Difficulty Fetishism: A Nuanced Discussion of Ableism and Difficulty in Games

CONTENT WARNINGS: Photosensitivity and strobe warning, stylized video game violence (including g*n violence), ableism, disablism. Let me know if I missed anything, I can add it to the list. IMPORTANT NOTES: I have been notified that I deadnamed Coty Kraven (the source I was referencing unfortunately used their deadname), as well as Cecilia D'Anastasio being a controversial figure and possibly Dante Douglas. Please keep in mind I am referencing these people's work, but not necessarily supporting them. I was unaware of these things.

Some of my derision for certain accessibility features, namely the repeated hints and reminders for how to continue, stems more from feeling like the game is being pushy. I enjoy chilling in random areas of games and looking for secret nooks and crannies, and repeated reminders that I’m supposed to be moving on to my prescribed ‘content’ can take away the sense of agency that allow games to be fun.

I think it's quite the opposite, the reason souls-like games are so popular nowadays is because starting from the 7th Gen, challenge and difficulty in games dipped hard in most AAA games, I remember playing stuff like Assassin's Creed and GTA4 and being annoyed by the complete lack of challenge, it's like devs figured that as long as you fill your game to the brim with near pointless content you can bamboozle the player into believing what he's doing is meaningful and rewarding. As for the addition of an easy mode in a FromSoft game, it's completely missing the point of the genre imo, other than being a development nightmare because of the PvP aspect of the games.

I can't really sit down and put every thought into words so I may come back to edit this to encapsulate more discussion on the entire video but there was a jarring lack on context on the "Dean's 26 minutes of gameplay" that's really important. Cuphead is a difficult platforming shooter and so to have 26 minutes of gameplay where someone does poorly in a difficult game and that be sensationalized sounds downright malicious. The reality is, Dean is a games journalist, someone who could get early access to games from developers to judge them and recommend them to other players through whatever medium they have access to, videos, blogposts, etc. The gameplay wasn't watching someone have a tough time with a difficult game, it was watching someone not even understand how to hit maybe 2-4 buttons on a tutorial with the buttons to press on the screen for them at all times. I hate to loop it back to infantilization but it genuinely felt like the person who we believed to be playing the game had handed the controller to someone who had simply never held one in their life before. And then people realized, this man likely gets paid to tell us if games are too hard for general audiences.

Look, I understand the intent behind the video, and I appreciated it, but I think its boiling this whole issue down to the "it doesn't hurt anyone to have more options" too much without properly engaging with what the other side is saying. First of all, people just need to come to terms with a simple fact: not all games are for everyone*. Even without taking into account the point that some people will have a harder time with the game due to a physical or mental disability (which they will find a way to overcome if they *really want to play the game), some games just aren't for you, me, or that random guy on the street. You may simply not like the genre, style, etc. And that's fine. There's also the fact that a game is made a certain way, most likely because the creators behind it WANT it to be experienced that way. For example, I saw another comment here talking about how their brother had a hard time with Hollow Knight, because a feature like being able to see yourself on the map was locked behind a charm, and how that it shouldn't be like that. Thing is, Team Cherry made it so it worked that way because that's *the whole point of the game*. They want you to get lost, explore, and make a mental map of the areas you've been to. Having to equip a charm to know where you are is SUPPOSED to be a sort of "punishment". And they have all the right to make that decision, because that's how they want their game to be experienced. And like, some games just aren't made to have difficulty settings, because that simply doesn’t work. The Souls series is a major example of that because how the fuck would you balance any of their games around that? Besides being a really hard thing to do, it'd take way too much of their developement time, besides possibly being a breach of the vision they have of their game. At the end of the day, accessibility features are a good thing, but you can't expect every single game to have them, want to implement them, or even be able to implement them. Not all games are for everybody, and that's fine.

