Designed Difficulty

Anthony Rowland, Founder of Ant Workshop, visited the University of Bolton to talk about his new project, and what he learned from his previous indie game ‘Binaries’. Anthony mentioned that at his game booth for Binaries, there’s was one puzzle that an adult found rather difficult, but later a child finished it with ease. “Different people will find different things difficult” (Rowland, 2017). Everyone will have a different approach when it comes to problem-solving, this can be attended by offering various levels of difficulty to choose from i.e. easy, medium, hard, ect. But offering different difficulties to choose from is less relevant to the puzzle genre than others, as puzzles generally only have one or two ways to be complete, and altering said ways could potentially break the puzzle.

Giving the player a choice in what difficulty level they play at is called Artificial difficulty, this can simply be changing the strength of the enemies, lowering time limits, ect. And has been used in many AAA game titles for years as it’s easy to implement. Design difficulty is the core of the game and is unchangeable, this has been used throughout the puzzle genre, and sometimes alongside games with artificial difficulty. “conquering a difficult section of a game has the potential to give the player an immense feeling of satisfaction.” (). Some developers chose to use design difficulty over artificial difficulty, as it sets a bass line throughout the game, and all players will face the same challenges, however, these challenges will prove to be too much for some players, leaving them with a bitter taste for the game. “What isn't so fun is when games require incredible feats from their players, often demanding they do things they simply aren't capable of.” (). These design choices are chosen by the designers, and it’s up to them as to how they want the public to interpret their game.

Rowland, A. (2017) Ant Workshop presentation. Employability & Enterprise. Presented at: University of Bolton, Friday 24 March 2017.

Suddaby, P. (2013) Hard Mode: Good Difficulty Versus Bad Difficulty. Tutsplus. [Online] Available from: https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/hard-mode-good-difficulty-versus-bad-difficulty--gamedev-3596. [Accessed 26 February 2017].