Difficulty is Dying in Video Games transcript

I suck at video games I suck at every video game you got it [ __ ] I don't kill you here it's going to be sad oh off the rock oh off the rock but because I'm about as good as I was when I was 11 years old every time I managed to snag a win or a high score on the leaderboard I feel a rush a sense of accomplishment because that's what video games have always been about I still remember my first win in fortnite I was playing with a friend back in 2018 and after many late nights of playing we actually won and we were both freaking out about it but now did you know that half of the average fortnite Lobby isn't even real players winning in Call of Duty Black Ops 6 is predetermined by the developer and some of the biggest single player games out there are designed so that you never have to face the hit of a game over we are entering an era where the game over screen is becoming a fragment of the past and this in my opinion is fing [Music] stupid oh my God I'm cracked again on a general level difficulty has always been important the Nintendo Entertainment Systems cartridges could only fit up to a Max of 1 Megabyte of storage so the developers needed to strategically make the game as replayable as possible with the limitations they had to give an example example of one of the many limitations of the NES I'm going to briefly touch on the console's audio system which only had five channels meaning only five sounds could play at one time the pulse wave channels were typically used to represent the main instruments the noise channels would be used for percussion the triangle wave was the Baseline because of its low pitch sound and the PCM channel was used for playing wave files but they had to be compressed down to around 2 kilobytes and if we were to compress Green Day's American Idiot to 2 kiloby we would get this with the many limitations of the NES developers couldn't just make a long story driven experience because they simply didn't have the space so what they had to do was make their game difficult enough that it took the player a long time to complete it before they moved on to another title not to mention each game on the NES costed around $50 but if we use an inflation calculator that's about $147 in today's market so video games were a lot more oneoff back then the Legend of Zelda is a game that comes to my mind when I think of proper utilization of difficulty Zelda has the traditional PR of save the princess from the evil guy but where it stood out from all the other NES games was its unique open world design because of Link's minuscule amount of Health the game encourages you to explore outside of the main objectives even in the very first dungeon you don't have to go into the other rooms but you're rewarded when you do with not only extra rupees AKA cash money but a ranged weapon that can help you on your journey within the Simplicity of Zelda is room for strategy when you're at full health your sword can be used as a ranged weapon so you can hang back and Target enemies from afar a lot of the AI can can't move in a diagonal Direction so you can maneuver link away from where you expect their next move to land and you can wait for NPCs to Bunch together to land a hit the damages all of them at once dying may be frustrating because you need to walk all the way back to where you were before and the enemies that you previously killed respawn but because death is annoying Victory Is So Exciting and because you're encouraged to explore every small area to make L stronger the difficulty of Zelda results in longer play time and more appreciation for everything that Zelda is and can be but as everything evolves over time so did video games going from the second dimension all the way to the third dimension 12 years before Zelda came out maze war was made in 1973 by everybody's favorite home gaming company NASA maze war was a multiplayer firstperson shooter that could be played when two computers were connected together and the entire game took place in this repetitive maze-like area that the players would try to navigate while carrying out their goal which was To Kill the other opponent it was Innovative on many levels but most of all because it introduced the most revolutionary difficulty technology used all the way from 1973 to about 2010 and this technology was called [ __ ] patting out Doom's playtime because every Corridor looks the same [ __ ] spending half a dungeon navigating a menu screen to equip and unequip the iron boots to progress the water temple [ __ ] the entire Grand Theft Auto 3D Universe yeah I'm about to throw shade at Vice City for 19 1997 a game that had fast cars shooting mechanics and a fart button was pretty damn neat but even at its prime Grand Theft Auto 1 was a clunky game the camera was angled in a way where you couldn't see that far in front or behind you so driving fast inevitably resulted in a sudden crash the shooting was extremely hard to maneuver and there wasn't a proper good story to grip the player into whatever job they were told to complete next it didn't have to though Grand Theft Auto was all about the chaos and it accomplished that because no other game was doing what it did at the time so when Grand Theft Auto 3 came out was the Jank of the first game just left for gaming history because it's transitioned into the third