There's a gap that I've seen continually be misunderstood for years: this conflation between accessibility and difficulty, specifically mechanical difficulty, and how some folks frame the latter as this meaningless barrier to entry that game developers should be rid of by now, especially when FromSoftware gets brought up. Where I see FromSoftware succeeding in making their games mechanically difficult without becoming impossible is in how they design their games to have options that aid in mitigating the difficulty their games are so notorious for. In the case of the Souls games, you've got everything from the ability to spec into different builds that scale well with a huge variety of weapons, builds that let you fight from a distance, weapon effects that widen dodge windows or stagger enemies, and especially in Elden Ring where they opened things up to an insane degree: the ability to walk away from a boss you're stuck with and go basically anywhere else, gain more power, weapons, or abilities, and come back to a point where the boss you were stuck on can even be trivialized entirely. That's not even mentioning the insane amount of summoning options in that game, to a point where part of the fun is finding them all like Pokemon over just using them to help with fights. The options are nearly endless with the direction Elden Ring went. Hell, I'd say there's options in Sekiro as well, the game that stumped quite a fair bit of "Souls veterans": underappreciated aspects like the customizable prosthetic arm that can be equipped with a variery of tools like a loaded umbrella that widens the deflect window and protects from firearms, the mist raven feathers that allow you to teleport away from hits, even ones that should have landed, and the fireworks that very quickly stun most enemies, among many others. Then there's the buffs from candies and Spiritfalls, or even weird, esoteric combinations of effects and prosthetic tools, such as applying a weak poison effect to yourself so that the constant damage allows you to use the mist raven's teleportation at will even outside of combat. Add to all that the game's resurrection mechanic that can be upgraded to let you do it twice... and with the proper items to recharge your resurrection nodes, "Shadows Die Twice" can easily become "Shadows Die Four freakin' Times". There's always tools in FromSoftware's games that make their games easier, blended into the worlds they've created and the mechanics they've designed. And whatever BS may come from a tiny fraction of the community that says "you didn't actually beat it because you used summons" or "you didn't actually beat it because you used prosthetics" don't matter. All that matters in these games is if you see "Victory Achieved", "Demigod Felled", "Shinobi Execution" or "Immortality Severed" on screen. These games want their players to succeed and they provide the means to do so in-game rather than resorting to abstract menus. I'd say that's a far more creative way of doing it that also encourages players to explore as much as they can, which is a great way to get the most out of FromSoftware's great level design without having to rely too much on map markers, GPS, constant notifications, and so many other annoyances that a lot of big budget games have been doing for a long time now. When you're able to bake in what are essentially "difficulty options" into your mechanics, you don't need an easy mode. Where I think FromSoftware genuinely still falls short is in actual accessibility features that can't be resolved mechanically. Colorblind modes, customizable subtitles, better controller mapping, and the like. But when there's still so much of this discussion that's being muddied by all the talk of difficulty settings, I don't see them or other devs with similar intentions not having a tough time going in the right direction when so much of the discourse DOES end up just sounding like their own artistic vision for games is either seen as invalid, or worse, hateful and ableist. Both of which are categorically untrue.

Perhaps this is naive of me, but personally, I've never really felt like there's a huge part of the gaming community that shames people for being disabled in anyway, being blind, deaf, having illnesses affecting our nervous system or muscle control that may affect our capabilities in mechanical skill... it's not like most people are shaming players who have a harder time beating a boss because that boss has a sound que they can't benefit from and that makes certain attacks harder to deal with, and accesibility options to help people who deal with these problems day to day is a wonderful addition that is NEVER a bad thing. The issue is that... it's not really something all games can do. The world isn't perfect, sadly, most cities have not enough ramps to make life easier for someone in a wheelchair, and most games are not programmed with options that'd make gaming a more fulfilling and satisfactory experience for those who face limitation when it comes to gaming. Games like TLOU2 come as examples of great accesibility in games to make sure everyone is included, but those options have a cost. PROPER accesibility require a level of work and knowledge that not everyone is willing or ABLE to program into their games, difficulty options or lack thereof are a flawed concession devs have to make, making a good game is hard enough, but balancing a game properly to make sure most players have the intended experience and THEN also to take into account disabled players by adding better options to makes sure they can enjoy themselves to the fullest too seems like a biblical task for many dev teams, executives only have money in mind, but accesibility options are a sink of time and effort with not much payoff, the way society is arranged, inclusivity isn't even near the priority list in most facets of our lives, despite the fact that we have more than enough resources for it.

The thing about souls games and accessbility is pretty straightforward. While elitism is bad and needs to go, not everything needs to be for everyone. I suck at Touhou, even on the easiest mode, I can't beat a single game. But asking for an easier mode would be pointless, because at that point I might as well not play a bullethell. In other media, we look a lot at artist vision. We wouldn't like an artist making their horror movie less scary because some people who can't handle scary movies can't get into it. But we have no problem asking a video game creator to essentially make multiple versions of the same game so other people can enjoy it? Again, if we look at this from a narrative perspective, there are lots of stories out their with themes that make me personally uncomfortable. I'm not about to ask the author to take it out or make a different version for me. While the toxicity is bad, I think your argument that narriative and emotional difficulty is good but technical difficulty is bad is narrowminded. You are essentially saying that only one type of difficulty and potential inaccessibility is valid. Only one area where the authors intentions matter.

