#56 The problems with "difficulty" in gaming

This week we wanted to have an easy going talk about difficulty in games. What makes it great, what makes it difficult to design and plan around for, and some cases where it's just a necessary part of a game's core identity.

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SHOW NOTES
Path of Exile's skill tree, mentioned later in the show:
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree

Here's some of the games we mentioned that you may be curious about:
Cyberhook: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1130410/Cyber_Hook/
Selaco (disclosure, Trav edited their launch trailer): https://store.steampowered.com/app/1592280/Selaco/
Another Crab's Treasure: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1887840/Another_Crabs_Treasure/
Lisa: https://store.steampowered.com/sub/77828/

TODAY'S CRUBCAST HOSTS
Chris: https://www.youtube.com/@MykonosFan
Justin: https://www.youtube.com/@WorldFamousJtart9
Moriarty: https://www.youtube.com/@reallycool
Trav: https://www.youtube.com/@ThatTravGuy

CHAPTERS
00:00 What's up with difficulty in games?
08:34 Starting games on Hard difficulty
13:16 Why should games be difficult?
33:32 Design versus designing for difficulty
40:50 Harsh realities of game development
46:28 Guides and completionism relating to difficulty
55:54 Games that use difficulty as a narrative tool
1:09:24 RACROX's Crubscriber Question of the Week

Creators & Guests

Host

Chris

Chris is the owner of the MykonosFan channel on YouTube. He hasn't been to Mykonos.

Host

Justin

Justin is Jtart9, world famous Twitch streamer. He's so famous.

Host

Moriarty

Moriarty is the owner of MRIXRT on YouTube, it's @reallycool.

Host

Trav

Trav is the owner of the That Trav Guy channel on YouTube. He T-posed once. Once.

What is Crubcast?

The Crubcast is a weekly podcast tackling various gaming and life topics with a touch of controlled chaos.

Hi, welcome to Crub.

Today, we want to have an easy talk about difficulty in games.

Trav, why do I want to talk about this with you?

Well, okay.

Before we start today, I want to talk about...

All right, so difficulty in games.

Difficulty in games, right?

If you asked me a year ago, I was someone who has always started video game on the hardest difficulty and just worked my way down.

But I was doing that because I'm someone who likes to replay video games.

And if I replay them, usually I like to turn the difficulty up.

I don't really have time to replay games as much today as I used to.

And plus, you know, getting better at certain genres at games.

I usually, if I'm confident in this genre, I usually start a little bit difficult.

But Chris, Chris is a little different.

And I'm interested in your dynamic with this discussion here.

Because if I'm not wrong, you don't like games that are hard, you don't like games that are easy, you just like games that are normal.

Tell me why.

Well, I am a boring, plain, vanilla person.

I don't add flavor to anything.

I don't add seasoning to anything.

I take the path of least resistance in life.

I don't like any challenge or friction.

I get uncomfortable if something is difficult.

And I like to enjoy things in my spare time that don't stress me out even more than my life already does.

But if the difficulty selection is...

It stresses you out?

You don't like...

So you're getting stuck on the same encounter over and over.

You're losing it.

You might be getting a little salty, a little sweaty.

And you're thinking, I'm always sweaty.

Is this what I want to spend my free time doing?

Kind of, right?

Look, it can be fun for me to sit there and beat my head against something, but sometimes I just want to sit down and progress in a thing and not just feel like I've spent my entire night not getting anywhere.

You know what I mean?

Like, time is so limited these days that for me, it's just like I could take joy in bettering myself, getting more developed in my skills, or, you know, learning a difficult pattern against an enemy in a game.

But what if I hit the easy button and had a better time?

That's kind of my vibe.

I'm not judging anyone who likes hitting their head against the wall for three weeks, right?

But that's not me.

This head has enough dents already.

I want to loop back around to what you just said.

But first, Justin, Em, either of you.

Okay, I know a bit about how Em is.

So I'm actually going to pass it to Justin.

Justin, how are you with games?

I'm extraordinary.

What's up with games?

What's up with games?

I'm extraordinarily stubborn with games that I play.

Like, I am the type of person that will look at something and be like, oh, I lost.

I'm just going to keep doing it over and over and over again until I win.

Even if there is a difficulty slider or like something that says, hey, you're losing a lot.

Do you want to turn the difficulty down?

I'll always say no.

And that's just that's mainly why I start playing games on normal, just because I know that if I hit something that is a challenge to me, I'm not going to turn that difficulty down at all.

And if I keep doing that, I'm going to have a less likely time of turning the game back on because I feel like if I'm not making progress, I won't turn it down to continue making progress because I'll feel like I haven't earned it.

I want to earn it if I am finding it like facing a challenge and actually overcome it.

You want to feel like you're earning it.

And so you're not just playing a game to get to the end of it, then you're playing it for the experience.

I know.

Yeah, no.

It also depends on the game, too.

Like if it's a story based game like an RPG, I don't really care about the difficulty because at the end of the day, you're going to beat it.

It's mostly a numbers game with a turn based RPG or something like that.

But if it's like an action game, something like an ultra kill, I'm not turning the difficulty down no matter what.

I will lose 500 times in a level.

I don't care.

You also play a lot of fighting games where your opponent is the difficulty and it's very, very different.

That's very true.

Like in a fighting game, there is no difficulty slider except for the story mode, which the story mode boss always cheats in a fighting game anyway.

It'll just read your inputs and do what's best to beat you.

So blocking frame one.

Yeah, exactly.

There's no point in trying to and trying to like beat a difficulty slider on that, in my opinion, because at the end of the day, if you just frame trap someone enough, you'll win.

So just just play it for the enjoyment of it and then go online and play actual people because that's where I get most of my enjoyment from a fighting game is besting my opponent.

Okay.

Okay.

I think this is important information.

I'll get back to you soon.

Moriarty, you said something pretty interesting to me before the stream.

You were talking about all of us in a similar way that I was talking about all of us just now, being like Trav loves hard.

Mykonos loves normal.

Justin is a bit of a bitch.

And then you described yourself as Kirby.

Right, yeah.

So what does that mean?

I guess in a way I am Kirby.

So my journey with difficulty in video games has been, I don't know, an ease-ification in certain parts while harder in others.

It's been, with regards to single-player experiences, RPGs and things like that, I used to pick them up and say, I want to play it on the hardest difficulty, because if I don't, I feel like I'm not getting something.

