Joe from GamersFTW discuss difficulty settings in games, and whether it's time to looks at difficulty in games in a new way rather than the old "Easy; Medium; Hard" way
Bandai Namco has released its latest financial report, revealing that the Dark Souls series has reached around 40 million units combined.
Amazon Prime subscribers can claim more than a dozen games to keep this month.
Firaxis veteran Jake Solomon hasn't seen mass layoffs like this in his whole 25-year career.
Alot’s changed in 25 years. We have games with $300 mill budgets, people not interested in games other than Fortnite and Minecraft, the older generation of gamers giving up the hobby or dying off, a period of super bad inflation where the industry decided to hike up prices on games, Gamepass harming game sales, GaaS games being pushed left and right with obnoxious monetization and worse looking/playing (Suicide Squad vs Arkham Knight).
The industry is just shite right now. Games ain’t selling, games cost massive amounts, businesses can’t bleed money and this is what happens. Part of it is on them and part of it is on consumers not buying.
Consumers ain't buying because of what they're selling; There is no new SSX or Burnout, everything is now Online Required, everything is 'service', etc.
Indies are still delivering the goods, perhaps even better than ever, because those are often the guys and gals who know what they want to make and just make that and hopefully we dig it as well and support it ...
... but when you look at those multi-million budget AAA games, are they improving on what we have had before? Is the new Forza Motorsport better than a Forza Mototsport 4? Is Halo Infinite better than Halo 3? Is Dragon Age 2 such a huge improvement over the first Dragon Age? Etcetc.
Yeah, graphics have gotten better, worlds have gotten better, but I think a gaming generations stands or falls with diversity and experiences, and a few gens ago we had access to whatever we wanted, so if we wanted a boxing game we picked up one of the boxing games, if we wanted snowboarding we'd pick up one of the snowboarding games, if we wanted to do a rythm game we had DJ Hero, or Guitar Hero, or Rockband. If we wanted to sneak around we had Splinter Cell or MGS or whatever.
We had variety and we had options, and that makes or breaks a generation, imo. You're in a foodcourt of games and they're serving all kinds of different cuisines, and so you'd pick and choose whatever you felt like that day.
Right now, you're in a restaurant, and you're only allowed to pick from one menu, and there's a dress-code, and you have to register, and you have to stay in your seat, etc etc.
I don't think XCOM: Enemy Unknown was particularly difficult, it just punished players who made poor decisions. Let's be honest, most games don't do that - most of the time you'll respawn after a count down, or just try again. Personally, I couldn't care less about difficulty options, I'll usually play the game how the developers intended for it to be played. Saying that, I don't see a problem with people making the game easier, especially when it comes to a more cinematic experience like Uncharted or Heavy Rain or whatever. As for Dark Souls, I'm not sure how the online aspects would work with adjustable difficulty.
It depends on the game whether or not a difficulty slider is necessary. If they feel that the difficulty is not worth the effort, or if the game's measure of difficulty is simply being "throw more dudes at the player", then certainly not. Otherwise, I see no reason why the player can't judge for themselves whether a game should be difficult or not.
I like to have the option, so not oudated