The "git gud" people live for Arcade era game design, and I respect them for that. As for the rest of this: "If you make a game for everyone, you will satisfy no one." Design for your intended audience, even if it is only yourself, the broader your design base the worse the end product will be if you aren't building emergent systems. I love immersive sims, but man they're unpopular games to play and make, basically being proprietary to the [Looking Glass] crew and their successors.

I do love the little reward other than progression in these games. I wish for more games that reward you with something long-term, instead of instant gratification. I definitely see the value for other ways to deliver story and gameplay. I don't think all games should fill that niche because it is inaccessible in some key ways that cant be changed without removing its identity. At the same time I don't think these games shouldn't exist in their current state either. I want games like these to exist, an unforgiving world, that CAN be conquered through hardship and/or collaboration. As a designer there is a big issue with difficulty settings: how do you know what difficulty setting is going to be best for you? That's why I enjoy coop so much in souls games, you can have friends aid you where you can't get through, a wonderful metaphor for life. We need more of these ways to let people decide and pick where and when they need help, and actually let them ASK for help, instead of adjusting an entire game before they even know if they need help. What do all these games need however? Accessibility, more accessibility options, easier way to handle and control the game, etc. There are many many steps we can take to increase accessibility without changing the "identity" of a game that needs to be worked through. And we need less shitty elitist gamers. There are people who spend 8 hours on defeating a boss, and people mock it?? Someone who spends that much time and effort into beating a difficult challenge is the type of person we should celebrate! it is no virtue to not make mistakes, to never fail, to never struggle. Virtue lies in doing what you want to do, DESPITE of difficulty. no one should be mocked for finding shortcuts, for seeking help, or for simply bashing their head against a wall until they succeed. these are not only valid strategies, those are intended and virtuous strategies

10:32 "we should have the option of playing games in all genres" As a fellow disabled gamer, I have to vehemently disagree here. I have a coordination disorder and an executive function disorder. Because of that, there are a lot of genres I simply cannot play, and that's perfectly OK. The one that hurts the most fighting games, that genre is just built around an ability I do not have. The complex sequences of button presses are simply too hard for me to execute. I'll admit, it makes me pretty sad that this genre my friends all love is completely inaccessible to me, but if you were to change it make it accessible to me then it wouldn't be the same genre anymore. But that's the exact reason I love the souls series. I know that when I play Sekiro and my friends play Sekiro, we're enjoying a shared experience. And unlike playing a multiplayer game where I can fall behind, I can take the game at my own pace and still know that I'm enjoying the same challenge my friends did. It might take me months and months to accomplish what they blew through in a couple days, but can still do it. And it's THAT part that people worry about tarnishing with accessibility features. If you introduce difficulty options, you'd lose that monolithic shared experience. I think the expectation that all games should be accessible to all people regardless of disabilities is kinda... "disablist"? Like it implies that the unique experiences of able-bodied people are in some way less valuable than the unique experiences of disabled people. That if a game is about an ability you don't have then it can't possibly be valuable to the people who do. And that just seems kinda gross to me. I can't coordinate my fingers to pull off cool combos, but my friends certainly can and they seem to get a lot of joy out of it. I don't think it's fair to say they shouldn't have art that appeals to them specifically just because you might end up excluding me. Honestly this whole video seems kinda gross to me. Have you ever had a piece of art that felt like it was made just for you? Dark Souls players have found a series that speaks to them with its difficulty and its exclusivity, and I think it's kinda spiteful that you don't want to just let them have that. I think there needs to be space for some games to be inclusive and for some games to the exclusive. The way you talk about Dark Souls players being protective of the games they love just comes off as really mean-spirited.

tbh there are a lot of reasons for the player to choose easy difficulties, it doesn't always have to be a disability trait. Personally, I play almost every big rpg on the easiest levels possible - because I am interested in the story, and not the grind. The worst thing a game can do for it's story is to throw in mandatory optional quest grind, which destroys the pacing completely and you feel no longer invested in the story. Easy difficulty settings allow you to charge through the main story, without engaging in any grind. You could also be a more relaxed player who enjoys wandering around the gaming worlds, or even a game-photographer, so you need the enemies to ignore you as much as possible to play like that. On top of that, yes, easier difficulties and various accessibility options help to bring in new players into gaming. Interestingly enough, physical controls are usually the biggest obstacle for a non-gamers, and the easy difficulty gives more freeway to get used to the controls.