I'm getting less of the game.

And so I want to play it on ultra-super-nightmare-devil-destroys mode.

Because that way I'm getting the full game.

I'm getting the full experience of it.

And over time, I found that that isn't really how I am now that I have no time for anything at all.

And I would rather experience a five or six hour long game that I'm able to complete in a single day, and say, yeah, I did that, and I experienced it, and I had fun with it, and now I'm done with it, than to have a 40 hour long hyper-difficult experience, with the exception of competitive gameplay.

So, you know, I do play shooters.

I was very big into CS for a long time, and Counter-Strike for a long time, and, you know, a lot of competitive shooting stuff.

I still get into some tournaments sometimes, and compete for some cash prizes in various games.

And with those, I really enjoy the difficulty of it, because I feel like I am getting better.

I've never been a fan of, like, games, like, like a Call of Duty, where your character gets better, right?

I always prefer a game where I feel like I am getting better, where I am excelling and becoming a better player and so on.

Which is why the thing that I do still turn the hardest difficulty up on is anything where it's momentum shooters, right?

So like Ghostrunner and Quakes.

You know, anything where you're doing lots of movement and running and kind of getting into that flow state, right?

When that's there, yes, I want the difficulty because I want to perfect it.

There was a game that we were playing at one point, you and I, Trav, which was a grapple shooter thing where you had to, you know, swing and try to get the perfect movement.

Cyberhook?

Yeah, Cyberhook.

Yeah, Cyberhook was awesome.

Yeah, so things like that, I enjoy the difficulty of it.

But if you're going to like load up Baldur's Gate, and I'm fine with Baldur's Gate being on normal or even easy or story mode, you know, like I'm fine with that.

I don't actually get a whole lot of experience out of just being killed 57 times in a 55 hour long game.

Yeah, and in a game like that, where it's story based, and the gameplay isn't as accentuated as much because it's really just a vehicle to get you to the story, what's the point of playing it on the hardest difficulty?

It's going to keep you away from the selling point of the game.

That's the way I've always seen it.

I totally get that.

I'm someone who, I'm just going to butt in here and take over the conversation now.

No, please do.

But no, like when it came to, what was it?

I played recently-ish.

Fallout 76.

I was going to say it might have been the original Fallout.

It was some turn based-ish game that I'm like, you know what, I'm going to play this on the hard difficulty because clearly, you know, there was a system that people spent time on here that I want to try to understand.

Sure, there's the narrative, that's great.

Someone still spent time on that combat system, and usually whenever I play a game on hard, which is one of the reasons I started playing games on the hardest difficulty, I don't do it too much these days, but it's just like I consider it a crash course of that opening stage that I'm going to be losing over and over on until I get it just right, is basically teaching me the nuances of how it wants me to approach a game, learning enemy behavior, understanding like the, what would I call it?

I guess the utility of certain weapons over others.

I'm going back to Sulaco, which I'm sure less of our audience has played.

What's the Sulaco?

Sulaco came out like, what, three, four days ago.

It's a really good half life fear inspired shooter.

Oh, is it like an immersive sim?

It's a little im simmy.

Not quite.

I wouldn't call it an im sim, but it definitely has im sim qualities to it.

But like when I was when the demo for that came out, I tested myself to play it on the hardest available difficulty.

And I got like maybe three, four hours out of that demo, just trying to do that, because it's like I'm it is teaching me how to play the game basically.

And as someone who if anyone who's seen my content would agree that like a big part of it is understanding a lot of those nuances and explaining those, especially in harder difficulties.

So that's just something that I've normally naturally gravitate to towards.

And I don't know, it's just like even with more narrative focused games.

Mario Sunshine.

No, there's no difficulty in that.

Yeah, but it's like I, yeah, I'll play it on the harder difficulty just to, you know, see what changes if it's just focusing on, you know, combat difficulty.

I'll take the time if it's something that I want to digest and look at critically, I will definitely take the time to try to learn how to play it on those harder difficulties just so that it's like, let's see, what's a better way to put it?

Games that you can kind of just play however you want, I guess, which I know examples are really coming to the top of my head.

But I'm someone who I love the modern Doom games, for example, and those games you kind of need to play in a specific way to understand how, at least on Harder Difficulties, it's very deliberately crafted so that you are using this weapon for this utility, this weapon for another utility, and managing your health and armor resources.

Yeah, after a certain point, the newer Doom games really do become more rhythm game than they are shooter.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, I see that.

But I really, that just kind of, I guess, woke me up to that idea of like playing on harder difficulties is going to, assuming that you want to go along for the ride, it's going to funnel you into this play style that the devs deliberately kind of wanted you to do and crafted it around.

Regardless of if it's good or not, that's, it depends on the game.

But that's just kind of a thought I have of just like, if I'm going to look at this critically, hard mode, harder difficulties kind of forced me to see what the devs are trying to do.

And I think that's sort of the thinking for a lot of people is that, you know, hard is intended, right?

Like that's the intended gameplay.

And I've noticed that when it isn't that you'll see that the game, you know, will say, this is the intended experience, and that might be medium or whatever.

But it does seem to be that if it doesn't say that, I'm going to assume that hard is the intended experience.

But it doesn't mean that I necessarily want to play it.

With regards to sort of difficulty in games, right?

I feel that they're sort of, boy, why should a game be difficult?

And what kind of value do we get out of that?

Right?

This is like the first stage of difficulty stuff in games.

Versus like, is difficulty something that we should be valuing in the way that we do?

And I think that those are two very separate discussions that we can have about difficulty, because like, yeah, sure, what do I personally get out of it?

Well, maybe I enjoy the challenge of it.

Maybe I get to experience some sort of a different dance when I'm playing these games, right?

Like it's a different experience on a harder difficulty, whereas maybe easy is kind of not an experience necessarily.

Like bringing up the Doom Eternal thing that the Trav talks about, when you're playing that on Ultra Nightmare, it is a very different game than when you're playing it on whatever the easy mode is called, right?

Like they are two completely separate experiences that do not compare in any way whatsoever, right?

You can't say, oh, this is similar to that, because the difficulty really does change it, and at that point, which is the real game, right?

And so that's certainly one discussion, but I'll tell you another one, which is the discussion that inevitably starts up when we talk about Dark Souls in video games.

