How will the expansion and growing diversity of gaming audiences effect what kind of challenges and difficulty options they expect from their games?

The usability of software, or any product, is one of the fundamental concerns of all design. It doesn’t matter how innovative, ingenious, beautiful or enjoyable a product is, if the end user just can’t work it then everything then everything that preceded its production will have been in vain.

This basic maxim of design provides an odd challenge for game designers and marketers. Games are unique among software in that the ease of use may be artificially restricted. While games have long had variable difficulties as a central element to their design, the issue that now faces the industry is whether the changing face of videogame audiences represents a change in the kinds of challenges and experiences demanded and if that will render the art and science of difficulty management redundant.

Gamasutra have recently been exploring the challenges of designing difficulty for games in an in-depth feature on the subject. While the article focuses on strategies for difficulty design in real-terms what it does highlight - and this is relevant to everyone from floor-level coders right through to the CEO’s office - is the notion that difficulty is a response to the demands consumers have of their experience and as such is critical to the success of the game as something that makes money.

“Choosing a high difficulty is the act of wanting to be tested on the part of the player. The reward of passing a test is a feeling of worth and accomplishment-and to make a test enjoyable is to make it challenging, while also achievable. Tuning difficulty in a quick and dirty way can also change the game's play fundamentally-this is something many developers don't factor into their decisions enough.”

The ability of gamers to mediate the challenge (and other content) to suit their style and competence as a user weighs very strongly in favour of games as a user orientated form of entertainment. Readers of literature cannot change the complexity of the language they’re reading nor can the watcher of a war film mediate the violence to focus on characterisation.

However, the rise of social gaming has called into question whether gamers even want to be challenged. When games serve a more social function and the relationship users have with them is more casual there is the very real question of whether offering customisable difficulty levels beyond what may be a relatively meek “normal” is relevant. Is it worth committing the resources to what is such a subjective and difficult design challenge?

Assuming that all gamers want to be challenged to some degree or another there is still the question of how that is implemented. Again the casual relationship many gamers have with the games they play could signify a lack of interest and understanding in how difficulty functions and offering a choice in the form of a menu with four or five options may be nothing more than another barrier in the suspension of disbelief. The ability to skip episodes in Alone in the Dark is an answer to this issue, albeit a contrived one.

While hobbyists may have the strength of will to persevere with a tough challenge gamers with a casual or social interest cannot be relied on to show loyalty to a product, especially in a social setting, if it proves too challenging. The future of game difficult may rely on the ability of games to mediate themselves, by looking at the choices a player had made in game to judge their interest and alter the difficulty accordingly, or perhaps examining the contents of their other game data or online activity to gauge what kind of player they are and their needs.

Evidently, as the demographic profile of gamers becomes more diverse so will their demands on the challenge offered by the experience. The dilemma that game designers face is making sure that the challenge they do offer is appropriate to the individual user as is possible without also challenging their loyalty to the product and the brands behind it.