It’s fine, guys. Sure that’s the size of one or two games these days, but that’s approximately how many the PS5 has!

Maybe he could try to make another TV series.

What I notice in my experience (with a couple obvious exceptions) is that at any price, I typically get way more entertainment time per dollar with indie games. Hollow Knight is deep into pennies per hour long ago, Slay the Spire is close to free at this point, and even indie games I don’t finish end up being the cheapest form of entertainment I’ve got. That said it’s the same conversation, but an order of magnitude less “value” with big budget game releases.

Back in the arcade era, they made games arbitrarily difficult to make us spend more quarters. Hence why so many middle aged gamers are good at platformers and have a chip on their shoulders about easier modern games. So I don’t know if hours per dollar is really the conversation we should be having about games, because that’s not the value proposition for me.

The real value of games is as art. Such a variety of creative energies are poured into game development that it’s easy to end up with a whole that fails to cohere to some extent. When it does come together with not only cohesiveness but a clarity of artistic intent, that should be seen as an astonishing achievement.

The real reason I think indie games do better in terms of the flawed metric of playtime per dollar is because of the smaller teams and leaner budgeting. I think we agree here. They are not as pressured by externalities to create on a schedule, to appear valuable to shareholders by clumsily chasing buzzword trends in game design, by monetising with dark patterns and micro transactions. Too much money is toxic to artistic pursuits.

I guess my only quarrel with you is the idea that Silksong wouldn’t have been worth $60. I’m already ten hours in, just found the first main boss, and on your metric it’d already have beaten the best movie I’ve ever seen in theatres for entertainment time per dollar. It’s a flawed yardstick that still makes the game look good.

When you’re a kid with no understanding of game design, no internet, and no subscription to magazines that explain it, all those dirty tricks that we now rightly put to much rubbish did have the power to make you think “I suck at this”. They didn’t have to be clever back then to give us this insane need to be punished by game designers just the right amount so that we can finally just try really hard, get really annoyed, stick with it way too long, and eventually get to say “yes, fuck you, I win!” For a certain kind of kid from that generation, that’s almost a healing fantasy.

Time will tell. These games all have so much talk about how certain builds are “cheese” or how the ashes make the game too easy or whatever - that’s all just dumb. The game itself is the difficulty settings, sometimes.

It seems too early to say how Silksong will be remembered, and Team Cherry still only had two games under its belt so it’s arguably too early to judge them. Will their next game be totally different and a massive risk, or do we have a Vivaldi on our hands, doing masterful variations on a theme?

I hate to answer a rhetorical question directly, so please forgive that; my satisfaction would have been much greater, if I was able to achieve those things. I have a realistic sense of what I was able to do given the challenge that I faced and the skill I was able to muster, and although more success would have been sweeter, I am able to be content because I have a shared context with other people who faced the exact same challenge.

I know many have been unhappy with what they are able to accomplish in games with no difficulty settings, and I see it as a choice by the creator to set people apart. It’s a harsh choice that seems most appropriate in grim and harsh stories.

Those who say it is passé argue so very convincingly, but I can’t hide that it appeals to me. It speaks to something primitive, perhaps anhedonic. I was wondering if it’s a generational preference more prevalent among people who grew up during the era of “Nintendo hard”, and if single-difficulty games will fade away in time completely. Maybe this game should have been called Swansong, if so.

There might also be a generational divide taking shape. People my age grew up with “Nintendo hard” and the industry was all about making games seem longer by making them extremely difficult to beat. Our options were to get better, cheat, or give up.

These days the industry is all about mass appeal, and all the problems that we see with games having massive budgets and having to make sure as many people can like them as possible. Indie games have different incentives, and so when a game comes along that was made with priorities that aren’t in step with what we’re used to, it tends to ruffle feathers.

I know my kid doesn’t have any sense that games should be difficult, or that a challenging game can be satisfying. Even FromSoft games are trending towards less difficulty, despite having the fans who famously chant “git gud”. Bigger studios might know something my generation doesn’t get about younger gamers - maybe games like Silksong are having their swansong, so to speak. I hope not, but it’s hard not to notice once it’s been pointed out.

The thing is, I can’t personally think of an accessibility setting that would serve the intended function without removing the sense of having finally met the challenge. I struggle with difficult games too, and I don’t always complete them. That struggle and uncertainty is part of the journey though to me and if there was a difficulty tweak available as soon as I got frustrated the first time, it would erase those stakes (for me).

I mentioned Celeste as a positive example. I did feel a satisfaction with completing that game, but if not for the highly emotional personal journey of the narrative potion of that game I don’t think it would have been as satisfying. At every point I knew there was an easy way out, and staying frustrated and gradually getting better was a conscious choice without any real stakes attached to it other than my own self-satisfaction. The was never any worry that I’d fail to complete the game. Those stakes do make eventually winning feel real.

So I just can’t think of any suggestions for this. It’s elitist or ableist I realise, and I’m not happy with that. The creator certainly was aware of games like Celeste, and they had plenty of time to consider those options. Before casting any judgment or making suggestions on their behalf, I’d be really interested to hear what they have to say about the choice. Do they think the struggle has to be as firmly set as it is for the triumph to feel as elating? I can’t read their minds, so if there’s an interview where they address that I’d be all ears.

It’s undeniable that the challenge is part of the mystique for some games. I note with great respect the fact that Celeste offers accessible difficulty tweaks. I beat that game and it was a great experience.

Both choices can be good, when made with intention and care, and when motivated by specific goals as a creator.

With dark souls, at least the ones I’ve played, the difficulty can be tweaked by engaging with the world, learning the progression system and the character options that suit you. For example I didn’t beat DSI until I tried playing a magic user, because I’m slightly bad at those games. DSIII was easy enough by comparison to beat as a straight up STR build, but that’s beside the point. Difficulty is a design choice, and the conversation around it is tiresome when it ignores the aims of the creators.

Every time a hard game gets made, we have to have this debate? Maybe the real easy mode is just not trying to please everyone.

The one man I know who loves video games the most - he loves the history, he knows the names in the industry, he reads critiques, he has an entire room where he keeps his game library (and will talk at length about preservation and physical media) - is not actually good at playing them. He is helplessly enamored with games as art, despite that he can’t really beat anyone at his favourite games. It might be plain distractibility or some form of dyspraxia, but it has not lessened his pleasure. I used to smirk when we were young, but I think he has sense on his side.

We all have our thing. I love From Soft games even though I suck at them. I do alright in platformers though.

How many people are you gonna ask?

Can you believe how compact the download is? They spent that long building in the age of incredibly bloated games, and it would fit on a game disc from back when my voice hadn’t cracked yet.

And despite being a mere handful of gigs, it still broke every major platform on release.

Fuck, what a great day.

Very modern production pipeline Bethesda. Got to stay agile, can’t be doing things the old school way, back when they made the game fun on release. That’s 2.0 at the earliest now

Well, because purchasing power has also collapsed in that span of time, obvi

/s

That’s what I always wanted “DeFi” to be, a systematic replacement for the legions of evil old banks who have happily collaborated with the worst institutions of the last several centuries.

Such wisdom and vision, we should let these people have power over payment processors

Yeah. As a society we seriously need to get on the same page about morality, but for my money it can’t come from a religious group tinkering with the beating heart of commerce. They may have points to make but it’s fruit of the poisoned tree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melinda_Tankard_Reist?wprov=sfla1

Collective Shout. Thanks to itch.io for naming them. TIL