Right?

Dark Souls.

Shout out to Niko.

One of the things about Dark Souls that people maybe do know but don't really appreciate is that Dark Souls created kind of the concept or brought back the concept of difficulty in-born inherent difficulty in video games.

There was a period of time before the Souls games became popular, specifically, I guess, Dark Souls 2 or 3, before that became popular, where games were kind of kiddifying themselves, and they were becoming very, very dumbed down, very simple and kind of arcade-y in order to mass appeal, right?

CODs and Medals of Honor and, you know, Spyros.

Just jump in, play a couple rounds.

You know what I mean?

Like they were getting really basic and super and simple, right?

And then you saw the Souls games come out, and they were unforgivingly difficult, but fair, right?

Like that's the big difference is fair.

They're challenging as opposed to stupidly hard.

And when this came out, all of a sudden, all of these other games are like, oh, you can be hard again.

And I think the fact that we now have the Soulsborne genre, right?

Like that has helped sort of show that this sort of difficulty, the inherent difficulties.

When we look at Soulsborne's, right?

What is the single defining event?

Well, it's really hard, right?

So like, even if it's not, oh, I don't have to do dodge rolls perfectly, and there's no bonfire mechanic and whatever, but it's really hard, people will still call it a Soulsborne for that reason.

Oh my God.

I just remember like the Crash Bandicoot thing of like, the N.Sane Trilogy or Crash Bandicoot is the Dark Souls of platformers or something like that.

Yeah.

And I mean, that's a great game too, or a great example, because it was horribly criticized for punishing difficulty, right?

So same sort of thing, right?

The Soulsborne games give us this sort of discussion about difficulty that's inherent.

And of course, the one thing that everybody always brings up with these games is it should have an easy mode.

And I tell you what, for people, I don't think, oh boy.

So this is one of the hot button items to talk about, right?

Like this is not something that we're going to be able to solve in our little podcast here.

But should a game, should every game have a difficulty slider, right?

Or the ability to have an easy mode?

And I guess before we really jump into it, there's an idea I want to, I guess an angle that I want to consider.

Sorry to cut you off, M.

But just whenever a conversation like this has had on mine, the topic inevitably comes up of what about accessibility?

And that's just an angle I want to, I guess, focus on.

No, accessibility is really important.

Yeah, accessibility is really important.

Yeah, I'll let you finish your thought, actually.

I thought you were setting up a plug, and I was like, this is a really interesting intro for a plug.

I was just going to bounce off of what M was saying, though.

Dark Souls came at a perfect time where games were getting much more homogenized because that's what the market for games were.

And then someone out there was willing enough to buck the trend and just be like, no, we're going to make a game like this.

And if you like it, you like it.

If you don't, you don't.

And it kind of comes back to a study that happened a while ago where people thought that they liked it.

It was like a study on like tomato sauce or pasta sauce.

And people said, no, I like it very thin and pureed and very easy to eat.

And then they did a blind taste test.

And then they found that 33% liked it spicy, 33% liked it normal, and 33% liked it extra chunky.

And it really just became a thing of like, so people don't know what they actually want.

So let's just make a bunch of different types of things.

And people can just gravitate to what they actually like, as opposed to making what they think that they want.

I think any YouTuber can tell you that people don't know what they actually want.

Yeah.

And that comes back to difficulty in games as well, because people want an easy mode for Dark Souls.

But do you actually want an easy mode for Dark Souls?

Because that sounds to me like you don't really want to play Dark Souls, because Dark Souls is Dark Souls.

If you don't like it, you can just play something else, or play something that's an action game, but more forgiving.

I'm not going to advocate for it, because I don't personally have the interest.

But if I were to devil's advocate, there is a part of me that is curious about things like the design of the bosses and like the worlds and stuff, which I could just go on to YouTube or Google Images for, but that feels like such a distant, separate thing that I then don't have any interest in the thing, weirdly enough.

Yeah.

Again, this isn't like a very good rebuttal to that, but I'm just like, well, it would be nice to kind of go through it and like take a look at it, even if I'm not really convinced, I would enjoy meeting it on its own terms.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Because like you could just go through the game and look at all the vistas and look at what the boss patterns are and see how it feels to fight those bosses.

And maybe you'd fail.

But if you really liked the way that the combat felt or the way the movement felt or anything like that, you would just stick with it and you'd keep going with it.

I mean, some people would argue that I don't have enough time in the day to do that.

But if you have a few few hours to play, then you play for a bit.

You say, hey, I got better.

And then you think about Dark Souls that I think is often overlooked in these conversations is that every death you have still matters.

Like, you still collect experience points.

Yeah, if you die, you have to go get your experience points back.

But you are making it effectively to where you died last.

You were able to make it to that point before you can do it again.

It does a good job at motivating you.

But also, like, if you can take that and then, you know, even just run up to where you got it, run back to a checkpoint and just level up your gear.

Eventually, even if you are not as good at the game, the game will get easier because you keep leveling up.

Now, that's also ignoring the arguably useless skills.

It is easy to not know what certain skills do that you are leveling up.

But, you know, later games get better at that.

But just that idea of like, you know, what you are lacking in skill can also, you know, be circumvented by just leveling up your characters and playing more of the game, investing more of your time into it.

I didn't know you were getting experience for that.

I think there is a very significant danger in focusing too much on souls in this, right?

So, Dark Souls is...

No, right.

It is difficult.

But I think it's really more a question of, or rather, a conversation around difficulty itself.

Because certainly while you have Dark Souls, you also have Hollow Knight, you have Cuphead, you got Sekiro, you got Bloodborne, you got Neo, and you got Celeste, you got Hades, and you got Doom Eternal, and you got Ninja Gaiden, you got Ghosts and Goblins, and you got like...

There's lots of difficult games that don't necessarily have these sort of sliders for easy.

And the thing about difficulty is that there are pros and cons to adding difficulty sliders that can be pretty significant.

And when we're talking about, you know, a video game, which is a mix of consumer and commercial and art and hobby, entertainment, like it's just this kind of mashup of all these different competing interests, right?

So we do have the inclusivity argument, which is that easy mode allows more people to play it, whether through, you know, accessibility issues or disabilities, or maybe even just limited gaming experience, new players, right?

It's pretty hard to give a new player Elden Ring and say, here you go, figure it out.

Especially when they blow up so big that it becomes like the game, right?

