Unraveling Game Difficulty

Games can be many things. A form of art, a means of expression, a way to relax, a platform to socialise and even a challenge to overcome. This sense of challenge and achievement was the main driving force behind the success of the Soulsborne series, and their success inspired a new sub-genre of games called Souls-Like.

It’s almost surreal how something as simple as difficulty can be so defining, and it would be a disservice to FromSoftware if we didn’t appreciate their careful planning and their intricate game structure that allowed them to ace this formula. To truly appreciate this, we must also take a look at the history of difficulty in gaming and see how it developed and changed over time.

During the early 1980s in the golden age of arcade gaming, games became notoriously difficult, because this high difficulty brought about the ideal financial model for that time. Games had to be difficult, for back then it was quite common to rent video games, and this would eat away at a company’s profits, since it meant that they sold less copies. By making their games extremely difficult, players would spend more time to beat them, and this would encourage them to buy the game instead of renting it.

This high difficulty also helped arcades to increase their profits. Many of these arcade games used a checkpoint system, which allowed players to keep playing after they lost by inserting some coins into the machine. Players would end up ‘failing’ more often in harder games, and so these games would end up generating more money for the arcade (which probably made them quite popular with the arcade owners!).

Now many of these games were designed with replayability in mind, and an effective way to get players to keep coming back to their games was the leaderboard system. Players didn’t only care about beating a game, they wanted excel, to be the best of the best, and for fellow gamers to recognise their achievements. These leaderboards and highscores were a mark of prestige for gamers, a way for them to become legends at their local arcade, and the harder a game was, the more effort (and money) it would take to perfect their skills and achieve the top score on the leaderboard.

Now difficulty is quite a tricky subject when it comes to games, because it’s very easy to get it wrong. Some games might be difficult simply because of poor controls or a heavy reliance on luck and RNG, and these games are often unsatisfying. Players want to feel that they are in control of their victory or loss, that their skill plays a big part in how good they are at a game, and a great way to achieve this is by having a simple game with a steep learning curve.

This philosophy was embraced by Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, who in 1971 famously said “All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master. They should reward the first quarter and the hundredth." - A quote which is now one of the most important concepts in game design known as Bushnell’s Law.

Unfortunately, many modern games fall short at creating fun and rewarding difficulty, for instead of coming up with some new challenge that demands more skill, they simply go for an easy ‘solution’ like increasing the number of enemies, or an enemy's health and damage. This sort of difficulty is known as a bullet sponge and if implemented poorly it can be notoriously frustrating, for it can seem like artificial difficulty, in which each fight feels like a drawn out slog, a test of a player’s patience, that demands time rather than skill.

Of course some games such as The Witcher 3 : The Wild Hunt and God of War (2018) manage to create satisfying difficulty even though they increase the enemy’s health and damage, and this comes down to their intricate gameplay. These games have a complex combat system which allows the player to adapt and take a varied approach, and I feel that the best way to describe their combat at the highest difficulty, is an elegant dance, as you skillfully weave past your enemy, dodging their attacks and avoiding death by the smallest of margins. The thrill of this type of combat is exhilarating for players that love a difficult challenge, and they really make you feel that you’ve mastered the game. They practically follow Bushnell’s law that we discussed earlier: “All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master.” Other games such as Super Mario or the Crash Bandicoot series would make their levels easy to get through but hard to obtain a 100% completion, by for example making it difficult to obtain all of the collectables or achievements, and these games are also a great example of the application of Bushnell’s law.

On the other hand, games with a simple combat system such as the early titles of the Assassin's Creed series fell short when it came to difficulty. Their combat typically consisted of around 3 attacks: a parry, a guard break and a dodge, and you’d use these accordingly to whatever your enemy was doing. This almost felt like a rock, paper, scissors game, and on higher difficulties it was quite boring, since the enemy’s increased healthpoints meant that you’d have these drawn out unsatisfying engagements that didn’t require any skillful adaptation from the player’s end.

Now when it comes to the Soulsborne games the best way to describe their difficulty would be fair. Even though these games can be insanely tough, the vast majority of your deaths come down to your own mistakes. A poorly timed dodge, a greedy attack or heal, a misread attack animation… the list goes on and on. This gives the player a feeling of control, that it was their mistakes which led to their death and it wasn’t because of some unfair gimmick. Naturally, the player might still feel frustrated at their death (especially if they were close to overcoming a long fought challenge) though instead of feeling cheated by some unavoidable gimmick, they will try to learn from their mistakes to get ever closer to overcoming some boss or obstacle… and when they finally succeed, the sense of achievement is phenomenal, because they truly know that they earned this victory through skill.

