Week of Blogging - Day 2

Getting The Least Out Of It

A former roommate of mine had a policy whereby he would only play a video game once and on the hardest difficulty. When I asked him why he did this, he replied that it was because that was how he got the most out of a video game. I've known a few other people with similar positions regarding difficulty in video games, but for me playing on max difficulty is normally a recipe for getting the least out of a video game. Generally speaking, I tend to play video games more for enjoyment than for challenge. It's not that I want games to be easy, but I've never seen eye-to-eye with people who love brutally difficult games. I think much of the reason I "get the least out of it" when I play on max difficulty is tied to my personality. When I complete something difficult, I don't get any sense of accomplishment or pride in what I've done. Rather, I get a strong inclination to not do that task a second time. I also tend to equate difficulty with inefficiency, so I (oftentimes wrongly) view hard tasks with disdain.

Another reason I don't like max difficulty is that games tends to make things hard for the wrong reasons. For example, when you play a shooter, upping the difficulty normally does not mean that your opponents are smarter, but that they now have ridiculously good aim and always know exactly where you are. You're left feeling cheated; it's not so much that you were outplayed, but that the odds were stacked against you in absurd ways. Oftentimes the best solution is to try to be equally cheap and exploit some glitch or inherent flaw in the game. This might leave you feeling smart for finding and using such a tactic, but you're left with the fact that you didn't actually beat the game; you merely broke it.

I realize difficulty in gaming is a difficult thing to write on (no pun intended) because of the inherent subjectiveness of the topic. I couldn't possibly go into all the nuances with such a short post, but maybe I'll try to give it a more thorough treatment at some point in the future.