Right, you need to play this or you don't get to be part of the Zodiac guys.

We're seeing that right now, bouncing back, totally not meaning to shill.

We're seeing that right now with Solaco, it's getting a bunch of, not a bunch, it's down to like a 90% positive on Steam, and so many of those negative reviews that it's getting, you know, boohoo, why don't you have a mini-map?

Why aren't there objective markers?

Why aren't there, why can't we fast weapon swap like in Ultrakill?

Why can't, why is it not like other game that I like?

I see.

And it bounces back to that idea of, in my perspective, just meeting a game on its own terms, but also...

We'll talk about that, we'll talk about that.

I have some more thoughts on that.

First is definitely inclusivity, which is like, we'll get there, I promise, right?

That's more of a con.

But when we're talking about pros, right, the inclusivity is certainly a part of it.

And I think it includes the inclusivity of somebody like Chris, who maybe doesn't want a challenging experience, right?

That's not what you're in that experience for.

You're not going into it to beat your head against this game.

You still want to experience it, you want to be able to get it, and you know what?

You're paying your good money to play it.

You put down $70, why can't I play this game?

And I think that that is certainly an argument, right?

Reduce frustration, that's another one that maybe Chris would understand or identify with, is being able to say, look, it's too challenging in this particular moment, and I'm feeling frustrated, and I'm bashing my head against this, and I don't want to give up, right?

I'm going to give up on the game, so an easy mode lets me through it.

I know that in our chat, because we do do this live on Twitch every Tuesday when we record, and then Friday is when the actual recording version goes up.

But if you're at the Twitch one on Tuesday, as Chimbis in our chat is, he says that the way that you handle the difficulty in a game like Assaults or Elden Ring is to summon something.

If it's too difficult, summon some NPC or another player to help you out, and that is your level difficulty scaling.

And sure, that exists, right?

That is an option that exists, but it's not in every game and it's not, you know, always the perfect thing for every person.

There's the fact that many people will argue that reducing or providing difficulty options will increase the player base, which means there's more players to play with.

It means it's easier, you know, more money, whatever.

But maybe personally, the thing that has always been the most compelling with regards to pros for difficulty is that easy modes allow for a player to progress through the story and experience the content without having these sort of big stair steps of difficulty, which increases my enjoyment as a player, right?

Like is a more enjoyable pacing.

It's a smoother pacing.

I don't have this moment where I'm like, man, I got stuck on the hag in Baldur's Gate for like six hours because I went in there too early.

You know, that sucks.

There was a in The Witcher 3.

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

In The Witcher 3, we went are there's a level in Carahein or whatever it is.

I don't remember the name of the city where if you go into these back alleys, you get attacked by a bunch of dwarves or gnomes or something.

Right.

And they were maybe 30 levels higher than me.

I wasn't supposed to be there, but I was there.

And then I got soft locked in this incredibly difficult fight.

And it ended my run.

I stopped playing because I couldn't like I didn't want to go and reload a save from five hours ago.

I didn't want to lose all of that time.

Right.

But also, I'm stuck in this stupid dwarf alley thing, getting beaten up in one hit by things that I can't kill at all.

And so even though, you know, it would have allowed me to continue to play to reload five hours back, I didn't.

And I stopped playing that game.

So I think there is a pro to having these things.

Right.

Yeah.

I've been there before.

I don't remember the game anymore because this was probably the 360 era.

Right.

But back then, it wasn't in my head to make multiple saves just in case.

So I did get to a point in the game where I just couldn't do anything.

Right.

I needed to be higher leveled or something.

I just there was nowhere to grind.

Right.

I think it was like some RPG or something.

So I was just like, well, I guess I'm never finishing whatever this game is, because I'm not doing all of that all over again.

It shows how much you actually wanted to finish it because you don't even remember the name of it anymore.

Yeah, it hurt me.

Justin, it hurt me.

I just don't even want to think of the pain, you know.

It hurt me, Justin.

It hurts you so much that you were just like, it's blocked.

Everything that may or may not have been good about it.

It's gone.

Like all my problems.

I just put it out of sight, out of mind.

You know, I don't let myself experience friction.

Yeah, blocked and muted.

L plus ratio.

No, the interesting thing to me about difficulty as well is you can make a game specifically difficult, and you could just do that.

That's the really cool thing about video games.

But the other thing about video games is that for it to be a commercial success, it has to be something that other people want to do.

That's one thing I wanted to get back to, actually.

Yeah.

So that's the con against it, right?

And I'm going to throw it right over to Trav.

But one of the major things is that it alters the artistic vision.

You have changed and compromised your intended experience, your intended vision for whatever the game is, because now the designed difficulty that is viewed as crucial or critical to that player experience is being adulterated.

Like the guy who makes Dark Souls really likes poison swamps.

We're not getting rid of the poison swamps.

That's his artistic vision, but people probably want that removed from the game to make it more gamer friendly, and that's not what it is.

That's an interesting example.

But yeah, I mean...

Zelda collectathon.

No, this is something...

I don't remember what it was that brought it up.

It might have been watching the state of play, actually.

That kind of reminded me of this, because this isn't a new thought.

I'm sure many of you have thought about it before, but I already forgot who it was.

It was either Chris or Justin.

I know it was an M.

But one of you mentioned the commercialization of broadly appealing a game to a mass market.

And I feel like there's always been a degree of that in some way.

I want to say I feel like it really started to become noticeable in the home console scene, I think around maybe the PS3 era is when I think it was really starting off.

But just this idea of like, this is going to sound really stupid and tell me if I'm off base here.

But people who don't make video games or don't even care about them now being in charge of making sure they sell, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, this has been a constant commercialization, right?

Like, not to throw them under the bus, but the current director of Xbox, Sarah Bond, is a woman who graduated her MBA and went to work for McKinsey, one of the most evil consulting corporations in the world, whose entire concept of bettering your company is to fire as many people as possible, and then got hired as an executive for Xbox.

Oh, that explains all the layoffs, okay.

Right, and as soon as she took over, what did she do?

She laid off everybody, because this is what she's been told is good.

McKinsey's interesting, and not to digress too much, but McKinsey's really interesting because they do have sort of an outsized hand in the gaming industry overall, because it's a whole bunch of MBA students who hire MBA students because MBA students know what they're doing.

