Have games gotten easier or have we gotten better?

[Terramax]

Looking back at old somewhat simple console games now I understand perfectly that the difficulty bar on arcades was so you paid more and on consoles it was most of the time to hide the game's rather short length.

This. Or if a game was made specifically for home consoles, it was often more about higher scores than actually about completing the game.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Games have definitely gotten easier in general, but they've also gotten easier from refined game design. There are plenty of NES games and SNES games that are not humanly beatable. Either there is a part that's so difficult it's literally impossible to pass, or death causes you to restart the game making it virtually impossible to get all the way through, or the game is an arcade game designed to kill you frequently so you eat through quarters. In making games less unfair, a lot of the challenge is lost.

 

[Doom972]

Games have gotten much easier. I know this because when I return to difficult old games which I've mastered in the past, I find myself struggling with them again. I think that most modern games are so easy that some of my gaming skills suffer for it.

 

[Not Matt]

we're better, the games are the same. only differences is that we are now clever enough to figure out something we couldn't before.
i remember picking up a game i hadn't played in ages a few days ago, the memories of vain in my forehead growing thicker and thicker from frustration the last time i played. when i got to the part i hadn't been able to beat, all i did was think and TA~DA. done in 3 minutes, after an hour and a half the entire game was over.

i think we are just getting better at gaming, be understand more of what we can do with a game to beat it.

 

[MazdaXR]

I think games are easier, but not in the traditional sense, I think there is a lot less working against you in games now, I mean most games now have decent camera, a well set out control system, generally less glitchy and if they are still glitchy it gets patched most of the time. Where as when we were younger the games didnt have the support that they have nowadays, even the best games suffered from camera issue when it moved to 3D, and the lack of saving in the early 2d era made those games really hard.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I think games are easier, but not in the traditional sense, I think there is a lot less working against you in games now, I mean most games now have decent camera, a well set out control system, generally less glitchy and if they are still glitchy it gets patched most of the time. Where as when we were younger the games didnt have the support that they have nowadays, even the best games suffered from camera issue when it moved to 3D, and the lack of saving in the early 2d era made those games really hard.

This.

One of the most unnoticed improvements of the current generation is general control. You're no longer fighting the controls or the camera, and no longer holding down 5 buttons to shoot a guy from cover (I'm looking at you, MGS). Controls have become very natural and responsive, so all that time we use to spend on wrestling with our controller is subtracted.

 

[bug_of_war]

Both.

Obviously we've all gotten better at games the more we play them.

Also, we've become more familiar with the conventions of various genres. For example, when you boot up a generic fantasy RPG, even one you've never played before, you already know that you should probably give your fighters point in strength, endurance and dexterity, your rogues get dexterity and intelligence, your mages get intelligence and something magic related and.

As for the games, yeah, they've gotten easier. Early games were designed for arcades. They were crushingly hard and unforgiving because more deaths meant more coins disappearing down the slot. When they made the jump to home consoles, it took developers a while to realise that they didn't need to do that anymore and that not doing so allowed them to sell games to people who hadn't been playing them obsessively since age 4.

I agree with this person. Also, just to add another few points:

Games have been around long enough for a majority of developers to understand how to make a game with good controls, graphics, stories, hints, objectives etc. Older gamers/experienced gamers are able to dominate most games in a few days now because the games mechanics are basically the same in every game now. As someone who has played for a long time you knoe that crouching makes you harder to see, head shots do more damage then chest shots/leg and arm shots, hold the joy stick half way forward to walk, a/x/space to jump, x/square/R to reload. Basically, both the game industry and the player have figured out the most comfortable layout for controls and what they do, and now that both the player and the dev know the 'basics' it makes learning most games much more easy than older generation games.

The older we get, the better our problem solving skills get, so when it comes to a level that is difficult someone whom is 15 and above are more likley to try a different strategy to get passed a certain problem then a 9 year old. For example, I played Predator Concrete Jungle when it first came out (So I was 10 or something) and that game is notorius for it's difficulty, poor controls, and lacks proper level description. I didn't finish the game until 2010 because I kept trying the same tactics over and over, but once I sat down and really tried to think about what I was doing wrong and how to get past the difficult sections I started blazing through the levels.

And finally, games are now more mainstream, thus you can't make tripple A titles that have 1 hit deaths, or major grinding implemented into games meant to appeal to everyone.

 

[krazykidd]

Games have gotten easier .

Autosaves
Checkpoints
No lives
No continue system
No game over ( serious this i find bullshit )
Mini maps with points
Less puzzles ( tomb raider anyone)
One button that does EVERYTHING ( run / cover / action a la Gears of war )

Etc..

Not to say it's a bad thing per se but everything is designed to let us win with minimal effort .

 

[Joccaren]

Both.
In 6 hours I've managed to reach the same point in Banjo Kazooie as I was at in 12 months when I was 7. I have become a better gamer.
At the same time, even replaying the game now its harder than 90% of games today, and in a legitimate sense of difficulty; its not like most game's "MASTER HARDCORE UP YOURS" difficulties where all the challenge just comes from the fact that your enemies are perfectly accurate or have massive HP/Damage where it rarely makes the game harder, merely more drawn out, Banjo Kazooie requires me to use a range of skills to get through the game, and that is where the difficulty comes from. The enemies themselves are easy, the platforming isn't too hard, and the puzzles are generally fairly obvious. Its how you've got to put them all together that makes the game a challenge. I've not only got to figure out how to do something, I've got to figure it out whilst tightrope walking above a pit of lava with enemies coming at me that I can't kill without using an ultimate move of which I have 20 seconds of use for at max capacity.