dimension no Grand Theft Auto 3 Vice City and San Andreas are all excellent games that I've played through multiple times the originals and the definitive editions but I stand by a th% that I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to play through any of those games without prior knowledge of the frustration they would be getting themselves into GTA 3 has hor horendous balancing issues the game takes place in three sections of Liberty City the first section is a tutorial area and after leaving it every gang member there ons who dead GTA 3 actually took inspiration from CD project red cyberpunk 2077 because all the mafia members of SuperSonic Vision spot you from a mile away and if you drive too close to them they will kill you in one hit the annoying part isn't just the location setback but that in GTA 3 you lose all of your weapons and armor so if you need to go back to that area for a mission or Collectibles good luck s Andreas and Vice City both have the same issues when it comes to their flying mechanics the problem with a game that wants to do everything from shooting to driving to Flying to parachuting to boating is that there is no way in hell every single one of those mechanics will be as good as another one which is why in GTA the shooting is decent the driving is immaculate the Boating is prime but everything else is not only underdeveloped but straight up torture to control if I get captured in World War II and the enemy puts a PS2 controller in my hands and Demolition Man in front of me as a means to get information I'll say give me the gun I'll shoot my team myself but let's be honest everybody who's ever lived to play Vice City has said everything there is to say about Demolition Man but you know what I never hear people talking about CP land the worst GTA Mission ever worse than flight school worse than yoga worse than scouting the port Copland takes Tommy versetti and his loyal companion Lance on a mission where they need to bomb a shop in a cop infested mall and to do that they need to one dress as cops to get in place the bomb and three Escape by GTA standards it doesn't seem that hard but it's actually the least straightforward mission in the entirety of Vice City the first step is a mess in itself all you need to do is lure two police officers in a garage with you and Lance so you can acquire police uniforms sometimes the cops will park their car right where the door closes sometimes Lance will just not enter the building sometimes the cops won't chase you and sometimes your wanted level will get so high it becomes hard to even figure out what's going on anymore after that first step you complete the second step and enter the third step the getaway immediate five-star wanted level with every cop in the city throwing spike belts cop cars will fly out of every street nearby like a projectile trying to kill you and once your car gets on fire Lance takes his sweet time getting out which unfortunately leads to his demise 90% of the time resulting in a mission fail if you want to play through the 3D Universe GTA games in 2025 you'll find that they are way more difficult than a lot of advertised hardcore games today just because of the raw iconic early 2000s Jank but the tank of the 3D universe is unique in its own right when it comes to progressing the game the early 2000s GTA games encourage the player to think outside the box and how they'll complete every objective by working around the Jank of each title in Copland why try to move the car by driving it instead of just running into it until it moves why wait for Lance when you can punch him in the face to reset his Ai and why fear the vehicle engulfed in flames when you can use it as a weapon the GTA Trilogy is a nightmare but you can turn it into a beautiful unh sandbox by using the Jank to your advantage the [ __ ] era of video game difficulty was one that I'm Overjoyed as passed us but I'm glad it happened because it forced the player to play the game by their own rules which today we see a lot less of but Grand Theft Auto wasn't the only franchise that struggled with a transition from 2D to 3D pretty much everything around that time had strange 3D controls because it was still relatively Uncharted Territory at least to the scale triaa games were trying to pull off Halo was an excellent step forward in departing from the [ __ ] era of shoot Shooters specifically prior to Halo on the original Xbox 3D shooters were a mess to play using golden i7 on the Nintendo 64 for example to aim your gun you need to physically move in the direction you want to shoot and if you want to be more precise with your shots you still need to use the joystick for walking to control the Crosshair enemies Don't Run for Cover and you can't strategize on how to outsmart your opponents because the only way to deal with the threat is walking towards them and shooting and then as if Jesus himself came back Bill Gates bought Halo and blessed the world of gaming Halo was a huge step forward for firstperson Shooters enemies work together to take you down they'll throw grenades they'll hide behind cover they'll get in aircrafts and try to kill you from above what revolutionized Halo was that the game didn't control as if a monkey in a rock designed it aiming is a separate joystick while moving is another you can throw grenades get in vehicles and