And I'm sure that you've worked in a job where some guy came straight out of college and thought he knew what he was talking about, but he'd never actually done anything.

And so it was like, yeah, I know exactly how to do this.

We looked at it in a book.

It was like, that's great, but this is real life.

And now you're going to take the guy who says, well, I read it in a book, and you're going to put him in charge of, you know, a hundred thousand employees and a hundred billion dollars a year.

And that's what happened with Xbox, and that's what's happened with a lot of companies, where you have this sort of middle management that is people who actively don't play games.

There is an anecdote from, I can't remember who, but it was an EA company, somebody.

They brought in a publisher from EA, publishing executive, and they were showing this person a game, and they tried to hand them a controller, and the executives said, oh, I don't play games, and waved off the controller.

And this is the person who was, at that moment, determining whether or not that game should be published or not.

So how can they make that determination?

This certainly is a part of it, yes.

And I hate to make the digression there, but it's a major problem in the industry, where today a significant portion of the executive base is just people who graduated from Wharton, and, you know, they have spent zero time developing or even grayboxing or prototyping video games whatsoever.

Yeah, and they're making decisions on what should go into a game made by someone who their life's passion is crafting a game for people to enjoy, because they know what would sell.

Or they think they know what they sell.

The difficulty slider certainly make games sell better, but they do alter the artistic vision, as we mentioned.

I would also say that, and I'm going to give you, since we're talking about EA, it does reduce the sense of achievement, right?

You know, you don't get that sense of achievement that you get if the game is very, very easy, right?

If I go into, I don't know, a city builder, and I give you infinite money and all the unlocks, is it really fun to build the city anymore?

It was something I was going to mention when we were talking about the difficulty sliders and Dark Souls, because I was thinking about, you know, like GameShark, right?

I was like, yeah, there was a point where you were kind of just game-sharking the game and just walking through it without any resistance at all, right?

And then that goes too far in the other direction.

Like The Sims, you put the infinite money glitch in, like with SimCity, right?

It's like, well, I can just buy and build anything now, which has an appeal, right?

Yeah, I was arguing that has an appeal in itself.

But there is something to the...

Well, because then the core gameplay of that is still creating something.

It's sort of like a creative mode on Minecraft, right?

Like, there is a reason to do it.

But when the core gameplay is combat or build or make money or...

I don't know, make date, right?

Like, having something that gives you infinite money, well, that makes it not fun to make money anymore.

Something that makes it so that you instantly kill everything makes it not fun to kill anything anymore.

If you are following a walkthrough for your video game story, and all you do is follow the walkthrough, just from step to step to step to step to step, is that really that good?

Are you enjoying that experience?

That's a conundrum I've thought about.

I've come to the conclusion that if it is a text-based walkthrough, I'm more okay with it.

Now, great, anyone can do whatever the hell they want, but if it's a text walkthrough, you're not seeing everything, you're not experiencing that story, you're still able to form your own opinions on it, rather than treating a game like homework, where you have to copy down someone else's answers.

Right, so difficulty makes sense, I think, and has value in these games, because it is the thing that is giving you a reason.

Like, there's no reason to play if you're removing all the reason to play.

But at the same time, the difficulty, it can be very high for some people.

And this is where I'm going to give maybe a slightly hot take, and I know that this gets said sometimes, and people view it very negatively.

So warming you up, take this as generously as possible.

I don't think every game is for every person.

And if a game is too difficult for you, maybe that game isn't for you.

And I know that that is viewed as very negatively, because, well, I bought the game, I should be able to play it.

But I can go and I can buy a movie that is in Japanese that does not have subtitles.

If I don't speak Japanese, that movie is not for me.

And it is, I think, not particularly acceptable for me to say, well, why didn't you make subtitles for me?

A very dramatic example of this would be like going into a supermarket and buying dog food and then eating the dog food and saying, I don't like this, make it better.

You should try a different brand.

And you'll say, oh, sir, that was advertised for dogs.

That was not meant for me.

Well, I got that dog in me, though.

That's better than anything I could have said.

I think we can actually relate it to food, though.

We can relate it to food in that I am a vegan, and I go to a steakhouse, and I go, why don't you have more salad?

I think that's a very good way of looking at sort of difficulty in games, is looking at it and saying, well, here's a steak, but I want a salad, and go, well, here's steak, though.

You don't go out and have a steak.

You bought a steak, I'm sorry to say.

And right, like I am firmly in the camp that, and I'm sorry to just keep stepping all over you, Chris, but I'm firmly in the camp that more accessibility is better, right?

Ubisoft has been really good about doing great accessibility.

The Last of Us, holy crap, one of the most accessible games ever.

But that accessibility doesn't remove the core gameplay, because even though there is combat in The Last of Us, it's not really why you're playing the game, right?

You're playing it to experience the story of Ellie and Joel and, you know, that kind of world.

You're going through the Sony cinematic video game, right?

Like, that's what that is.

It's the same as Uncharted or any of those other types of games, right?

God of War, all very similar.

Spider-Man, very similar kinds of games.

And so going through that, the combat itself isn't actually all that important to the core underpinnings of that experience.

Yeah, it's a part of it, but you can remove many, many, many, many aspects of that game, and still get a very close approximation of the original thing.

But if you were to go into a Doom Eternal and say, well, now you have infinite ammo and every gun kills everything, right?

You have fundamentally changed the entire experience of the game.

And I think once you've done that, once you've changed the fundamental experience, that's when it becomes, well, you're asking for a salad at a steakhouse.

And admittedly, some steakhouses do sell salads, and some sell really great salads, but not everyone does.

And I think it's unreasonable to go to a steakhouse expecting them to.

Yeah, which is why I made those comments I said earlier about Dark Souls, where it's like if you don't really vibe with Dark Souls in terms of its gameplay, the story isn't really going to keep you coming back for more.

Like you're going to Dark Souls because you want to play Dark Souls.

You don't want to go to Dark Souls because man, every A test, the destroyer or whatever that bloodborne boss was like she her backstory is so good.

I need to stick around to figure out what's going on with her.

Like Melania from Elden Ring, man, great character design.

I really like her character design, but it's not enough to make me play the game.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I did the Devil's Advocate for the Souls thing earlier, but I just don't play them because it's like maybe if I sit down and really give it a chance one time, I'll finally click and get into it.

But it's like, I just enjoy those games through people who enjoy those games.

