their job, and the game never gives any explanation for this whatsoever. Sure, the player should expect the game to become challenging, but in a power fantasy it makes no sense when a tough character is reduced to a weakling without any reason being given within the game's fiction.

Halo and Mass Effect are two examples that I like to use. In the former example, Master Chief is a genetically enhanced super human who is supposed to be capable of really dishing out the pain on the Covenant. He is idolized by even the toughest marines. But when players decide it's time to play the game on the Legendary difficulty, this sense of being a vastly superior warrior is tarnished. The concept of power fantasy is effectively thrown out the window. It's established that Master Chief is a hero. So why is he all of a sudden being destroyed by the simplest of foes? Why isn't he capable of decimating the Covenant anymore?

In Mass Effect, Commander Shepard is a savior of the galaxy. Shepard travels from planet to planet, fighting bloodthirsty mercenaries and merciless Geth. But because Shepard is a highly trained professional with access to the highest quality equipment and crew, he or she is able to deal with these foes without much challenge... on the normal difficulty. When players raise the challenge by switching it to Insanity, all of a sudden Shepard becomes as weak and vulnerable as the enemies he or she is supposed to be mopping the floor with. The sense of being a savior of the galaxy is gone. Shepard becomes terrible at his or her job, and no reason is given for this other then to challenge the player.

Is that a good reason? Should developers be willing to throw logic away in favor of a challenge when players raise the difficulty? I personally would be very interested in a game that tries to explain why a character is weaker or less powerful when the difficulty is raised. It would be awesome if raising the difficulty caused a twist in the beginning of the game that gives a reason for the main character's sudden drop in efficiency. Perhaps they get severely injured in the beginning, causing them to lose their edge. Maybe it's discovered that the enemies had done some research and found ways to make themselves more powerful.

Power fantasies become a problem when the player can easily disrupt what the whole game is about by simply raising the difficulty. You can think of the idea of a power fantasy as being structurally weak. Players will only get the true sense of being a superior individual if they play on the default difficulty or lower. Anything higher, and the effect is gone. It creates situations where characters say things like, "Oh, thank God, Master Chief is here! We're saved!" and then thirty seconds later they watch him get worked by a lone Grunt with a plasma pistol. It makes you realize that not only do you suck at being Master Chief, but now Master Chief sucks at being Master Chief. The problem should be apparent by now.

Narrative continuity is absolutely essential in games where players participate in a story. If a character is supposed to be extremely powerful, he should be just that. If the player raises the difficulty, some sort of justification should be given to explain why the extremely powerful character suddenly is not. It breaks the continuity, and that's just one of the issues with power fantasies. They are too vulnerable to be manipulated in negative ways, and the game's narrative often suffers because of it.