Things like massively linear levels don't help either. The fact that in most games these days there is 1 path that you follow, split up by cutscenes every now and then, is annoying, and really does make the game easier by a ton. In Banjo Kazooie the hub world of Gruntilda's Lair is linear, and the order in which you do each level is, but within the level you're free roam. There's no set path to take, and you've got to figure out what to do yourself.

Personally I prefer the older style of game. Its why I'm getting back to playing all my old Rareware classics. Much more entertaining than todays stuff IMO.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Games as a whole are definitely getting easier, as can be seen be in all the posts above this one.

Also, I routinely smash through modern RTS's and FPS's on their highest difficulty. Recently I retried Age of Empires 2 and Doom 2 and kept getting my ass handed to me on medium difficulty.

 

[Kikyoo]

I've got to say both as well. It's all well and good to say if you crank up the difficulty on certain modern games they're as hard if not harder than old games, but no, I disagree. Games have changed the focus of the challenge a lot, yes, and in some brief instances come close to the difficulty of the olden days. But Games used to be harder. It's true we as gamers have become a lot better at them, but trust me when I say games used to be a lot harder. As in tricks glitches and exploits were required to beat some games, and others were just thought to be impossible. I think the best comparison I've had has been Punchout.

One of my Nephews came over, and i fired up punchout for him. I ended up going through 3. The SNES one, the NES one, and the one for the Wii. On the Wii he got up to King Hippo pretty easily. SNES one he got maybe 2 fights down, and the NES one he struggled with Glass Joe.

It's easy to forget how hard these games were when we were little, and some of the extra modes and mechanics certainly makes the new punchout more interesting, but for whatever reason, controls timing whatever, The original seems harder.

Not all of our newer games have these comparisons to make, and a few series managed to continue to be incredibly difficult for a long time. But to all those Call of Duty fans, I ask, how many of them have beaten, from start, to finish, the likes of Wallenstein 3D, or Doom, or Duke Nukem. I played those games but never beat them.

That's not to say the current generation is inferior. Far from it. The crushing difficulty of games of the past turned a lot of people off to gaming. I think we're in a much better place now. We've got plenty of easier games, as well as some harder ones. We've got a good mix, and more of the games these days are a lot more fun. From shooting, to fighting, to action adventure games have improved a lot.

 

[Arcane Azmadi]

Games have gotten way, way, WAY easier.

Put the average CoD brat in front of the original Doom and watch him die while crying like a *****.

 

[Tanakh]

We are better and games are more specialized. The hardest ones are way harder than old 8 bit ones and the normal/easy ones way easier.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

They've gotten easier.
I think this is mostly because difficulty doesn't make money anymore, because you don't have to put money in a slot to get more lives.

 

[an annoyed writer]

I think it might be a bit of both, actually. The devs have learned a lot in their time making games and have learned how to make objectives and the like stand out a bit more compared to back then. See: Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time remake vs. Original, specifically the Water Temple. They added some simple visual cues in the remake, making the temple much, much easier. We've also improved as gamers, with our senses attuned very specifically to various cues and the like.

 

[josemlopes]

Last night I played Commandos 2 and while the game is hard the user interface certainly doesnt help, most of the functions that you will use cannot be accessed through the interface but instead only by the defined key. Imagine an RTS that would make all the base construction binded in the keyboard and it would completely expect that you would remember all of those keys since the game was hard to the point that you would have to use them all. Also you cant pause to check the binds, and different characters have different binds.

The game is hard but a lot of it has to do with the total lack of a user friendly interface, and that is something that a lot of old games have.

 

[zerragonoss]

over all most the changes have been covered by people above in saying its a combination of shift of focus, better players and higher forgiveness. One thing I would like to ad is very few modern games are in the same genera of any older game platformers still remain mostly the same (though some have added a Dimension). Almost everything else has enough gameplay changes for me to classify it as a newer genera. To get a good baseline of difficulty changing over time you have to look at long lasting series and see any changes within.

 

[m19]

Games have gotten way, way, WAY easier.

Put the average CoD brat in front of the original Doom and watch him die while crying like a *****.

Average CoD brat won't have any trouble. Last time I tried Doom it was way easier than I remember. And the way I remember is that I couldn't even strafe properly and still beat it.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

on a whole i'd say both; there is less challenge and more hand holding in the last decade, but there are a lot of formula players are now getting used to, and standard button lay out that through years of practice, our reactions have become instinct

 

[darthzew]

Games, in general, have gotten easier. The reason for this is because games have changed.

Back in the day, "beating" the game meant something a lot more. Games were originally designed like arcades, where you were given lives and a no saves. The point was to get as far as possible and get as many points as possible on a single play. Games were not designed to be beaten. They were made to beat you so you could put in another quarter and try again. That kind of thinking bled into console games for a very long time.

Today, games are built around story and are meant to be played to the finish. Games have gotten easier because developers actually want you to finish now.