gameplay didn't need to be halted to progress the game Halo is also one of those games that loses all of its novelty if you play it on the easy difficulty the shooting itself doesn't have the the traditional punch we're used to today with the hit markers and sound effects which honestly I'm a huge fan of I would inject that [ __ ] right into my arm but because killing enemies isn't that satisfying on its own and it's the feeling of accomplishment after clearing an area that sells the combat of Halo playing on an easier difficulty feels like white noise after a while at one point in Halo 1 I was supposed to climb this ramp kill two Elites and activate the light bridge to the next level the only problem was I was playing on heroic and like we discussed earlier I suck at video games so I couldn't fight those two enemies head on so I drove my w hog as far up the ramp as I could and use the machine gun attach the vehicle to wipe out the enemies where my plan fell short though was that I underestimated how intelligent the enemy AI was so when I'd Mount the gun the elites would hide where I couldn't shoot them but when I'd leave and enter the driver's seat they'd come out again so I decided to hang out on the gun for a while to regenerate my health without the threat of them shooting me and then once I was safe enough I got off the mounted gun to lure one of the elites out of their place and just as I planned he peaked out from around the corner and was met with a grenade once that was done I took care of the other guy and without a partner he was pretty easy Halo is filled with moments like this because of the many tools it gives you to progress the game and if you're playing on harder difficulties chances are you'll be planning different ways to advance the game multiple times in each level but again if you turn Halo to easy mode all you do is walk to the enemy shoot and Advance it's completely mindless the open-ended gameplay of the single player translates so well to Halo's multiplayer as well which is why it revolutionized the first person shooter genre even if Halo 1's online was land playay only but fast forward to Halo 2 which had online multiplayer players used the gimmicks of each map to their advantage because of the vehicles boosts and gun variety each person on the team had a role to fill and most of all the entire game wasn't run by an algorithm don't you love him the best kind of person is the person that tells you everything you want to hear all the time even going as far as to scream misinformation at you just to reiterate The Narrative they've been trained to spew out logically speaking algorithms are not good for society there's nothing beneficial about creating Echo Chambers for every individual in the world and social media algorithms are factually turning each and every one of us more extreme in our beliefs by the minute because every day we look at our timelines we're fed information not challenging our beliefs whatsoever but instead reaffirming them by any means necessary although there's nothing beneficial about Echo Chambers it sure as hell has worked in making sure people stay looking at whatever app they're looking at for the longest time possible so of course video game companies looked at this and said hey I can do that fortnite Battle Royale is the biggest game in the entire world and everybody's been saying since 2018 that it's going to die but it still pulls in huge waves of new players every single day having its biggest spike in engagement only a year and a half ago the game has stayed popular because it caters to everything over the years it's lost its original art style in favor of a more realistic look so they can implement the celebrity and franchise collabs more naturally instead of redesigning them to look like they belong in a stylized shooter I mean seriously just put the current default skin beside an old one and it's clear to see how much fortnite signature style has faded over the years there's family-friendly game modes without guns so anybody and everybody can play the game but most of all since 2019 fortnite had a major change to its matchmaking system so that everybody can experience the thrill of being cracked at fortnite to explain how fortnite's matchmaking works as of late 2019 around 75 of the 100 players in the average fortnite match aren't real players depending on your skill level you'll sometimes be put in lobbies with a little more or a lot less if you're absolutely insane but the number stays relatively close to 75 because the whopping majority of players aren't out of this world nuts at fortnite Bots are pretty easy to detect because of their shooting patterns they always miss most of their shots and then get more accurate the longer they stay alive this way the player still feels threatened by them if they're left alone fortnite also uses skill-based matchmaking meaning depending on how you performed the previous round you'll be put into matches with players of similar performance because fortnite slaps these two features together every single person who plays the game will have the exact same experience no matter who you are how you play on average you will win and lose the same as everybody else ew what's that smell could it that fortnite's matchmaking fing reeks in a genre like Battle Royale tension strategy and fear of the unknown is where it