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July ‘08 Round Table — Updated 07/31
By Corvus | July 31, 2008
Wow. June’s Round Table was great. I didn’t have time to go around and comment on the later posts, but the month was chock full of awesome, from the first post at the beginning of the month to the last three that were added on Monday the 30th. Thank you all so much for taking time to participate.
July ‘08
Hurts So Good, or “Yoda! My Safe Word is Yoda!”: While most, although not all, people would agree that video games need to provide some resistance to achieving goals, nearly all of us have played video games that are controller-tossing, keyboard-banging, mouse-slammingly, couch-kickingly difficult for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s poor controls, sometimes it’s amped up AI, sometimes it’s unfamiliar gameplay. Often we set these games aside permanently and stop playing. But sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we forge ahead, deal with the frustration, stay the course. What sustains you through those particularly difficult games? Or, if you’re not into punishing yourself, what is sure to make you reach for the eject button on the CD-ROM tray and never look back? Do you play your games on Insane or Meek difficulty levels and why? Or, as a designer, how do you decide on the challenge level of your game(s)? This month’s Round Table invites you to discuss Difficulty in Games by answering one of these questions, or providing your own.
As always, check out the FAQ to find out how to submit your post to the Round Table and if you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me. Please don’t submit your posts in the comments, but email links to me (if you already have my address) or use the contact form linked above. And, if you’re going to link directly to this month’s Round Table, please don’t link to this post, but to the entry on the Round Table page at http://blog.pjsattic.com/corvus/round-table/#0708.
I will continue to share your entries via my shared feeds, Twitter and, as always, by updating this post. I look forward to reading what you have to say!
July 2nd — I must be riding the same cosmic waves as Jay of Tales of The Rampant Coyote, as he posted on topic yesterday in Favorite Abusively Difficult Games. That deserves an honorary entry, don’t you think?
July 2nd — Scorpia launches the Round Table this month with a fond reminisce of how bloody difficult some of our older game really were in Hard Times.
July 2nd — Max of Worldmaker is hot on her heels with a post on the relationship between difficulty and community in I Cannot Survive Without a Little Help From My Friends.
July 4th — Keira of Write the Game writes about the difficulty inherent in balancing difficulty in Game Over.
July 4th — Aaron of Anyway Games joins his first Round Table with Segmenting Difficulty, a post on giving players control over difficulty settings.
July 4th — Josh of Mind’s Eye discusses “Fair Hard” vs. “Cheap Hard” in Degrees of Player Beat Down.
July 6th — Mercedes of Girls Don’t Game revels in the higher difficulties in Old-Fashioned, Controller-Stomping Fun.
July 7th — Steve of Fullbright talks about why we persevere through difficult games in Stubborn.
July 7th — And thus Spoke Pi returns to the Round Table to draw a line between genuine difficulty and poor design in Hardnessicity.
July 9th — I talked about how the concept of intentionally increasing difficulty is relatively unique to the narrative medium of video games, although not entirely without precedent in Working at Cross Purposes?.
July 10th — Aaron of Anyway Games has submitted a second entry in reaction to my post that asks whether the added difficulty need be an impediment to completing a game in Mysteries & Puzzles.
July 11th — Rayna of Plucky Pixels posts about her difficult relationship with game difficulty now that she’s a game designer in Playing easy, working hard: Making games difficult is fun
July 8th — I somehow didn’t find this post in my feeds until this morning. DanC of Lost Garden uses a carefully crafted difficulty curve to discuss what’s wrong with game reviews in Soul Bubbles: A classic game ill treated by expert reviewers.
July 15th — William of H.T. Parnell’s talks about the various means of amping up difficulty in The Elitist Nature of Difficulty.
July 17th — Alex of While !Finished (I’m not sure if that name refers to the blog, or to Alex, or both) pleads with developers to consider her preferences while deciding on difficulty in Dear Developers.
July 18th — Jason of Unfettered Blather has a go at Treyarch for the difficulty of bad design decisions in That’s Just an old Wii injury.
July 18th — Jesper, The Ludologist, has a post I’m included as an honorary entry. He writes about video game difficulty created by bad design and assures us that It is Alright to Blame the Game.
July 19th — Kimari of Indigo Static explores his love/hate relationship with difficulty in Thank you, may I have another?
July 23rd — Greg of The Dust Forms Words starts out with the assertion, “There’s no such thing as too hard,” in his post Stairway.
July 23rd — Dan of Cruise Elroy talks about how important it is for a designer to provide The right kind of hard.
July 24th — Tormod joins us with some musings on the relationship between enjoyment and difficulty in Even unfair can be fun in the end.
July 27th — Sparky of Discount Thoughts has been playing Grim Fandango as part of the Vintage Game Club and it’s inspired a post on the importance of contextualizing difficulty–Run, you pigeons! It’s Robert Frost!
July 28th — Jason of ProbablyNot.com looks for a difficulty Somewhere Between Impossible and Impossibly Easy.
UPDATE
July 30th — Mitch of Insult Swordfighting writes about teaming up to meet the challenges of a game in Get by with a little help from my friends.
July 31st — The anonymous Drugstore Space Cowboy at Mahogany Finish explains how difficulty imbalances in MMOs don’t have to be bad things in Unbalanced? Unfair? Good.
You’ve got until 11:59pm today to add your opinion to this month’s topic. August’s topic will be posted tomorrow!
Tagged:Add new tag, game difficulty, Round Table. |
July 5th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Hate to point this out ,but you messed up on the title of my entry. It’s “The degrees of a Player Beat Down”.
July 5th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
heh. ‘Bear down’ is very different imagery, isn’t it? Fixed!
July 18th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
*her preferences =P
I know, I know, I have a boy’s name!
July 18th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
D’oh! I fixed it, so sorry!
July 23rd, 2008 at 11:58 am
I’m away for a few months and suddenly The Round Table is five times larger. Awesome. I’ll be sure to continue my lack of participation, just in case.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:57 am
I just want to say that I am in awe of how many excellent contributions the Round Table has been getting. You folks are amazing!
July 31st, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Yeeha. I’m looking forward to procrastinating on next month’s topic.
(On your Round Table page, it’s “Mahogany.”)
July 31st, 2008 at 9:29 pm
heh. Don’t care to change the site name to Magohany Finish? Thanks for the correction!