I appreciate the vid overall but I think you're too dismissive of the qualitative aspect of difficulty which weakens your analysis (for example the bit about Fallen Order at 20-ish min). Ultimately it's about emotions - stress, fear, tension, frustration, discouragement, relief, satisfaction, the feeling of multitasking, etc. They are all powerful emotions which are created by or amplified by high amounts of difficulty. Hell, even "quantitatively" many games do change on higher difficulties. Entire sections of your moveset can become more situational if not outright unviable, strategies become impossible to execute, consistency drops, attacks can become borderline unreactable in some instances. Trying to downplay it just leaves a big hole in your argument. The qualitative stuff, the feelings difficulty creates, are things developers can and should use to create interesting experiences for players. It gets more complicated because of the highly mixed multimedia nature of games nowadays (almost all games are "content delivery machines" now to varying extents) and the fact that people with specific disabilities will, for example, feel more challenged by control schemes that are second nature to able bodied people. Thus getting the intended emotional intensity of hard mode on normal mode. ...Though this is even further complicated by the fact that people don't really know what they want and part of the artist's job is to be bold and force people to engage with something they wouldn't engage with normally, which customization options undermine by letting players opt in and out of things freely instead of being forced to engage. AND THIS is complicated by the fact that most games (esp mainstream ones) are pandering bloated products that don't focus on delivering any particular experience, instead wanting to appeal to everybody. Meaning they have no real argument against that kind of opt-in/opt-out approach. It's a complicated discussion.

Whether a game should include varied difficulty modes should be up to the developers. If a game doesn't have varied difficulties, it's probably because the developers didn't want there to be. If a certain kind of game isn't for a certain kind of player, that's just it. It's not made for that kind of player, and it doesn't have to be. Games are art and developers are artists who should be able to make the games they want to make without having to compromise their vision because some players who the game wasn't even made for in the first place feel entitled to have an easy time. Not all games need to have varied difficulties, but that doesn't mean that none of them should. Not every game should be made to cater to every player.

Something I don't think you covered (though it's possible I missed it) is games which do have difficulty levels, but don't allow players to change it after they start (I'm looking at you, WB games), or restrict when you can change it (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft), effectively leaving people potentially stranded in a section of the game they simply can't seem to beat. Some people may find that stimulating; I find it frustrating and infuriating (and has caused me to refuse to continue playing, and uninstall a game that I was previously excited to play).

I really enjoyed this video. I'm very much an active player in challenge gaming sphere (which is slightly different in nature from what you're discussing) and am also disabled. The intersection I think also brings out an important question, which is how players end up defining what they consider difficult. It brought to mind a few things. I think the culture surrounding Let's Plays as sort of "I need to experience all the content and chew through the game as quickly as possible" contributes to the sort of grind culture we see in the games. I think it changes how you play a game when you're performing for an audience (especially when you're playing an edited video versus a livestream) also complicates the dynamics of how players build a relationship with the game. There are a lot of games where "difficulty" and skill is built through repetition or trial and error, just memorizing all the problem areas or learning some obscure, unintentional technique or property in looking up other player's experiences. For instance, one of the things I've never liked about Persona 3 is that it allows and expects you to use ailments against the monsters, especially in Tartarus Boss fights, but there's no indication of which ones will work other than just experimenting with all of them, which in turn also means having the proper skills on your personas which requires precious in-game resources you'd be wasting. There's a secret boss in the game generally considered the "hardest" boss, but what it actually is is a bunch of hidden rules not told to you in-game about what you can and can't equip or bring. If you break any of the rules you're just insta-killed (and in the original you had to go through a gauntlet of monsters to get to the boss int he first place). The boss fight basically requires you to bring a very exact set of personas and equip very specific moves and attack in a very set order. To me it communicates an idea that we can think less in terms of challenge and more in terms of how we define what are usable approaches to building a relationship with the game. As a challenge gamer, I find games that essentially force you to interact with them in very specific ways and no other accessible ways make themselves less open to emergent styles of gameplay. Challenge games aren't about seeking out "hard" games but finding ways to create emergent styles of gameplay that change how you approach whatever strategy you'd otherwise rely on. The kind of irony to it is that less difficult games overall lend themselves to way more challenge options or games that open up for different accessibility options also create a lot more opportunities for ways for you to customize your challenge modes. Playing a game for "difficulty" to me is "can you complete this level without the sword/boost ability" and see how it changes the way you approach it. A lot of games seem to revel in making the game tedious and full of unnecessary administrative steps and the exclusivity that comes with it. I could play Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker without a sail (something I've seen actually suggested as a "hard" mode multiple times) and it wouldn't make the game stimulating or interesting in any way to me. And to your point, difficulty levels aren't even the only means of accessibility, but I think that belief is so entrenched in the general discussion that one bleeds into the other. Difficulty is one part of accessibility of course, but not the only one. Metroid Prime Remastered comes to mind in how the discussions surrounding it bothered me. You get a thermal visor in the game with a sizable segment during the game where you have to navigate a facility during a Blackout and rely on heat vision to see in the dark. However, the remaster turns up the blur effect far more from the original (which itself already created photosensitivity problems) to the point where the game creates significant motion sickness problems. It's something a lot of players have commented on, but a lot of the responses to that discussion are basically "I didn't have any problems. Just don't use it. It's not that bad, get over it" none of which is helpful. It's also not a segment that's designed for you to go without the visor as the game is counting on you using it. It's a good case study to look at, but of course I have to warn that it can be very sickening to look at even for reference material given the motion sickness problems. The top comment is almost always "you don't need it for that long" and not the actual problem that it's causing motion sickness for a significant number of players. The design philosophy of a lot of Pokemon fan games also come to mind because a lot of them are designed to cater to that higher difficulty crowd in a way that just makes them very tedious. You raised a lot of very great points and always appreciate what you have to say.

