By David Futrelle
I regret to inform you that the gamers are at it again. Or at least that subset of gamers who have somehow convinced themselves that finishing games on the hardest possible mode is an accomplishment as momentous as say, curing cancer or rescuing a litter of puppies from the 15th floor of a skyscraper in your underwear, or something.
What’s got the gamers’ manties in a bunch this time? Well, it tutns out that several games journalists have suggested that maybe the ninja vs. samurai game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, released last month, would be a bit more fun and accessible if it had an easy mode.
You’d think that someone had banned them from eating chicken tenders for life.
Gamebros have long preached about the evils of easy mode, but something about suggesting that a deliberately difficult game like Sekiro should have an option for those who don’t want to end up punching a hole through their monitor in frustration was too much for these sensitive — sorry, I mean, EXTREMELY TOUGH –gamer souls to bear
And then there was this masterpiece of angry gamer pomposity:
Some of the angry gamers (like, for example, Mr. Fetusberry himself) denied they were “gatekeeping” their hobby. But others did their best impression of a mean bouncer.
Others don’t mind letting the “weaklings” play, but only if they end up getting properly emasculated for choosing easy mode.
It’s worth remembering that these guys — and most of those yelling the loudest about this are indeed guys — are basing their self-assessments as “non-pussies” and “non-weaklings” om their prowess at a game that involves sitting at their computer hitting keys real fast.
Wow, guys, you’ve proved that you’re so obsessed with video games that you’re willing to grind through difficult game missions over and over again until you get good enough to beat it. Ten year olds can do this.
But these guys have convinced themselves that playing a ninja game has somehow made them the equivalent of an actual ninja.
What makes their complaints even more pathetic is that adding an easy mode to Sekiro wouldn’t stop them from playing the harder modes that these guys love so much. It would just make the game more accessible to a wider range of players.
How fragile must your masculinity be if you feel threatened by someone else enjoying a game that you like but with a little bit of the difficulty dialed back? WHO FUCKING CARES?
Some people play games in order to master them, to beat the final boss on the hardest difficulty setting; other people like to play to relax.
I’m in the second camp. And so, while I’ve been playing video games, off and on, for nearly three decades, I basically still kind of suck at them, despite devoting many hundreds of hours to some of my favorite games — generally the sort of open-world games that allow the maximum amount of just goofing off. I almost always play games on easy mode at first, at least until I get the hang of them. Sometimes I stick with easy mode because, well, I just don’t feel like dealing with a lot of frustration. I paid for the game, shouldn’t I get to enjoy it how I want to? Oh, and I was kind of addicted to the Candy Crush games for a little while.
Are you really not a real gamer, as “Gorilla Channel” inventor @pixelatedboat sarcastically suggested on Twitter, “unless you treat gaming as a horrible, joyless job you don’t get paid for.”
Seriously, if the mostly casual way I play video games, sitting by myself or with a friend in the privacy of my own apartment, offends you as a gamer, might I suggest that you maybe just shut the fuck up about it? What fucking difference does it make to you how I or any other “weakling” gamer plays a game.
I mean, Jesus Christ, dudes. Get a grip on yourselves.
H/T to Shitty Gamer Takes on Twitter, who highlighted that tweet about “weaklings” needing to go back to mobile games and got me heading down this whole rabbithole.
UPDATE: I added the tweet from Fetusberry; thanks to kupo in the comments!
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I’ve been hearing this bullshit for years now. It’s been close to twenty years since I heard some gamers whining about how “games are for pussies now” they aren’t as hard as the NES games they grew up with and that the PlayStation 2 and Xbox brought in hordes of “casual gamers.”
I watched some of the videos of the boss fights for that game.
I watched the protagonist die over and over and over again, AND the boss die over and over and over again, until both finally ran out of lives.
that’s not artful gamemaking, that’s just drawing fights out because the devs couldn’t think of creative ways to do boss fights.
there’s some great artwork in this game, some of it is downright gorgeous, but the fights…. look wayyyyyyyyyy too grindy for me to have any fun with.
an easy mode would be EXACTLY what I would be looking for. something to shorten the fights so you only have to kill a boss ONCE, not 3 fucking times. make the game less grindy so you can move through and enjoy the presentation and scenery more.
so yes, that actually WOULD make this particular game better. some games are about challenge, and others are about visuals. this game… is more about visuals IMO, and should reflect that.
David. You missed the best one.
https://twitter.com/Fetusberry/status/1114364382606053378?s=19
Also, safe space? Really? Like you’re not the ones trying to create a safe space where the gamers who can’t play the game for myriad reasons can’t hurt you by *checks notes* playing a singleplayer video game far, far away from you?
Those comments on Twitter just scream alpha-male toxic masculinity to me. The “pussy” thing, the “weakling” thing, this whole fantasizing about gamers going on easy mode being verbally abused by in-game characters, it’s all fucking gross and disgusting to me. Is there even a reasoning for this kind of thinking? To be quite honest with what I what I think, not really.