excels compared to every other type of competitive shooter it can be about the kills but it's also about how far you can make it through the match modern fortnite basically forces the player into one play style where there's no fear of the unknown because every real player in the lobby is of similar skill level there's no pressure of losing with no gain because you'll always get at least five kills from Bots and there's no tension because there's always something breaking the silence like an NPC running at you blindf firing or another unlock that you just got for living another minute it's like game developers are trying to eliminate the core thrill of what makes video games fun in the first place it all started with the risk of wasting the quarter you put in the Pac-Man machine if you got a low score the decline of your kill death ratio and XP if you performed poorly or even in fortnite back in 2018 having to start over without getting enough points to level up your battle pass it's the pain of losing and the reward of winning that that makes video games interesting and when every player in the lobby is actively strategizing and planning their next move because they know they're playing with another person who is also planning and doing anything they can to survive and that person could be anybody from Little Billy with a controller to fortnite ninja it creates an authentic multiplayer experience skill-based matchmaking is commonly torn apart for a variety of reasons but I believe it's detrimental because it's basically an algorithm that tells the player what they want to hear all the time if you continuously die in fortnite you're guaranteed a win because the game will match you with less skilled players or even more Bots and if you win you're guaranteed a loss because the game will match you with fortnite Jesus and his disciples that build like it's the last fortnite match they'll ever play it's predictable it's artificial and unfortunately it works because believe it or not most casual players don't actually know how fortnite's matchmaking works so a lot of people just think they're absolute Gods at fortnite even though epic games is just SP Mo feeding them that narrative a victory Royale isn't valuable anymore there's no sense of excitement because the game's designed to give you one I want to die in video games I want the matches to feel like I'm actually playing against random people all around the world and every match I play will be a step forward in my experience because I W be rewarded for sucking by getting a predetermined win the next round that's the harm in this recent Trend in multiplayer gaming developers are removing the hit from losing which used to be a kick forward a moment where you realize where you went wrong but now it's a pat on the back and a hey it's okay you'll just win the next one but it's the growth that makes competitive multiplayer exciting not necessarily just the winning screen because you can't have one thing without the other you can't have one thing without the annual Skyrim replay scientists have been studying since the Ice Age why men must always go back to Skyrim and as man it's because Skyrim is so accessible any play style any difficulty any piece of hard where Skyrim is such a charming and approachable game that you can play it any chapter of your life but as I age I begin to notice that Skyrim as a game world doesn't encourage you to interact with it outside of the combat what's the point of interacting with the shopkeepers and using ins why hunt and cook when you don't need to eat Why adventure when you can fast travel in a world with as much lore as Skyrim you'd think that the developers would want the player to have a sense of real habitant in its environment but Bethesda didn't make Skyrim as immersive as it should have been until now Skyrim's survival mode add some minor features that change everything because the player needs to stay warm eat and sleep you're finally given a reason to cook your own meals or buy them from shopkeepers the amount of junk you can carry is drastically reduced so you need to carefully plan what items you want to take with you on your journey and the planning gets even more complicated when you need to consider the temperature of the places you'll be riding through fast travel is gone in survival mode so now for the first time ever you'll be using the carriages more than just three times in your playthrough or even better riding place to place traveling around Skyrim on Horseback for what begins to be tens and hundreds of hours never fails to engulf you in its magical iconic Skyrim Ambience keeping your character fed and strong for each new challenge adds a level of immersion that the base game just didn't have and I as a player with well over 500 hours in Skyrim believe the game is way better with this feature enabled Skyrim survival mode gives the player a reason to embrace every side and Main mechanic of Skyrim it's not that the DLC makes you feel like you're living in Skyrim but more so makes you feel like an NPC in Skyrim which is everything I ever could want in my entire Skyrim and it also proves my point that easy leaning game design holds back games like Red Dead Redemption 2 did you know in Red Dead Redemption 2 it's almost impossible to die to grizzly bears if you're being attacked by one or infinite grizzly bears