I don't think any sane person is truly advocating for exclusion of Accessibility (even if they think so). The misunderstanding comes from not knowing "Accessibility =/= Difficulty" There is a lot of retaliation from those more limited than others, some justified, over this. Deaf, Color blind, or Blind options are not what is being attacked. Difficulty changing is something that some games are designed for, & others not. To implement this is a heavy task that has diminishing rewards compared to simply balancing the game correctly from the beginning. If people of lesser capability truly wish to play certain games. There are always easier ways to play the game. A button that makes everything easier makes it so you might as well be playing another game entirely

Amazing vid!! I’ve been saying this for years!!! I need more accessibility features in games for tweaking the experience just right. It is also super true that many gamers are extremely ableist; whether or not they understand or want to admit. ❤❤ Also!! The treasure chests in Persona 5 make a sparkly noise!

I think a lot of gamers think to make games with easier options or accessibility inherently takes something away from the experience. And in some ways I get that, part of many games is learning mechanics and building skill, and that feeling of triumph can sometimes be lost. And yes, some designers, while trying to be more accessible, make the game pushy or condescending in a way even some disabled players find annoying. But that isn’t inherent. Adding difficulty to a Souls game isn’t invalidating your ability to play it on harder difficulties. You don’t have to play the easy mode. While you might think the experience is “incomplete” others are happy to be able to experience it at all. As much as the easier mode doesn’t have the difficulty that makes you enjoy the game, for the people that need that option the easy mode probably still has difficulties, it’s just that they’re surmountable now. It isn’t changing the core experience of the game, it’s making more people able to experience that core, and decide just like every other person if the game is for them. People talk about how these features are “intrusive” or how games “don’t have to cater to everyone” but neither of those are what we’re asking for. The pop ups and tutorials and difficulty selections can be made upfront, and then you don’t have to see them again if you don’t want to, it’s that simple. You pick a language and adjust the audio levels and switch on tutorials and captions and easy difficulty. The games can still have aesthetic, gameplay, genre, writing, etc. choices that aren’t for everyone. Games not being for everyone in the sense of “artistic vision shouldn’t be compromised for mass market appeal and different people can like different games” is not equivalent to “some people who are interested in the game and are otherwise in the target market should be unable to play it because of circumstances outside of their control” in any way. Sure, it sadly isn’t feasible for every game to be perfectly accessible, but they should still be expected to try. It’s like saying that disabled sports leagues shouldn’t exist because sports were intended to be played in a certain way that some disabled people can’t do, so to create leagues with small changes to accommodate that is somehow tainting the experience of playing those sports. Or saying that captions shouldn’t be expected because the intended experience was of voice acting, and games shouldn’t have to cater to people outside of the intended audience of neurotypical hearing people. Sure, not everyone is into sports and not everyone wants to listen to voice acting, and the mediums shouldn’t be changed so that those people will start liking it, they dislike the medium and doing so would lose the beauty in other aspects. But people who already want to experience these things shouldn’t be barred for no reason, the core of it doesn’t have to change for them, just the accessibility.

I was really excited for a “nuanced” discussion. You started out with great points and even had “we’ll come back to these counter arguments”. However, no discussion was had. You let your emotions take over in a rant about your desire to feel included and your disdain for the antithesis. The irony of saying accessibility is being reduced and belittled while simultaneously reducing the antithesis and belittling its supporters.