Darwinian Difficulty

While browsing about the Internet, as one does when bored and should really be sleeping, I found a very interesting article about game difficulty. In the article, published on Gamasutra, the writer explores the idea of a "Darwinian difficulty curve" where a game starts off being hard and stays that way without the option to lower the difficulty should you decide that you are struggling a bit too much. The writer, Josh Bycer, uses two games to prove his point that this way of making games is better than the much more popular difficulty selection method, those games being Ninja Gaiden Black and Demon Souls. Unfortunately i have yet to experience the "horror" that is Demon Souls but from what I've heard it's even worse than Ninja Gaiden. The main difference between this method of designing games and the more common method is that the player will be given all the skills needed to complete the game at the very start and within the first level or section of the game will be forced to use each of these skills at some point. This means that the player is aware of all if not most of the skills required to successfully go through the game from the very start, usually this is done without the use of tutorials and through putting the player in a situation where they either see the skill being used or come across a new enemy/area that requires them to expand upon their knowledge of the game so far and to increase the skill they have. Throughout the article Bycer notes that through the use of Darwinian difficulty the player is left feeling more rewarded having used their own skill and knowledge to overcome obstacles, from personal experience i can say this is very true of Ninja Gaiden which to this day I am yet to complete due to its difficulty. I won't go into it any further as Bycer does a very good job of it but it is an interesting read if you are at all interested in games.

On a similar note, in the previously mentioned article someone posted a comment directing readers to a video by Egoraptor. For those of you who don't know, Egoraptor is a highly entertaining animator, most popular for his "Awesome" series of animations which mainly parody popular game series. In the video Egoraptor talks about Mega Man X and how it cleverly hinted at how to complete it instead of using tutorials or characters telling the player how a challenge could be overcome. The video itself is both highly informative and entertaining but be warned Egoraptor can be a bit foul mouthed.

From now on i will be including links to my social sites and gamertags to make things simpler for people to find me, these will be located at the bottom of my posts (if i remember to put them there). And just in case you missed them, here's the links to the article and video:

Darwinian Difficulty: How Throwing Players In Headfirst Can Work by Josh Bycer
Sequelitis - Mega Man Classic vs, Mega Man X by Egoraptor


X-Box: IkasuKiller
PS3: Ikasu-Killer
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/LeighNorton88
Twitter: http://twitter.com/L_Norton_
LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/leighnorton