I'm glad that they're happy.

I'll give you two additional things that we haven't really talked about.

And one of them, I think you're both going to agree, you're all going to be like, yeah, okay, that makes sense.

One of them, I don't know.

So with regards to games that are not AAA, adding in additional difficulty sliders and not making it just the most basic thing of enemy get 20% more health, right?

But actually doing a balanced and tested difficulty is a higher amount of development resources, right?

Not every game company has the people to be able to say, let's make a second game, right?

Because essentially what you're doing when you're saying, give me multiple difficulty levels, is you're saying make separate video games for me, right?

I want the regular game, and then I want game 0.5, and then I also want game 1.5 too.

I want it harder and easier, and they all need to be balanced, and they all need to be tested, and they all need to work, and they all need to have enemy placements, and they all need to have new drops, and they all need to...

Like that takes time, and if you're not Microsoft, that may not be something that you can afford to do.

Because you still are trying to sell this game without putting much money into it, because you don't want to put too much money into it, because then you have to sell more copies to make up the fact that you spent a billion dollars on the game.

Right, and one of the things that people don't really understand about the gaming industry is that when a game sells for $70, that developer is probably making $15 to $20 off of it.

And that's a good, reasonable percentage that they're doing that, maybe significantly less.

So for every dollar they spend, they have to make $5 to recoup it.

And that's without any sort of cost of marketing.

Once you add marketing in, it can be very expensive to make a dollar.

Right?

It can be really expensive to make a dollar.

And so, if I'm looking at it going, well, I want to do this, it's going to cost me $10.

That means that I now need to sell $70 to make that $10.

I don't think I can do that.

It's not worth it.

And then it all comes back down to, we have to make a game that people want to buy and want to play.

People want to buy.

And like, there are plenty of, if you people really need to play more indie games, to be clear, you need to go play indie games.

That's where all of the exciting stuff is happening.

That's where all of the things that you want are happening.

When we talk AAA games, it's always going to be milk toast garbage, right?

It's always going to be, always.

Indie games are where all the exciting stuff is happening.

So if you want more exciting stuff, go play indie games.

But if you're not going to, then...

Like, if the only game you're going to play is Dark Souls, I don't know.

Yeah.

Here's my other...

I think another Crab Adventure just came out.

Another Crab Adventure, yeah.

And that's a good indie game that follows the same kind of idea.

And you know what?

It's not going to be a perfect Souls analog.

It isn't Dark Souls.

It's not trying to be.

It's just trying to be close enough while putting its own spin on it to a game that they wanted to make.

Yes.

And that's kind of the point here.

Go experience those.

You're going to get to experience a lot of cooler things.

I'm going to give you my other thought that I think is maybe a bit more controversial, but I guarantee you that we've all heard it definitely Trav.

Which is that when people start talking about accessibility features, adding an easy mode, players tend to view that as a sign of lesser skill, as a way of the game not being played as intended.

And so it becomes a sort of elitist thing of, no, no, no, we don't, this game is meant to be hard.

You don't deserve an easy mode because this is meant to be hard.

Yeah, it's where the adage get good comes from.

Exactly.

Because there's a sense of, there's a sense of accomplishment and self actualization when you beat that thing that's hard, because you're like, you completed it, you achieved what you thought was impossible.

You achieved something that you thought was very difficult and you managed to beat it.

And because, and just because you did it, now someone else has to do it, even if they don't want to.

That's something I experienced a lot with the very early days of Ultra Kill, actually.

I was like, hey, violence is too hard for me.

Not true anymore.

But back then, I was like, yeah, I don't quite get it.

I'm going to try to learn the game.

And I got a lot of comments on that very first video I made way, way forever ago.

Just like, get good, basically, like a bit of name calling that I'm not going to repeat.

But, you know, that kind of stuff, just like, and I feel like that is a unique issue only to these sort of like micro cultures we have online.

But, you know, it is a thing.

It impacts some people.

And it's so vocal for people who are on those platforms and on those, in those communities that are trying to experience the game in a way that they can now talk to about it with other people in the zeitgeist.

And yet, it's still such a minor amount of people who actually purchase and play these games that just have no idea that any of this is happening and that this kind of discourse is happening around the game.

When in reality, you can probably just play a Kirby game and everyone's having a good time and everybody's happy.

So, one of the types of difficulties that we haven't really talked about, and I think Chris is actually kind of a crazy expert on this, there is a difficulty outside of like poor gameplay stuff, right?

Like, yeah, you can play a game and maybe the combat is difficulty or difficult, right?

Or maybe it's hard to make money or whatever.

But collectathons are a type of difficulty where it's not really so much about going out and killing everything, whatever, right?

That can be in the game, certainly.

But the collectathon difficulty is more about going and finding all the things and sort of exploring everything.

How do you feel about somebody using like a walkthrough to find where all of the collectibles are in a game?

Where's all the blue coins, Chris?

Well, I've used them over and over in my life, so I'm pretty thankful and happy for them, honestly.

I keep thinking about the steel ingots in the pit in Fallout 3 recently and how much I hated finding all of those back in the day, right?

Like, I didn't enjoy that.

That wasn't a fun thing.

But I did it.

You know, if I had internet access back then, I would have used a guide like Lickety Split.

You know what I mean?

So it's just, I guess, the ego tide thing where it's like, if they're going around acting like they did it on their own and berating others, even though they used a walkthrough, then that's a little strange.

But I'm very for it.

I'm like recently, I'm just in the era of my life.

Like we mentioned walkthroughs earlier.

It's like, if using a walkthrough is going to help me see the end of the game, then I'm just going to use it at this point.

Like, I don't really berate myself for it or feel like I'm giving myself a lesser experience.

It's just like, if I would not do this otherwise without it, then I'm going to do it.

It's kind of my vibe.

So, especially with that, I mean, I've been doing a thing where I've been getting like one of each Pokemon for the last few years, and I haven't been just fumbling around in the dark for the best ways to do some of that stuff, right?

Like, I'm definitely looking up what people are doing, what they're suggesting, the best place to find which ones, right?

So, A+, in my book, do it if you want.

Have you found Phoebus yet?

But do you consider that like...

Nice.

Do you ever have moments where you feel, say, like...

You're not getting the intended experience by using a guide, or do you even...

Is that even a thought that crosses your mind?

It crossed my mind.

