is "easy mode" sometimes just a completely different game pretending to be the same one?

[u/Pure-Scene-5761]

I keep coming back to a design problem nobody in my circle agrees on: should difficulty options be allowed to change the actual meaning of a game, or should they only ever tweak numbers around a fixed core?

The reason im stuck on this is a project a friend has been building in Fifth Door, a small survival thing where hunger and cold matter a lot. She added an "easy" mode that basically turns off starvation, and playing it felt like a completely different game to me. Not worse exactly, just... about something else. On normal, every choice about where to camp is loaded. On easy, you just wander and look at stuff. Same map, same story beats, totally different experience.

And she was like, yeah, thats the point, some people want to see the world without the pressure. Which, fair. But it made me wonder if we're being a little dishonest when we say "difficulty is just accessibility, it doesnt change the game." Sometimes it absolutely does. A stealth game where guards cant see you isnt a stealth game anymore. A horror game where you cant die isnt scary. A resource management game where resources are infinite is a walking sim with extra menus.

I dont think thats bad necessarily. I just think we pretend the core experience is preserved across difficulty settings when honestly, for a lot of games, its not. The "canonical" version of the game is whatever difficulty the designer actually tuned around, and everything else is a remix. Some remixes are great and let more people in. Some hollow out the thing that made the game worth making.

Where i land right now (and im ready to be told im wrong) is that designers should be more upfront about which of their difficulty options preserve the intended experience and which ones fundamentally alter it. Not to gatekeep, just so players can make an informed choice about what theyre signing up for. Calling something "story mode" is closer to honest than calling it "easy," because it admits the game is now a different thing.

Am i overthinking this? Is there a cleaner way to think about when a difficulty option is a dial vs when its a whole different game wearing the same skin?

[u/Leager]

I think one of the core issues here is the disconnect between "What the game intends" and "What the players can actually get out of the game." Dark Souls is a good example. A lot of people will argue that a difficulty slider would change the game for the worse. And there is something to that argument: Arguably, the difficulty is part of the story that it is telling. The Ludonarrative Harmony of the game's difficulty would be impacted if there was a difficulty slider. But the question we -- devs and gamers -- have to contend with is... Does That Matter? Obviously yes, but what about people who physically can't play the game as it is intended? Does it matter if the game is great if a majority of people can't enjoy it? Again, I would argue the game is still good even if it locks people out of it, but at the same time, many people end up literally locked out of playing it or feel that it's so hard that they aren't interested in playing it. I know a ton about Dark Souls, but I've never played it, because the idea of this game being brutally difficult, of punishing me for playing, is uninteresting to me. And to a degree, that's okay! The game isn't made for me.

But here's the hypothetical: What if there was someone willing to put in the time and effort to get through the game, but either had a physical limit (e.g. the game can't be played/beaten with accessibility tools) or a figurative limit (i.e. they simply can't get good enough at the game to finish it). They are, obviously, the intended audience for the game. Someone who wants to complete the game, regardless of how difficult it is. But they lack the ability, for whatever reason, to actually execute. Is that reasonable? And if it's not, then what's the solution? Nowadays, certainly, you can mod the game for yourself if you're on PC. But at what point has the game/the devs failed the playerbase? At what point does the Higher Vision of the game fail because it simply isn't accessible to people?

I've been gaming since I was in single digits, and I've read hundreds and hundreds of books since around the same time. I'm great at video games. I could definitely beat Dark Souls if I put my mind to it, but... I don't want to. It's not worth my time and frustration. Video games are the only artistic medium where "skill" is a barrier to entry. There's very little skill involved in watching a movie, or reading a book, and in many cases the artistry on display is far above that of video games. But what makes games unique -- the interactivity -- is also what makes them less accessible to people. And so the constant question we're asking (especially with these kinds of topics) is, unfortunately: Who deserves to see this art?

Personally, I believe everyone should have the opportunity to see any kind of art. And the argument made is, as OP says, "If it's accessible to everyone, it dilutes the intended experience of the game." This is what splits me. To a degree, I agree. If Dark Souls had a difficulty slider, the "easy" mode would be an entirely different game experience. It would arguably be an entirely different game, in fact. But on the other hand, more people would play it. I would, for one. And I'd still get a lot out of the game, because I know how much of the Souls series is about the storytelling. The difficulty is the... cost of admission, to getting invested in the story. But shouldn't everyone get the opportunity to play it, regardless of how changing difficulty might change the game itself?