With Hollow Knight: Silksong’s huge launch in full swing, community debate about its qualities and flaws has gone back and forth, with some players insisting their criticisms about things like the game's difficulty are valid and shouldn’t be instantly dismissed as "hate."
But The Cabin In The Woods is exactly what I’m talking about. A product with mass appeal that still caters to a small group of people. Much like Paul Verhovens old movies. You can watch them as dumb action or social criticism.
And movies have several accessibility features. Things like subtitles, which often translate cultural references or jokes that don’t directly translate to viewers from foreign countries. Descriptive audio tracks for visually impaired, directors commentary to learn things behind the scenes. Many services and devices also allow you to even out dynamics and enhance speech.
The problem with games that have a too high difficulty threshold isn’t that you’re missing out on some hidden subtext. It’s that you will never get to see 70% of the game, for absolutely no good reason.
Cuphead is such a good example of this, according to xbox achievement stats 31% never made it past the first part of the game, 72% never got to the end of the game.
Accessibility in film delivers the same work to more people. Accessibility in games can cross the line into creating a different work entirely, because the interaction itself is the art, not just the visuals or sound.
Saying “most players never saw the end of Cuphead” isn’t proof of failure; it’s proof of selectivity. Just like not everyone finishes Infinite Jest, but it doesn’t mean Wallace failed as a writer.
Cuphead was made to invoke arcade game feelings. The gameplay is brutal by design. That’s the point.
It’s like watching Terrifier and throwing up half way through, storming out of the cinema and saying “the acting was good but it was too violent, I wish I could watch a version of the movie without the gore”
But it doesn’t, accessibility in film does not deliver the same work to more people. Films are translated, dubbed and subbed to be approachable. Adding voice acting from talent that were never involved in the original film. It’s all about adapting the film to fit a wider audience.
The fact that gamers think games are somehow different and the “git gud” approach is just pointless elitism. How would Cuphead, Super Meatboy or Silk Song be a worse game if they had an easy game mode where you had more life and/or checkpoints? How does that setting change the experience of someone playing in normal, veteran or hardcore mode?
“How would the game be worse if it had an easy mode?”
Adding an easy mode changes the experience even for hardcore players because:
Design intent shifts. Once multiple difficulties exist, developers design around them. Balancing, encounter pacing, even story beats get shaped by the lowest common denominator.
Cultural meaning shifts. If a work is known as “brutal but fair,” its identity collapses when an easy bypass exists. (Dark Souls without consequence isn’t Dark Souls; Cuphead without punishment isn’t Cuphead.)
Easy mode doesn’t just let more people in; it makes it a different game. Saying “just don’t play easy” is like saying “why not release a PG-rated Terrifier with no gore? Horror fans can still watch the R version, so what’s the harm?”
Terrifier is available in several cut versions for specific regions / services. Which is incredibly common for movies in general and have been since the 70s. Which you do to reach a wider audience.
Both Silk Song and Cuphead already have additional difficulties. They’re already balancing difficulties, they’ve just decided to gate keep gamers who are not able to play difficult games.
If Gears Of War and Call Of Duty had hardcore and veteran as the only difficulty setting, it wouldn’t make them more interesting games or make a statement about the horrors of war and the fragility of man. It would just make less people enjoy them, for no good reason.
A high difficulty threshold is bad game design. And it’s exclusive to people who have physical disabilities or limitations, or other reasons to why they can’t play overly difficult games.
And I say that as someone who loves to beat games in the higher difficulty tiers. But as someone who also wants more people to be able to enjoy the games I enjoy and who’s happy game design has improved since the 80s.
“But as someone who also wants more people to be able to enjoy the games I enjoy”
Its really not about you is it? I get where you are coming from but in the end its people who make the games who decite what kind of experience they want to make. Sometimes their visio does not click with everyone and that is allright.
No, that’s exactly my point, it’s not about me. And of course game developers and publishers are free to do what they want. But their decisions can and should be criticized if you don’t agree with them.
Many years back a friend working with a group of disabled teens and young adults called me asking about Guitar Hero. He wanted to know if there was some practice or easy mode where the song didn’t abruptly stop if you didn’t play well enough. At that time, unfortunately there wasn’t.
I can’t remember if Guitar Hero ever got a no fail mode, but Rockband did, which opens the game up to a new crowd of gamers.
Subtitles/dubs are translations. They adapt language, not pacing, cinematography, editing, or structure. That’s fundamentally different from altering a game’s difficulty, which changes the mechanics, the thing the art is built from and differentiates it from other mediums.
A better analogy:
Subtitles are like adding glasses so more people can see the same painting.
Easy mode is like repainting sections of the canvas so it’s “clearer.” You can call both “accessibility,” but one preserves the work, the other mutates it.