That's why I had so much resistance to it for a long time, right?

But like...

Then there's something just like, you know, The Legend of Dragoon, like that's a JRPG I had as a kid, and I didn't actually see it through all the way till the end until half a year ago.

Like, I finally just said, you know what?

The walkthrough will keep me focused and actually committing to the game.

It removes all the barriers of mental resistance I have, of just like losing interest or whatever, right?

It will make me see the credits and find all the stupid hidden collectibles along the way in that game for like the PlayStation trophies, right?

Because they're hidden in the rendered backgrounds, like you don't see them kind of thing.

You just have to know where to go.

And I'm like, all right, you know what?

I'll use a guide.

I'll know which characters have good weapons to use that won't bite me in the butt later because I built a character the wrong way or something, right?

It's good for that stuff, you know?

And at a point, it's like, especially with JRPG builds, right?

It's like, if I'm going to risk getting the wrong build and just shooting myself in the foot, then I will definitely use a guide and make sure I at least have an easier time than a time where I can't beat the thing.

There's a difference there, depending on the amount of input you're doing, right?

So if that guide were to take away, like, I don't know, let's say that in Pokemon, you didn't have to fight them if you found them a certain way, right?

You could use an item and just instantly capture them, and there's no fights, and you can go and capture them in that way.

Now your guide tells you exactly where to go and how to capture them every single time in that way where you never have to fight them.

Or like for a boss fight, it's like, do this on turn one, turn two, turn three.

Right, yeah, exactly.

Is that removing some of, like, how do you feel about that kind of walk-through gameplay experience instead?

Because I tell you, when you talk about using a guide in general, nobody has a problem with that, I think, in terms of difficulty.

And I understand we're kind of getting a little gatekeeper there, because you can do whatever you want, obviously.

But with a game like A Path of Exile, or Diablo IV, for example, where you have these sort of really big, I don't know, skill trees and stuff.

I was going to say, it's like flowcharted to be optimized.

Yeah, I need some help.

I'm not going to spend 300 hours figuring out what the perfect build is for a barbarian bash cleaver, right?

Especially if someone's done that already.

And why would I want to go and look for that?

Why would I want now?

I maybe will experiment within that.

But there are certainly people who are going to go out there, and they're going to be kind of, you know, scientists about this stuff, and they're going to help you make that thing.

And I think especially when we're talking about like a path of exile, which if you haven't seen the skill tree for it is disgusting.

I think there's 2000 skills on it.

It is absolutely insane, and there's no way to look in and figure out what you're going to do.

I think I just saw Chris look it up on screen.

It just showed as like a blob of colors.

I couldn't even recognize that this was like a designed thing.

I'm going to put that in the show notes.

What is this?

In the fighting game community, we call them lab rats, and lab rats are people who go into the lab and will grind out and find any piece of technology that they can find about a certain character.

And be like, this is something this character can do during the gameplay.

I'm not sure if it's usable in an actual fight, but they can do it.

I'm not going to test it in the wild.

I'm just going to show you that it exists, and then you can take that tool and decide whether or not it's useful in an actual fight.

It's like comparing a test bot to a speedrunner.

And we see this all the time with new games, where people are like, here are the builds, here are the things, you know, this is what I did.

And obviously people are fans of them, right?

Because otherwise, the YouTuber who says, hey guys, here's the newest build from the newest patch, I've been doing this, and look what I was able to do, I hit 37 billion damage, right?

Like that wouldn't exist, and I'm not talking about those to be clear, because I think that those make a lot of sense.

I do think that there is a certain level of input that you have to be able to do before it does become, again, game-sharky, right?

Like if it is step by step, here's what you do, and now game is over, and you've experienced nothing, why not just watch a Let's Play?

Like the one walkthrough that I will always use when playing these games, and I say this every single time that I'm on the podcast for some reason, it's Persona.

There's something called social links or confidants, depending on whatever game you're playing.

And it's you talking with a character, and then they'll have like a text box come up with three answers.

And if you pick the right answer, you get more friendship points, and the friendship points can accumulate, and you can get to the next level of the social link, which lets you see more of the story.

But if you pick the wrong one, you just have to spend a day literally wasting time talking to someone and getting those friendship points another way.

And I will always use a guide for that, because there's no benefit to saying the bad thing.

There's only a benefit to saying the positive thing.

So, in my opinion, it's just not wasting time seeing things that are not meant to be like the good answer.

And now you have to waste time in the game, so you are missing out on other content because you have to spend time to get the points that you missed out on because you wanted to say, big butts bonanza, and they're like, I don't even know what that is.

You only shortchange yourself, right?

Like, I've only beaten five Royal, but in that thing, like the whole new post game they added, like if you didn't friendship up with like a certain character or two, you just didn't get it.

You just missed it.

You just missed it.

It just the game just ends like it normally does, and you don't get to see the actual new content they put in the game that they released.

And it's just like, why would you do that to yourself?

Yeah, I have no guilt in a optimal calendar guide for a persona game, because it's like, well, I just want to see the game I'm playing, right?

Yeah, it's fun to pick whatever answer you want, but you can shoot yourself in the foot if you really want to.

If you would, if you're really like, yeah, I'm going to play this 100 hour game twice, then go for it.

The boy.

Hello.

I've seen people.

I know people who play a persona game every year, and they'll play the same going over and over again.

And I'm just like, I appreciate that you like this game that much to do it.

Like I like I like literally, I know people who finished persona 3 reload and then just started a run of persona 3 portable to play as the girl character.

And I'm just like, you just played this game.

I do that too.

Not to replay as the girl character, just to replay the game.

There is, there is, I think, also sort of a subcategory of games, which is games that use difficulty as a narrative tool, something like a Celeste, right?

Or perhaps even God of War, where the the challenge and the puzzles are intended to reflect the journey of the main character, right?

And as things become more easy, or you become more skilled, or whatever, it is sort of showing the mastery of the character over the emotions, while you are getting mastery over the character's ability to do things.

And I think that we do see that a little bit.

It's not super common, right?

There's games like Lisa maybe, and a couple of other ones where difficulty is still used like this, but they're very, very rare.

And I feel that that gives you kind of this more immersive, emotionally resonant sort of experience, right?

But they're definitely out there.

I don't know that there's...

Can any of you think of any others that use that?

I don't think there's a whole lot.

My go-to example would have been Celeste.

