Opinion: Easy Modes Don’t Ruin Anything, Ubisoft

Alex Hutchinson, lead designer on Assassin’s Creed 3, is wrong.

I’m sure he’s a lovely bloke, talented too, but his comments regarding easy modes in games – an otherwise throwaway snippet no doubt pulled from a greater body of discarded text for maximum impact by Edge magazine – have wound me up.

Even assuming that there’s a greater context to his words, and reading beyond the headlines, I can’t think of a single game in recent years that has been “ruined” by a lower difficulty level. Ruin is a strong word (and his, too) and seems completely at odds with my own personal opinion.

Of course, opinions are there to be personal, but I just don’t see his point.

[drop2]”If you have a cover shooter and you switch it to easy and you don’t have to use cover, you kind of broke your game,” he said.

That’s largely nonsense, not because a game’s singular core mechanic must be its bond that holds everything together, but because that’s not really how games like that work.

Cover shooter? Let’s assume he’s thinking of Gears of War. It doesn’t matter if he’s not, but that’s a title that most will be familiar with.

I’m playing the game on (say) a ‘medium’ difficulty level and I’m struggling with a certain point, the option to drop to a lower level would be most welcome.

But that won’t mean that I don’t have to use cover. It means – in this example – that the enemy will be less accurate, and it means that their bullets will harm me less. If I stand still like an idiot I’m still going to die. I need to use cover, but I don’t have to be such a hotshot at everything else.

Is that really a problem? Is that really “breaking” the game?

No, of course not. It is – by definition – making it easier. It’s making it more suitable for me and my (lack of) skills, and it’s making that otherwise sticking point passable. Of course, I could die repeatedly on ‘medium’ until I manage to scrape by, but I really don’t have the time for that and I certainly don’t have the patience.

In fact, games that don’t adjust to my capabilities or offer a way to (even temporarily) reduce the difficulty better have a damned good reason for their stubbornness.

Playtesting and focus testing can only offer so much in the way of balance, there’ll always be players better or worse, and that’s what easy (and hard) modes are for.

[drop]”You made a game that is essentially the worst possible version of your game,” added the lead designer.

Again, he’s clearly talking about a stripped back, mechanics-less version of a game that I can’t seem to connect with. Am I playing the “worse possible version” of F1 2012 if I throw on all the assists and let it change gears for me?

No, I’m playing the version that’s most suited to my skills, and my available time.

Am I missing out on something by not bothering with Uncharted 3’s upper echelons of difficulties?

Nothing but challenge and some trophies, as far as I can see, and I’m perfectly happy playing on a lower difficulty so I can enjoy the story, the ride, the flow without having it interrupted by Retry? screens and loading pauses.

I’ve barely played an Assassin’s Creed game beyond a few hours of the first one, so there might be an association with Hutchinson’s comments that I’m clearly missing, but on a wider scale – games in general – the somewhat ignorant remarks used in the article managed to annoy me more than they probably should have done.

I like playing certain genres of games on easy modes, just as much as I like playing others on hard. I don’t think they represent the “worst possible versions” of the games I might not otherwise enjoy at all, but – again – maybe I’m just missing the point entirely.