All Games Should Have An Optional Content Tourism Mode

[Thursday Next]

All games (with the exception of multiplayer games), should have an entirely optional, content tourism, easy mode whether this manifests as Super Mario Bros. "Super Mushrooms" or Minecraft / No Man's Sky "Creator Mode" or a good ol' fashioned Doom "God Mode" where difficulty is reduced so as to be trivial.

 

This optional mode would in no way impact on the enjoyment of players who want to play games like SoulsBorne where they are struggling to overcome the odds. All they have to do is not select the option et voila, an intact, difficult experience.

 

While I see the point that some game makers may consider that the difficulty is integral to their game, I would argue that if developers are seeking to operate as an entertainment providing business, the increased accessibility should trump the artistic concerns of providing an option to coast through the game. Developers likely also consider graphical fidelity and audio effects essential to their vision, but games do not arbitrarily force you to watch them at a certain resolution, or listen to them at a certain volume, or anything else.

 

In fact, many aftermarket tools are created so as to allow just this, be they save editors, mods, or other hacks that allow you an easy route through games like FTL, Mass Effect and others.

 

As has been pointed out numerous times before, games are the only medium that hold content back from you, if you can't stand love scenes in films, or hate Sansa chapters in Game of Thrones, you can skip them. Arguably you are not getting the best or fullest experience, but that is your choice. In games, if you have paid the entry fee and get stuck, then you are screwed and will never experience the content to the end. That is grossly unfair and should be corrected. For all the whining ninnies who cry at having ruined their experience because they set the game to easy and then got bored at the lack of challenge, turn the difficulty back off, or accept that you ruined the game for you. Just like if you read the end of a film on wikipedia and find the rest of the movie boring. It's not wikipedia's fault, or the film's fault. It's your fault and no one should have to protect you from you (in terms of entertainment).

 

/mic drop

[TheMightyEthan]

I worry that giving players an optional god-mode will be a temptation that many players won't have the willpower to avoid, and that it would often result in players using it in parts they would otherwise persevere through, and that they would then get bored with it for being too easy.  You say that you should just not do it, or turn the difficulty up or whatever but that's a cop-out, you can't just ignore human psychology when designing a product that you say you want to make accessible and fun for as many people as possible.  Part of game design is knowing not to design a game in a way that encourages styles of play that aren't fun for the majority of people (or at least the majority of your target audience).  You say "well you should just have more willpower" but by the same token I could say "you should just have more perseverance".

 

I actually really like the solution that Super Mario 3D Land/World used, where if you fail the same part of the game a certain number of times it gives you a super powerup that you can either use or not, and the powerup lets you basically coast through that part.  I think it's a good system because the requirement of failing a certain number of times prevents players from reaching for it too readily, and because it only lasts through the one level you've been failing it doesn't then detract from the rest of the game.

 

I also don't think "artistic integrity" can be so easily dismissed.  Sure major AAA games like the Ubi open world games are already designed by committee and have basically no artistic integrity, but I don't think you can use that as a blanket dismissal.

 

I'm not saying I don't think any games should have such a tourist mode, I used the story mode in ME3 for my follow-up playthroughs, but I also don't think you can make the blanket assertion that all games should.

 

*Edit - For those of you wondering, we'd already discussed this extensively on twitter, which is why we were both able to bang out walls of text on the subject so quickly.

[Thursday Next]

The problem with that is that it's not always a matter of perseverance. It sometimes comes down to a matter of ability. Some people will never be able to develop the necessary skill to beat (and let's just use it as a well known example) Bloodborne. No amount of practice is going to overcome the fact that their reactions are simply not quick enough to get through that game, it's not their fault. In that case, after their 10th (or more) attempt at a boss, why not give them the help they need e.g. a one shot invincibility potion that lasts till the boss is defeated, or the next lamp is activated, which disappears from the inventory once the boss is vanquished whether or not it is used?

 

As I said, other than multiplayer games, where it would obviously ruin the game for those not cheating, I can't think of a single game that having this option in (especially as implemented in Super Mario 3D Land/World) would diminish the experience for those that can, and it would absolutely improve it for those who cannot.

 

That said, this is all born out of a dislike for gatekeeping in general, whether it is on Guitar Hero songlists, or Destiny Raids, anything that stops me getting to content due to arbitrary skill or other barriers is hugely frustrating.