There’s also a bit of ableist sentiment in these farcical comments too, since us disabled and neurodivergent people(although, not all of us) have difficulties with so-called “hard modes” and also because some disabled and neurodivergent people have toys(including me) either to play with them when they feel like it and/or when they’re in a negative mood or simply just happen to own them and they have them(me being in the latter, although I did the former when I was younger too).
All it just shows is that the video game industry is toxic and that the gaming community is toxic, pathetic, classist, ableist, cliquey, elitist and exclusive as fuck. They have nothing better to do than to put down people who they think are inferior to them. This is what’s called the superiority complex, by the way(obviously people will already know this and don’t need my explanation, but I’m just clarifying here, regardless).
I have to say that in the wider context of game design, it’s perfectly legitimate to create a game that is very hard and is meant to be very hard. Indeed, some games should cater to people who enjoy challenges of that type and several game titles are known to be difficult games and have attracted a fan base thanks to that fact. Now, that doesn’t mean that playing “easy games” is bad or makes you a “bad person” or whatever. Games are supposed to be fun. One person’s fun is sometime another person’s drag. These people are no different then sport enthusiasts that rails and mock people practicing sports recreatively (or a sport that doesn’t require the specific set of skills they consider acceptable) instead of competitively and who don’t dedicate hours to the mastery of such sports.
Can’t imagine having so little validation in my life that I would need to publicly berate hypothetical gamers for choosing an easier play through. Yes Billie, you’re a big, tough, manly man. Sad man-babies are sad.
Ichthyic:
Well, that just shows. Difficulty has nothing to do with substance when it comes to video games. Gamers celebrating “difficult” games just furthers their elitist and ableist ideologies. Nothing less.
It’s funny because I wouldn’t use an easy difficulty in Sekiro (I don’t really feel like the default is unreasonably difficult) I equally don’t feel like it would impact me, as a person, if such a difficulty existed.
So, if I were designing Sekiro ‘easy’ mode, the actual answer is not to just give enemies less health and make them do less damage. That, for example, would not help me on the boss that I’m currently working out how to deal with, I’m just legit not dealing with some of his attacks correctly at all. So, one of the main mechanics in the game is deflecting attacks, which is done by pressing the block button just as they land. What would probably really help people who are just straight not getting it would be a mode where enemies hitting your block are automatically deflected, so you could just hold block instead of timing them (Metal Gear Rising has a very similar mode in its easiest difficulty). That’s probably the only way to make the game much easier in a way that would actually help people who are having trouble, because ‘getting’ deflecting attacks is like 90% of combat in the game.
EDIT: So reading some of the above comments, the whole thing with the protagonist dying and reviving is somewhat integral to the plot. The enemies, the whole deathblow mechanic is just the game’s way of splitting out fight phases mostly and should generally be considered cosmetic.
I wonder: How much overlap is there between macho gamers who make a big show of despising easy mode and manospherians who think any woman should be instantly available to them, without their making an effort to become the kind of man a woman would want to date?
@personalpest: The Venn diagram is a circle.
I’ve been thinking about this a bit more and I think the essential problem is people having trouble with the fact that other people have different tastes than them. They like thing x, and then see someone saying ‘I don’t like thing x’ and read that as ‘you’re an idiot for liking thing x’ (or take to heart people who are trolling in just such a way). I love a ton of really shitty video games and movies, and can be realistic about what isn’t good about them while also appreciating what I like about them.
There was a great article this week on Kotaku about why games, especially games like Sekiro, could use an easy mode. I would link, but I don’t know how to post URL’s here. These…persons.. mentioned in the article are probably comment on both that article and the one from Pcgamer mentioned earlier in the article
If you want to chat about games in a non-toxic environment, I would recommend visiting the GirlGamers forum on Reddit. It is a mostly positive place except when some people vent about the BS girl gamers face. It is also one of the few gaming spaces I have found that is completely welcoming to trans people.
I cheat like a bastard in every single player video game, because I’ll enjoy the game on my terms and you can’t stop me.
Newsflash: just because you like to play some games on easy mode doesn’t mean that you want everything in life to be easy.
That mode of thinking is way too…(whispers)…easy.
I’ve played through most of Sekiro, and I finally quit at the final boss, after 28 hours of a rollercoaster of “fun” and “horribly unfun”. An ‘easy mode’ of some sort would definitely make the game more accessible, but I don’t think it would truly fix some of the core issues that make the game unfun at times. Specifically, the game is very restrictive in how a player can approach it, it has a nasty habit of becoming tedious, and it doesn’t have a smooth learning/difficulty curve.
To expand, as briefly as I can on why I think those things… First, it’s missing the multiple builds that made Dark Souls more flexible for people with different playstyles (in Dark Souls they were, broadly, light/agile melee, heavy/strong melee, ranged magic). Second, it turns into a memorization/rhythm game at some points — which, if you don’t like that type of thing, becomes very tedious. And, third, too many of the late-game bosses have numerous attack animations and timings that you won’t have seen anywhere else in the whole game — so that tedium is made worse by having to learn dozens of new attack animations, all at once, right near the end.
At the end of the game, I was honestly feeling like the game design had gone from “What will be challenging to the players who have been learning the combat system?” to “What will be challenging to the developers who already intimately know the whole combat system?”. (And I didn’t even mention the stealth system yet, which often just means you hide and walk away for a drink of water while the AI forgets you exist after being spotted.)
