Author Profile

Zeru Hu is a student admitted to New York University Game Center. He has a strong interest in game scholarship and formalist game design. 

Introduction

A couple of weeks ago, I went out for some Kebabs with two friends of mine, one being a game design student and the other a hardcore gamer. While waiting for the Kebabs, we got into a heated debate on the high difficulty and lack of difficulty settings in the newly released, best-selling game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Despite being a game design student myself, I have never been a hardcore player who likes to take on extremely challenging games that require a high level of cognitive, mental, and physical ability. Consequently, at the time of the debate, it is an understatement to say that I could not progress very far in the game.  However, the debate did raise a series of questions that are worth examining. Does accessibility compromise Hard Fun? If so, under what circumstance is said compromise justified? Most importantly, should Hard-Fun games provide accessibility settings?

Before we proceed, I shall clarify my presupposition here:

Hard-fun games should deliver their intended Hard-fun experiences to as many players, regardless of their skill and ability, as possible.

I shall also define Hard Fun here quoting XEODesign:

“Hard Fun creates emotion by structuring experience towards the pursuit of a goal. The challenge focuses on attention and rewards progress to create emotions such as Frustration and Fiero (an Italian word for personal triumph). …It rewards the player with feedback on progress and success” (XEODesign, Inc.).

On another note, Hard-fun games do not necessarily refer to games of extreme difficulty but refer to games that focus on challenges as the chief experience.

With these premises in mind, I will attempt to abstract Hard Fun and Accessibility from specific genres or games, examine the contradiction between them, and answer the said questions. Case studies of games of disparate genres will be presented in an attempt to construct a universally applicable game design principle that is not limited to any particular genres or games.

Does accessibility compromise Hard Fun?

If we were to review the most basic ideas of game design – the formal elements of a game – we could reach a consensus that the player is the foremost component of a game. Here I am to establish a basic belief on which this article will be based: the parallel principle. The parallel principle goes as follows. The player is the necessary condition for an experience to exist. The game by itself does not constitute any experience; the game experience exists if and only if the player plays the game (Schell 10). Since every player plays differently – on a different skill level or with a different play style – no two experiences are identical. Different players’ experiences (in a single-player game) are also parallel: one’s experience does not affect another’s. Hard Fun, as a subset of experience, follows this proposition. One’s Fiero in overcoming a challenge in a Hard-fun game cannot possibly make the frustration of another any more enjoyable, vice versa.

Therefore, we must break the question down to sub-questions that follow the parallel principle:

The a priori answer to question (1) is no. By virtue of the parallel principle, we can deductively conclude that making a game more accessible – for example, by adding an easier game mode that is not played by players who only play the original game mode – cannot possibly alter the experiences of those who do not play the easy game mode. The a posteriori answer to question (1) is also no. In FTL: Faster Than Light, the difficulty can only be chosen prior to starting the game and cannot be changed mid-game. If a player chooses to play on normal difficulty, then the experience of the run cannot be compromised by the easier game mode.

However, in this scenario, one may refute my argument by raising the question, “What if the player chooses to turn on easy mode after his defeat on normal mode? Would that compromise the Hard Fun? After all, the experience of the game is not limited to a single run but pertains to the entirety of the game.” This refutation is very valid but lies outside the domain of my first sub-question. I will address this problem in my answer to the second sub-question.

To effectively reply to question (2), we need to subdivide the players who are playing on accessibility settings into two groups by nature of the parallel principle. The two groups are:

I shall clarify these definitions: by whether the players are capable of overcoming challenges, I mean their factual capability, regardless of whether they recognize such capability and notwithstanding their effort in practicing. A player who is unconfident in his capability yet is, in fact, capable of beating the game, for instance, falls under the category of B. One may argue that players learn and improve: a member of A can become a member of B over time. This argument is valid but does not contradict my definition as such players would fall under the category of B, too. One may also argue that all physically able players, if given enough time to practice, can beat any winnable game. It would be hard for me to say that this statement is a priori false, but the premise of unlimited time for practice cannot be realistically attained. The time a player spends on a game is empirically limited by his accumulation of frustration: if the player is too frustrated by the challenges to continue playing – to wit, the player makes his final decision to rage quit, that is, most possibly did he already rage quit many times before – the time provided for his game experience is then terminated. Simply put, if the player’s final rage quit comes before overcoming the challenges, the player falls under the category of A. One may insist and obnoxiously argue that players may be enslaved and forced to practice until they beat the game in an attempt to nullify my categorization of A, but such argument is simply repulsive and violates the premise of games: “Games are entered willfully” (Schell 34).

With the definitions of my categorization of players clarified, we shall move on to examine the two newly formed questions per the categorization:

For player group A and in response to question I, accessibility does not compromise Hard Fun. To effectively examine the experience of A, I shall reiterate the definition of Hard Fun here: “[Hard Fun] rewards the player with feedback on progress and success” (XEODesign, Inc.). Following this proposition of Hard Fun, we can conclude that Hard Fun rewards the player if and only if the player achieves both progress and success. Progress and success are two necessary conditions and together a sufficient condition to necessitate Hard Fun. However, because A is incapable of achieving said progress and success, no Fiero is being rewarded to the player. Hard Fun cannot be compromised if it does not exist in the player’s game experience. Therefore, accessibility does not compromise Hard Fun for players who are playing on accessibility settings and incapable of overcoming the challenges that lead to Fiero.

On the contrary, accessibility increases the amount of Hard Fun for player group A. Again, players experience Hard Fun if and only if they achieve progress and success. Without accessible design, player group A does not achieve success and therefore cannot experience Hard Fun. Accessible design enables A to experience Hard Fun by moving the goal post of Fiero before the obstacle of final rage quit.

In response to the potential argument that moving the goal post closer nullifies challenge and sense of progress, I here shall expound the nature of challenge and progress. Challenge and progress are relative terms: they are determined by the distance between the player’s starting skill and the player’s Fiero on a number line. If a player starts at skill level -20 and then beats the game at +20, then his progress is the same as that of a player who starts at 0 and beats the game at +40 – the change in skill is the same. 

As long as there is a difference between the starting skill and the final skill after the player overcomes the challenge, the player experiences Hard Fun. Such Hard Fun might not be as rewarding as that of a capable player playing on normal difficulty if the accessibility settings made the game easier such that the change in skill of the incapable player is smaller than that of the capable player, but again, such comparison is invalid by virtue of the parallel principle. The point is that the incapable player experiences more Hard Fun on accessibility mode than he does on regular difficulty.

Accessibility only disables Hard Fun for player group A if it narrows the gap between the player’s starting skill level and the game’s challenges to the extent that the player feels no challenge, hence no progress. However, such experience is, at worst, equally unrewarding as one wherein the player fails to overcome the challenge and reach Fiero because neither of them satisfies both necessary conditions for Hard Fun, progress and success.

The two conditions for Hard Fun, progress and success, therefore, are both enabled by accessibility except for said scenario. The conclusive answer to question I is thus that accessibility does not compromise Hard Fun for players who are playing on accessibility settings and incapable of overcoming the challenges that lead to Fiero.

For player group B and in response to question II, accessibility does compromise Hard Fun. The logic is simple: the goal post of