Max East takes a look at how difficulty became prioritised in the gaming world, and why that’s not always a good thing.
Have you ever found yourself staring at a screen with a little pink pig staring back? It was about three in the morning when I last met with this digital creature. On paper, My Friend Peppa Pig is a game that should take about one hour to complete. It’s a children’s game, for crying out loud! Yet I found myself repeatedly barred from progressing through the game, or softlocked. With soft lock, after soft lock, I found myself still playing as the sun peeked through my window, as the pig cruelly smiled. Developers fixed the glitch roughly a week after I gave up, but I still haven’t gone back to finish what was started. Maybe the difficulty of an impossible challenge was all that kept me engaged. Or maybe it simply hurts too much to try and go back.
The same goes when playing Elden Ring. I’ve spent forty hours stuck in Limgrave (the first part of the world) because I end up aimlessly pivoting between each difficult position, ultimately burning myself out. Of course, this can easily be chalked up to a skill issue, but I find that the gameplay loop doesn’t seem to benefit my ADHD either; I follow the exact rhythm every time. Soon, I learned to enjoy the environments rather than the gameplay. I sought beautiful areas of the game, and my interest is quickly diverted once the gameplay becomes too centred around combat. Yet whether I power through or run from the area, I always go back to exploring without an aim, until this cycle has repeated three or four times. Then eventually, I stop booting the game up, and move on - similar to Peppa Pig.
Similar to how I wander around in Elden Ring, my teammate and I chose to find a new way to have fun by exploring what was possible, rather than trying to win.
When taking a step back from the digital realm, physical board games give me an entirely different release. Just last year I found myself in a heated Monopoly game at UCD’s infamous Philosophy Society. Joining in on the back foot, my friend and I were losing money left and right, with no hope in the foreground. Similar to how I wander around in Elden Ring, my teammate and I chose to find a new way to have fun by exploring what was possible, rather than trying to win.
We made graphs and encouraged our opponents to make absurd trades with us. In contrast to my time in video games, this method provided an unintentional advantage as it caught other players off guard. We eventually acquired all of the blue properties and started buying every house, stealing the other player’s opportunities to develop their land. This tactic secured our victory while awarding us a new dimension to play the game: social manipulation. When playing as Peppa Pig or fighting demons through dark landscapes, one can’t persuade digital creatures to function against their coding. With Monopoly, a notoriously hated and unfair board game, I was awarded the ability to convince others to play how I wanted them to. I wasn’t at the mercy of evil soft locks or long hours spent overcoming a single enemy. With Monopoly, I was able to bypass the unfair difficulty by taking the game in a more preferable direction.
When I repeatedly threw myself at Peppa Pig’s swing set for hours, I didn’t know when it would end. The only choice I could make was to disengage from the challenge.
Perhaps what’s missing in these overly difficult games is an expected conclusion. No matter what happens, a Monopoly game has a guaranteed resolution, with bankruptcy promised under three hours (unless someone gets angry and quits). When I repeatedly threw myself at Peppa Pig’s swing set for hours, I didn’t know when it would end. The only choice I could make was to disengage from the challenge. All responsibility is put on me to either continue through the frustration, or resign myself to no resolution at all. This makes me deeply uncomfortable. Yet for some others, it’s exhilarating.
The famous streamer Kai Cenat threw himself at Elden Ring’s torment for hours on end and never gave up. He was visibly uncomfortable throughout, eventually having to call in a therapist to guide him live on stream. It could be the money gained by such an entertaining stream that kept him determined, but how could the average Joe attempt to recreate such a strong motivator?
The answer is simple: in the face of a game’s overwhelming challenge, sometimes it’s better for the player to find a personalised way to enjoy the game.
The same way I found pleasure in exploring the beautiful environments of Elden Ring, or delighted in my unorthodox methods of winning Monopoly, a player may need to think outside the box if they are struggling to engage through conventional means. The gaming community has already taken a similar approach to adjusting a game’s difficulty, although usually to increase the challenge. Some players will modify a game’s hardware or software to include challenges the developers didn’t think of, or impose specific rules that they must follow while playing a game; Pokemon Nuzlockes are the most popular implementation of this method. The rules of a Pokemon Nuzlocke can vary as they are entirely self-imposed, but the two most common rules are as follows: when playing a Nuzlocke the player can only catch one Pokemon per route, and once a Pokemon falls in battle they are ‘dead’ and cannot be used again.
If it’s possible to make a game more difficult by thinking creatively, the reverse should be possible too. With a little unconventional thinking you can find enjoyment in your most challenging games, without experiencing any frustration.