It’s no coincidence that one of the most hated bosses in the Soulsborne series was the Bed of Chaos from Dark Souls 1, a boss fight which was notorious for its gimmicky nature. It wasn’t even a difficult challenge, for any progress you made throughout this fight was kept after your death, and so you were bound to succeed after a few tries, yet this boss also had unpredictable attacks which could one shot you. After beating this boss there’s very little sense of achievement if any, for it didn’t take any particular level of skill or capability, it was just a test of patience. This is a very rare instance of a poorly designed Soulsborne boss, and the only reason for this drop in quality was because this area and boss fight was designed towards the end of the game’s development and they had to rush it due to time constraints. Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creative designer for Dark Souls 1, even went so far as to describe it as his biggest regret in the game.

Something which was quite unique about the Soulsbourne series was that these games had no difficulty settings to choose from, and so they were played at a fixed difficulty. Most games offer you a wide range of difficulties to choose from, usually accompanied by a brief description of what to expect, though it’s practically impossible to know what difficulty you’re capable of handling before you even start a game. This drives a lot of players to pick one of the easier difficulties for they seem like a safe option and they’d be wary of being unable to progress on one of the harder difficulties. The problem with this is that you can easily end up breezing through a game especially after you become familiar with the basic gameplay, and in the process this could rob you of some of the satisfaction that comes from overcoming a difficult challenge. You could argue that some games offer you the chance to adjust the difficulty at any time during your playthrough and that this would allow players to always make the gameplay challenging, however it’s been shown that most players hate changing the difficulty mid-game, and that when faced with this choice, they’d rather quit the game entirely.

Now when it comes to the Soulsborne series Miyazaki had once said “ever since Demon’s Souls, I’ve really been pursuing making games that give players a sense of accomplishment by overcoming tremendous odds” and this really captures the heart of the series. There are some bosses in these games that when first encountered seem impossible and you’d wonder whether you have a chance at ever beating them. You’d barely scratch their healthpool and the challenge ahead might seem insurmountable… however when you look at your defeats you’d start to notice that they were practically caused by a cascade of mistakes on your part. Perhaps you got too greedy and tried to attack instead of healing yourself, or you mistimed a dodge or misread an attack animation. Each death and loss is a lesson, and with each retry you get better and closer to defeating this boss, until finally you manage to climb this insurmountable mountain. Truly a journey of overcoming tremendous odds, and rightly rewarded with an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction. Your hard work paid off, and what you once deemed impossible was now achieved through your skill and growth. The importance of skill in these games shows how even though the difficulty can be tremendous, it’s always fair. There are many skilled players that take on crazy challenges such as beating these games without levelling up, without using a weapon and even without ever taking damage, and the fact that these players manage to achieve their goals, is a testament to how well crafted and fair the gameplay is, and how the developers have a great understanding of satisfying difficulty.

It’s worth mentioning that even though the Soulsbourne series doesn’t have an easy difficulty, there are still ways for you to make your game easier. Playing as a spellcaster will typically make the playthrough easier, and you can always summon allies to help you out in a boss fight. There are also items which will make your playthrough easier early on, but a heavy reliance on them will punish you in the late game. For example by using a shield you’re less likely to learn how to time your dodges, and Dark Souls 1 actually had an item known as the Drake Sword which was notoriously overpowered early game but which scaled horribly. This weapon was seen as a ‘noob trap’ since it made the game quite easy early on but eventually it would end up limiting its wielder, for they would miss out on some crucial gameplay skills, reflexes and knowledge which are learnt from the early game challenges. By the time they reach the mid game section, this weapon’s strength would have dropped off significantly, and it would no longer be able to overcompensate for their lack of skill. At this point the traditional weapons would actually be stronger than the Drake Sword once they’re upgraded, yet players who used the Drake Sword wouldn’t be used to them or they wouldn’t have upgraded them, and so they’d be stuck using a weaker weapon at a difficult point in the game until they make this transition.

Now even though the Soulsbourne series has a great grasp on difficulty, they still manage to gradually improve their system, to make it more enjoyable for the player. For example, Demon Souls, which was the first game in the series, sometimes had very long distances between a respawn point and the boss fight, filled with many dangerous enemies. You could easily die to these mobs on your way to the boss, or they could exhaust your healing supplies. This was quite frustrating for the player, for after dying to a boss you’d want to give it another shot as soon as possible instead of having to fight through a trail of enemy mobs, and it seems that FromSoftware learnt from this, for their most recent game, Elden Ring, has extremely short distances between the respawn points and the boss fights, without resistance in between.

Hopefully this article managed to shed some light on difficulty and the well crafted formula of the Soulsborne series. If you’ve never played these games I’d highly recommend that you check them out, for the best way to appreciate their strengths and fun is to experience it yourself. Its fans often say that you have to play them to understand why they’re so beloved, and I’ve got to second that opinion.