Furthermore, language isn’t a good metric by which to compare analogies because games are also translated.
But The Cabin In The Woods is exactly what I’m talking about. A product with mass appeal that still caters to a small group of people. Much like Paul Verhovens old movies. You can watch them as dumb action or social criticism.
And movies have several accessibility features. Things like subtitles, which often translate cultural references or jokes that don’t directly translate to viewers from foreign countries. Descriptive audio tracks for visually impaired, directors commentary to learn things behind the scenes. Many services and devices also allow you to even out dynamics and enhance speech.
The problem with games that have a too high difficulty threshold isn’t that you’re missing out on some hidden subtext. It’s that you will never get to see 70% of the game, for absolutely no good reason.
Cuphead is such a good example of this, according to xbox achievement stats 31% never made it past the first part of the game, 72% never got to the end of the game.
Accessibility in film delivers the same work to more people. Accessibility in games can cross the line into creating a different work entirely, because the interaction itself is the art, not just the visuals or sound.
Saying “most players never saw the end of Cuphead” isn’t proof of failure; it’s proof of selectivity. Just like not everyone finishes Infinite Jest, but it doesn’t mean Wallace failed as a writer.
Cuphead was made to invoke arcade game feelings. The gameplay is brutal by design. That’s the point.
It’s like watching Terrifier and throwing up half way through, storming out of the cinema and saying “the acting was good but it was too violent, I wish I could watch a version of the movie without the gore”
But it doesn’t, accessibility in film does not deliver the same work to more people. Films are translated, dubbed and subbed to be approachable. Adding voice acting from talent that were never involved in the original film. It’s all about adapting the film to fit a wider audience.
The fact that gamers think games are somehow different and the “git gud” approach is just pointless elitism. How would Cuphead, Super Meatboy or Silk Song be a worse game if they had an easy game mode where you had more life and/or checkpoints? How does that setting change the experience of someone playing in normal, veteran or hardcore mode?
“How would the game be worse if it had an easy mode?”
Adding an easy mode changes the experience even for hardcore players because:
Design intent shifts. Once multiple difficulties exist, developers design around them. Balancing, encounter pacing, even story beats get shaped by the lowest common denominator.
Cultural meaning shifts. If a work is known as “brutal but fair,” its identity collapses when an easy bypass exists. (Dark Souls without consequence isn’t Dark Souls; Cuphead without punishment isn’t Cuphead.)
Easy mode doesn’t just let more people in; it makes it a different game. Saying “just don’t play easy” is like saying “why not release a PG-rated Terrifier with no gore? Horror fans can still watch the R version, so what’s the harm?”
The harm is you no longer made Terrifier.
Terrifier is available in several cut versions for specific regions / services. Which is incredibly common for movies in general and have been since the 70s. Which you do to reach a wider audience.
Both Silk Song and Cuphead already have additional difficulties. They’re already balancing difficulties, they’ve just decided to gate keep gamers who are not able to play difficult games.
If Gears Of War and Call Of Duty had hardcore and veteran as the only difficulty setting, it wouldn’t make them more interesting games or make a statement about the horrors of war and the fragility of man. It would just make less people enjoy them, for no good reason.
A high difficulty threshold is bad game design. And it’s exclusive to people who have physical disabilities or limitations, or other reasons to why they can’t play overly difficult games.
And I say that as someone who loves to beat games in the higher difficulty tiers. But as someone who also wants more people to be able to enjoy the games I enjoy and who’s happy game design has improved since the 80s.
“But as someone who also wants more people to be able to enjoy the games I enjoy”
Its really not about you is it? I get where you are coming from but in the end its people who make the games who decite what kind of experience they want to make. Sometimes their visio does not click with everyone and that is allright.
No, that’s exactly my point, it’s not about me. And of course game developers and publishers are free to do what they want. But their decisions can and should be criticized if you don’t agree with them.
Many years back a friend working with a group of disabled teens and young adults called me asking about Guitar Hero. He wanted to know if there was some practice or easy mode where the song didn’t abruptly stop if you didn’t play well enough. At that time, unfortunately there wasn’t.
I can’t remember if Guitar Hero ever got a no fail mode, but Rockband did, which opens the game up to a new crowd of gamers.
(Ill reply to both parts in separate replies)
Subtitles/dubs are translations. They adapt language, not pacing, cinematography, editing, or structure. That’s fundamentally different from altering a game’s difficulty, which changes the mechanics, the thing the art is built from and differentiates it from other mediums.
A better analogy:
Subtitles are like adding glasses so more people can see the same painting.
Easy mode is like repainting sections of the canvas so it’s “clearer.” You can call both “accessibility,” but one preserves the work, the other mutates it.
Furthermore, language isn’t a good metric by which to compare analogies because games are also translated.