There are few things worse in the world of gaming than an entitled gamer. “On-disc DLC” you say? Nope. “Madden”? No, and quit shaming sports gamers. “Casual gaming”? Bzzt. The entitled gamer beats all of these. Know why? Because, thanks to the internet boosting everyone’s confidence to Shirtless Gerard Butler levels, developers have no choice but to make sure that anyone with a blog and an internet connection is able to not only play their game but also complete it with nothing more than the exact skills they walked into the game with. The consequence of not doing so? Negative reviews across the blogosphere saying things like “too difficult”, “unplayable”, “unrealistic expectations” and, my personal rage-inducing favorite, “bad design”.
Bad design? Really? The very definition of a game is a contest involving skill or, at the very least, chance and endurance. In that case, creating a game where the only prerequisite is to show up is, using the definition of the word “game”, bad design. Worse, it’s a failure at doing what you set out to do in the first place. If I ask you to teach me how to draw a picture of a dog and you decide that I’d much rather just have a picture of a dog that you drew, it doesn’t matter how great that picture is. It doesn’t matter if I even enjoy the picture. At all. You failed at doing the one thing expected of you. Yet, in this day and age, many people care nothing for the voyage as long as they see a little pop-up that says “Achievement Unlocked: Reached Destination”. Worse yet, they feel entitled to it. Which, to me, makes no sense. A gamer should never feel entitled to success. Heck, a human being in any sort of endeavor should never feel entitled to success. Success needs to be earned or else what’s the point of even having any skill or the capacity to learn a skill to begin with? Where would any profession be if everyone could just, well, do it without learning or trying?
So that was a somewhat obvious, if not unnecessary and long-winded, explanation of why a game that’s too easy is much more deserving of the “bad design” description than a game that’s too difficult. But that’s just going by the straight definition of what a game is, and in truth that’s not the whole story. No, a game that doesn’t properly challenge is bad design because it has nowhere to go. Let’s say that you have a competitive game of some sort that plays a bit like soccer, only instead of needing to get the ball beyond a keeper and into a netted goal your objective is instead to get the ball just anywhere beyond the end boundary, regardless of height. Suddenly, about half a dozen skills necessary for any competent soccer team are thrown out the window, final scores reach numbers rivaling college basketball results, and games devolve into who gets the ball first as mounting any sort of defense is all but impossible for even the most skilled, if not completely impossible. The removal of all of these barriers, while making the game of soccer accessible for anyone that can kick a ball really high and really far, turns the game into something not even worth playing. And yet somehow this is the end of the spectrum developers feel they have to move toward in order to keep the entitled gamer’s favor, even if it means that the longevity of the game has to suffer, because the entitled gamer will tell the rest of the world not to buy the game otherwise. Now, in truth, it’d be pretty sad if a developer just made a game so difficult that no one could play it in the same way it’d be unfair if basketball hoops were only one centimeter wider than the basketball itself, but even then the gamer has something to work toward instead of when a game is so simple there isn’t a challenge.
So why, you ask, is the entitled gamer so against the idea of a difficult game? Because it goes against the idea that they are “good” at what they do. It makes them feel that the hundreds of games they’ve played haven’t prepared them for the one that’s in front of them. And that just doesn’t make sense to them. “Why shouldn’t I be able to just drive clean through this game,” they think. “I’ve played so many before this, I should have no problem.” The answer their mind goes to is “Well, this game must be too difficult for every other gamer as well, especially since I’m really good at what I do, so that means it’s designed poorly.” And, of course, this is completely ridiculous. Should I feel like any other language is “too difficult” because I can speak English? Or any other sport “too difficult” because I’m alright at tennis and can run fast? Of course not, that makes no sense. Yet any game that ends up insulting a gamer’s (or, heaven forbid, an established reviewer’s) long-established dominance over their favorite past-time by, oh, requiring them to learn a new technique or even replay an area because they couldn’t beat it the first time ends up described as “unfair” or “awkward”. A genre that confuses or frustrates them gets touted as “outdated” or “draconian”. And this makes developers have to cater because the entitled gamers have keyboards and blogs.
Even worse is the entitled reviewer, as not only does the difficult or unfamiliar game destroy their entire self worth but it also keeps them from flying through to other games and quickly reviewing those. “This game is so broken and unfair it’s keeping me from good games,” they think, and the rage is apparent in their reviews, their blog posts, their tweets. The sheer notion that they should have to spend more time on a game than they want to just flies in the face of their professional pride. After all, they are experts in the field of video gaming, shouldn’t they know best? Let me give you a quick piece of advice if you’re reading this, online reviewer: one game is not another. Until you only review one genre exclusively, you will find something that fairly challenges you in ways you may not be familiar with. And even if you do review only one genre, chances are you’ll find a challenge that requires effort. So, when you do, please do the right thing and step outside your lifelong comfort zone, because developers are tired of hearing you tell them that they can’t do their job when the reality of it is the other way around.