the same QuickTime event will play where Arthur needs to escape its grasp the thing about this QuickTime event is that it always knocks you down to the same amount of health and automatically reloads your gun so that you can kill the bear it doesn't matter how many times a Grizzly mauls you to near death you can get attacked an infinite number of times because the QuickTime event automatically makes it so your health doesn't drop beneath this Mark Red Dead Redemption 2 is full of stuff like this missions will teleport you right back half a minute before you died so if you fail there isn't any frustrating punishment neglecting food sleep and forecast requirements doesn't have any major negative debuffs and is only a minor inconvenience if left unattended for a game that begs you to take it slow go into the saloon and have a drink stack some oregano and take the time to split Point each bullet just to get an edge on the enemy it really contradicts itself in the way it executes its gameplay because Red Dead Redemption 2 is just way too easy because the game doesn't pose the player with any real challenge even though you can hunt all the legendary animals for some talismans that boost your character stats there's no real reason to there's no real reason to go to the saloon and order food there's no real reason to clean your guns there's no real re reason to do a lot of the awesome immersive stuff in Red Dead because the game basically plays itself for you if you hold the left joystick forward straight out of the tutorial Arthur is extremely overpowered he can take on multiple enemies no problem because all he needs is a health drinking some cocaine I feel like red Dead's easy difficulty does it a lot more harm than good because right off the bat I don't feel like a gun Slinger I feel like I'm pointing a gun at the disabled and I am the terminator it especially Hurts The Experience because a lot of people replay red de Redemption 2 and for replays it just gets more glaring every single run through the game behind Red Dead's easy difficulty is a very Advanced cover system seriously you can cover behind pretty much anything in the world and it has a lot of fun gun-based mechanics especially for a third-person Story game but because Arthur's built like a Shonen protagonist after the 400th episode there's no incentive to use any of it playing The Last of Us absolutely ruined red Dead's combat for me because the enemies in that game work together to flank corner and surprise you it's a much more gripping and terrifying feeling when in combat it forces you to use bricks to stun your enemies hold them as meat Shields and stealth your way around the environments because multiple armed bad guys is actually a threat in that game and then you go back to Red Dead and remember that covering in this game is completely optional and healing items are more common than the catlan revolver from a perspective of catering to the General Public I understand why game companies do this I remember getting so upset that I sucked at every Call of Duty Black Ops match when I was 12 all right fine I'll change the music but I also remember getting better and watching my KD improve slowly but surely because I was learning the game when I try to play Call of Duty today I'm engaged for a little bit because I love the new gameplay I love the sounds I love the graphics all that but it's just so painfully artificial if I win a match I know I'm going to lose the next one and if I lose a match I know it's only a matter of time until I get into a game where I wipe the floor with the entire Lobby being a God isn't fun it's becoming the god that single player and Competitive Gaming is all about Call of Duty has had very light skill-based matchmaking since Modern Warfare in 2007 but only in 2019s remake did they amp it up to what we know today which is the new engagement-based matchmaking Call of Duty Black Ops 3 from 2015 lost 30% of its players the month after release which is pretty normal for a competitive shooter and it didn't have the engagement based matchmaking that we know in Love Today Black Ops 6 on the other hand the newest release which is all about farming that sweet sweet playtime lost 44% of its players 1 month after release and another 38% the month after that and I bet my bottom dollar which I probably shouldn't have mentioned I have because Activision is going to try and slurp it up like it's some breast milk and I bet my bottom dollar that if Call of Duty Black Ops 6 wasn't just a game that was designed to tell players what they want to hear the retention of the audience would be significantly better because there would actually be some substance behind the U1 scen but what's difficult for me to understand is what do you guys think about all this no but seriously what do you guys think like I am fully anticipating waking up on release day to a bunch of comments disagreeing and calling me an overreactor for this I legitimately have no idea how this is going to perform is the recent difficulty changes in single player and multiplayer gaming good for the industry let me know what you think in the comments below and I'll check them out as soon as I possibly can as always thank you so much for taking time out of your day to watch this video and make sure to quick save press F5 quick save press F5 oh my God I was here 30 minutes ago