So I think anyone who thinks that it couldn’t use some redesign, or at least an optional difficulty tweak or two, is probably way too interested in being “elite”, rather than primarily in having a fun time playing games. It’s just not one of FromSoftware’s best productions, at least not to me.
Today in Irony: Dudes who live their whole lives on the easy mode* protest the existence of such in computer games.
Silly incels, no wonder women don’t want you.
Honestly, though: If these bozos really cared about bettering themselves and becoming excellent, one great way to do it would be to stop obsessing so damn much about games, and keeping in mind that they are only games.
*(complete with moms who bring them chicken tendies and Mountain Dew on command, and uncomplainingly wash the Cheeto dust out of their wank-socks, to boot)
It amuses me that these guys’ idea of being REAL MEN and TOUGH GUYS is being good at playing video games.
Quoth the raven: What on earth did I just read?!
Video games are like novels. They allow you to fantasize you are someone else, a character in an exciting story. Identifying with the character in either case can be sheer escapism or a moving experience, but even if we deeply identify with, say, Emma or Hamlet, we shouldn’t think we *are* Emma or Hamlet.
Like Don Quixote, these guys seem to confuse fantasy with reality, thinking that *playing* a brave knight in a computer game or *reading* about a brave knight in a book means you *are* one. It follows they think the harder the game or book’s adventures are, the braver it makes the character for overcoming them, and therefore it makes *them* braver in real life.
Naturally they oppose “easy” levels. They also think that reading, say, poetry is for sissies, and that *real men* only read hard military SF – judging its quality not by how good the writing is, but by how many armadas of spaceships the hero commands and how many great battles he won.
Yeah, I remember the NES days, when games were hard and merciless… and we used Game Genies and called hotlines and bought guides and magazines to CHEAT LIKE HECK.
I still know the Age of Empires cheats that give you missile cars. Or the ultimate Turok 2 cheat.
These people are deranged and completely stuck in their toxic mindset. Seriously, the idea of more people having fun with something should make you happy, not cry.
I suspect they do not imagine some people may play just for the pleasure of the story, and thus can follow it better with an easy mode. Games like Divinty Sin 2 even specify that when they present their play modes.
But maybe those people are so much in a competition view of videogames that anything which is not “competitive” enough is viewed as “weak”.
But remember that, ultimately, it will always be those “weak” others that try to impose their view on videogames, not them ! (sarcasm, if not clear).
Which lead to the question : if the “weak” persons successfully allow their vision to be included in gaming, are they really “weak” ?
Hard mode obsessives are nearly as boring as min-maxxers.
While I wouldn’t want to take away anyones easy mode, I think there is a genuinely great feeling to be had when playing on hard. Paradoxically, hard modes makes things easier. You don’t have to optimize for x variables, but find the one of the very few possible ways under pressure. It’s not that much about achievement, but rather the good feeling when your whole mental capacity is focused and your hindbrain and cognition work in sync to clear obstacles in a timeframe approaching 1/100 of a second (6ms being the precision of a trained musician afaik). Easy mode with its hundreds of options and slow pacing often allows one to slow down so this state is not reached. Sure, martial arts sparring with a good partner often beats computer games for haptic feedback, hormones and sheer creativity, but for a quick relaxation, they are awesome.
This is what I love about games. Sure, a good story is nice to have and gorgeous graphics can help immersion, but give me a reason for thinking too fast to only stay in boring adult frontal lobe and I’ll probably like the game. I also believe that as much as we find gamebros yucky, this is one of the very few connections with their body they are going to have, so a bit of the ire is understandable.
A large swathe of gamers seem unable to disagree with people without making it a matter of personal superiority.
There’s a perfectly reasonable position you could take here without pulling out soy-based insults or otherwise belittling people. It goes like this: “Hyper-difficult games are a particular niche; as with all matters of personal taste, not everyone will enjoy them and that’s OK because not every game has to be designed to appeal to everyone. Providing an easy mode in such games would be pointless, because they are designed such that the primary source of enjoyment is mastering the game mechanics; asking to play them on easy mode is effectively refusing to engage with the central premise of the game’s design, just like if you asked for a version of Skyrim with all of the open world stuff turned off or something.”
But of course these gamers don’t want to have a reasonable conversation about the theory behind game design and how different games cater to different tastes and types of enjoyment – they want to yell about soyboys and declare their supremacy over people who play games not to their taste, like we’re stuck in an eternal schoolyard pissing contest about whether Sega or Nintendo is better.
Donovan The Gamer, you’re the one commenter who acknowledges that all human beings have what it takes to play computer games. Naturally, not all of us can play in Total Ass-Kicker mode, at least not yet.
That said, the species bias in your remark is offputting. It’s okay with me when my cat puts his paws on my keyboard and messes up my game. I really can’t fault him for lacking the opposable thumbs and big brain that the developers of the game have — and assume that all players have. I’d like to see them — or maybe you — leap up onto my desk gracefully, without knocking over so much as a dust mote. Actually, I wouldn’t. Three words: Can’t be done.