I dont play on easy, I never really have. Ive made fun of those who choose that option at the start of a game, whose text I think should be surrounded by flowers and bunny rabbits upon choosing that mode, and thats the article I started out writing. Then I started to think about the people who play on easy, and why they dont want the challenge the game can offer. For me, thats when I get the most satisfaction out of a game, when after hours and hours of wading through the unrelenting hordes I eventually stand a top their bodies and I can leap up, in my underwear, and declare how awesome I am. But maybe thats just me, thats what I enjoy about gaming. Sure I like the stories, but other than RPGs Ive never really found stories in video games that compelling, so I just blast through whatever excuse the game gives me to start killing the bad guys. That was fine until Portal came out. Here was a game which didnt have enemies throughout and didnt have a difficulty setting but was well written, funny, and I genuinely wanted to find out what happened at the end. Now, the difficulty was fine in Portal, I dont know anyone who was stuck for any considerable amount of time and everyone I know whos played it has finished it. But lets say for arguments sake that Portal was hard, like really hard, so hard that some people just couldnt work out a chamber. They wouldnt be able to finish the story let alone the game. Some people will say, Well thats the point, they need to get better! and thats fine go on and say that, but some people wont struggle on and just quit. An easy difficulty, with less complicated puzzles, would let them finish the game and the story without punishing them for being bad at the game. LA Noire did something pretty interesting in terms of difficulty. It had a compelling story, making people want to carry on and find out what happens, but there are gun battles in the game which, if youre not that way inclined, could prevent you from continuing the story. If you failed a few times the game would ask you if you wanted to skip this section. Great! A compromise between story and gameplay. If you wanted to finish the gun battle you could say no and keep going, but if you just wanted to investigate and go the whole cop thing without the gunplay, you could just skip those bits. It does take you out of the whole experience a little, but so does respawning at the last checkpoint. Game designers set the difficulty according to how they want their game to be played. Halo has heroic which they say is how its meant to be played and they have settings either side of it if you want more of a challenge or less of one. In an interview referred to in The Escapist, Alex Hutchinson, lead designer on Assassins Creed 3, argues that easy difficulty ruins games and allows you bypass mechanics of the game such as having to use cover in a cover based shooter. AC Revelations of course the game that introduced the base defence mechanic which, if you kept your notoriety low, you only had to do once in the tutorial. Alexs argument does of course have merit; the game isnt being played the way it was designed so you might not feel the way the designers intended you to feel when faced with certain obstacles. Some people dont enjoy staring at chest high walls waiting for an enemy to reload, some people like to wander through a battlefield firing a gun in both hands as bullets bounce of them like marshmallows. So what if theyre not playing it the way the developers intended it, theyre still having fun. Difficulty can also be built in by users themselves. Final Fantasy VII, a game from 15 years ago at this point, is not a particularly challenging game. The magic you can pick up is far too powerful and there are pieces of armour that just make you immune to entire elements and the bosses that use them. However, there are mods you can get from the community of gamers who still play it that ramps up the difficulty changing items effects, the armour, magic, and even the enemies behaviour. If a game is too easy, then you can make it harder yourself, dont use a gun in a shooter simply punch your way to victory, or even just getting 100% in a game which is probably a lot harder than just breezing through the main story. Easy difficulty is like an all access pass, if you want to just wander up to the smiling guard, flash your laminated card, and walk through the story and have the experience that you want, thats fine, if theres an option for that go for it. But if you want to have to sneak past a burly, angry dude with the flail, whos using a dragons tail as a tooth pick, you can do that too. And if theres no option for hard or ultra-hard or screw you mode, then make your own, do it with no arms and naked. Games have moved on from the simple can you get to the end idea, people can have fun whatever way they like, whether that be just to experience a story or even how much carnage they can create. If youre an elitist and think that everything should be at Ninja Gaiden or I wanna be the guy level difficulty and those who cant handle it shouldnt play, then screw you cause Ive still not finished IWBTG. I like a challenge, but I wouldnt want to deny someone the experience of a game simply because theyre not good at it. Easy is an option, not a requirement, just the same as Hard.