[TheMightyEthan]

I am inclined to agree with you that most games would benefit from the temporary god mode like SM3DL/W, but, and I'm saying this as someone who bounced off the Souls games hard, multiple times (because I kept hearing about how good they are), I still feel like if the devs want to make it that way that's their prerogative.

[Thursday Next]

Not disagreeing that the creator is free to make any decision they like. But I do think that this is one decision that is *always* a bad decision. SoulsBorne doesn't *need* to be difficult, it's a fascinating beautifully realised world that is worth seeing on its own merits. Much of the fanbase treat it as epeen cos it's a "difficult" game which, if anything, diminishes the whole.

[TheMightyEthan]

Having thought about it more, I can't think of a single game that I don't think would benefit from something like the SM3DL/W system, so I guess on that point I agree with you.  It's just the menu toggle, activate whenever you want god mode that I think presents enough temptation that it would detract from the game.

 

Hell, maybe you could have a thing at the beginning of the game, like selecting difficulty, where you could choose whether you want god mode whenever, a powerup that only appears at certain times, or god mode never, and then not let you change that setting without starting from the beginning again.  That way people who don't want it can start a game with it turned off and then not be tempted, people like me can pick the middle ground, and then suckos like you can choose the lame baby whenever I want it option. 

[MetalCaveman]

I like the way Ninja Gaiden handled it, to a certain degree, if you died multiple times in one area, you had the option of lowering the difficulty for the rest of the game, and that's cool, less cool was the fact that certain characters mocked you for that. I never used it, as the only time I died enough times to get that message was when trying to find out how charaters changed their attitude towards you for choosing that alternative, then I went back to playing normally.

 

Recently, I've been playing The Witch and the Hundred Knight, and that game allows you to choose the difficulty without affecting the story, and, it even allows you to weaken or strengthten enemies from a menu at your home base, regardless of difficulty, that's also a cool method.

 

I'm not sure I feel comfortable with the dismisal of artistic intent in a games difficulty, as that may apply to big games that take every decision mostly as a business one, but that doesn't mean that all creators follow the same rules/principles/stuff or that they should, would Meshuggah be way more popular if instead of whatever it is they play, they played pop? Sure, but then they wouldn't be Meshuggah. Not everyone is going to like everything, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's a ton of games, movies, books, and other stuff that I haven't been able to get into for various reasons, and that doesn't make me wish they were different, as other people do enjoy them for those reasons and that's cool with me.

 

That said, I do miss cheat codes, those were fun, playing StarCraft with a couple of immortal zerglings running around killing everything was fun, but it was fun as a cool little thing to do after playing the game normally, not as a way I would recommend you play through the game if it's your first time. Doom 3 was cool, if you were stuck on a chapter, use the god mode cheat, clear that chapter and then at the beginning of the next one, you were back to normal, meaning that you could get out of a particularly though area without having to worry about making the rest of the game trivial.

 

Another way of handling this, is what Dark Souls 2 and Battlefield Bad Company did, in DS2 all enemies had a finite amount of spawns, after which the area was completely clear until your NG+ playthrough so if you died after killing a couple of enemies, you still knew that eventually, there would be no more enemies there, allowing free pass through an area. Bad Company had something similar in that there were only a fixed amount of enemies in each area, and if you died, whatever enemies you had killed stayed dead, meaning you could go in, kill a couple of dudes, die and then respawn without having to worry about those dudes.

 

So yeah, interesting subject, I don't think all games need or should have something like this, but implementing it in an optional way, wouldn't be bad, unless it went directly against the creators wishes, then it wouldn't be something I would feel comfortable with, but I recognize that others don't share this view.

 

As an side, apologies for any typos and stuff like that, it is times like these when it becomes painfully obvious that English is not my mother tongue.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

If all your game has to offer is its difficulty, then I'd question whether or not your game is worth playing at all. It'd be nice to have the option to toggle something like a tourism mode, though I doubt I'd want it for an entire game.

[Thursday Next]

I agree with you MCM, and I obviously don't think people should be forced to implement any feature. The thing with Meshuggah is that you can skip songs, fast forward, whatever so you can "experience" the whole album. At no point during a Meshuggah album does a pop up appear asking you to repeat the lyrics that were just sung and if you fail locks the rest of the album out until you pass the check. If you skip songs or parts of them you aren't experiencing it as intended, and you may not like it, but you can get through it.

 

Tenshi pretty much nails my feelings on games that people think would be ruined by easy mode. If creatively, all you've got is moving the enemy health slider all the way to the right, and player health bar all the way to the left... then yeah...