That's all I got, really.

Celeste...

I'm not gonna...

No, not that one.

And I never asked for an easier Celeste, right?

No, I would never ask for an easier Celeste.

Celeste is perfect the way it is.

You do have one.

You can turn on god mode.

It exists in the game.

You can turn it on, and you can never die.

And so, like, even in that game, where they do have this sort of insane difficulty, Celeste is a very difficult game.

Yeah, the point of the game is you're supposed to die like 500 times per level, and it's really, really fun.

It is part of the intended experience, and even then, they did do an accessibility easy mode.

But I would say that that's more of them showing, like, that is part of their vision.

I got one.

Hades.

Hades.

It's a roguelite, so I don't know how much that counts.

Yeah, roguelites are an interesting one, because those games are meant to fail and retry over and over and over again.

And, man, I'm playing my first roguelite ever because they made a Pokemon roguelite on browser.

That's basically my first roguelite I've ever played.

I'm calling you out.

You played Risk of Rain.

Yeah, but I played it with you guys, and you guys said, hey, I figured out how to get to the end.

You said, hey, I figured out how to get to the end, and I said, oh, OK, and then I followed you.

And I picked the sword guy, and I felt cool, but I was doing significantly less damage than both of you.

I see.

You didn't do it on your own like we did.

I see.

I see.

No, I did not.

I only played that game with you guys.

Gotcha.

Fake flan.

I also think there are some sort of games where difficulty is encouraging maybe experimentation, right?

So certain games, as we talked about with Path of Exile, have these sort of deep, complex systems, right?

Difficulty can serve as an encouragement for you as the player to experiment, to try different strategies and builds and play style.

I think maybe the one that's the most popular, that would be sort of like this, is Monster Hunter, right?

Monster Hunter.

Where you have this sort of optimal gear, and you also learn monster patterns and weaknesses, and the combat itself is actually fairly high skill ceiling.

And through that, you get that sense of pride and accomplishment that I mentioned earlier, because you're capable of going through and sort of experiencing.

Yeah, and Monster Hunter is very much so like that, too, because that's a game for me.

I always struggle to really get into playing them, because I don't like it at all.

Like, I really like Monster Hunter from the outside, looking in looks so cool.

But the core concept of I'm going to fight monsters to get stronger, to fight monsters to get stronger, to fight monsters, just never really clicked with me.

And that's a type of game where a difficulty slider is not going to make me want to play the game more.

My issue is not, it takes too long to fight monsters.

My issue is, why am I fighting these monsters?

I just feel like I'm slaughtering things, and I feel bad.

Hell yeah, brother.

And then, maybe the final thing that I'll have to say about it, with regards to certain different types of things with difficulty, is the dynamic difficulty balancing, which is a system that we do see in quite a lot.

I'll give you a whole list of games in a minute, but the idea is that in real time, we're going to adjust the game's difficulty, right?

We're going to keep it challenging, but not frustrating.

If you die too many times, we're going to lower the difficulty.

If you're killing everything, we're going to create more difficult stuff.

It's really difficult to do well, but when it's done well, it's really, really good.

For example, Left 4 Dead, the AI Director, God Hand, Resident Evil 4, where they digest different things.

Halo did it.

Mario Kart 8 uses its rubber banding.

I would show that as a bad example, right?

One of the least satisfying examples ever is when you are in first place and get blue-shelled and then everybody rubber bands past you.

That's not a good experience, but it's certainly an example of this sort of dynamic difficulty balancing, right?

Did you play Crash Bandicoot 4, Chris?

I did, yes.

Do you remember, did you try the modern mode that was in that?

I don't remember.

I think that's probably what I played it on, yeah.

So in that game, I remember it dynamically adjusts the number of attacks.

Oh, okay.

That makes sense.

So the more, the worse you're doing, the more checkpoints you get.

Yes.

And that doesn't change the core gameplay, doesn't change the intent of the game because you're taking that into account when you're making it.

Maybe Horizon Zero Dawn, where different enemies would have different health and stuff, depending on how you were playing.

I think that this sort of dynamic stuff, it's very cool, it's very hard to do.

But when it's done really well, it is very cool.

Because the game never asks you if you want to turn the difficulty up, it always asks you if you want to bring it down.

Right.

That's a good point.

And so when it automatically just goes, you know what, we're gonna bring you up, and we're gonna make it a little bit more difficult.

And I really do think that the gold standard for that has to be left for dead.

The AI director is so good at what it does, that it is challenging for professionals, and it is challenging for people who are terrible first time players, right?

And it's still the same kind of level of challenge, I think.

Do you want to explain what the director is to anyone who might not know?

Would you like to explain what the director is?

I could try.

I feel like I've talked a lot already.

You have.

You probably know more about it than I do, because I haven't done a lot of research into it.

But it from what I remember, it's essentially the game like there is a computer controlled, basically a dungeon master, a DM looking over the whole thing and trying to understand like, all right, these people are doing really well.

Let's throw in some items over here.

Let's throw in a big monster over here.

Once they're, you know, maybe doing a little too well, do they need help?

That will determine if we're going to spawn med kits, pills, weapons over in this spot.

That's always supposed to spawn something, but what you need is going to depend on how you've been doing.

And so it's very adaptive to how you as a group or by yourself have been doing with Left 4 Dead.

Yeah, if you spend too long in a certain area, it's going to start pushing in the types of monsters that will force you to move.

If you are moving things too quickly, it'll start supporting, you know, bringing in the things where it'll slow you down a little bit.

If it notices that you are healing a lot, it's going to start giving you healing items because you're healing a lot.

If it notices that you are only picking up rifles and never picking up a shotgun, it's going to try and give you more rifles and less shotguns.

You know, it's going to affect the enemies, the items, various parts of the gameplay.

It's really very smart implementation.

There's a reason so many people who have even casually played Left 4 Dead always have such a great time with it, and it's because they've basically just made it to tailor an experience around you and your skill.

And it's fascinating how it's handled.

Which I didn't even know that was a thing, and that's extremely fascinating.

Yeah.

The AI director in it, right, which is sort of what the idea was.

It's real basic, super whatever, but it's just kind of following trees in order to keep you at a constant amount of intensity.

It wants you to have these sort of lulls, but it wants you to get really pumped up too.

And it tries to keep that sort of roller coaster, this is really hard, okay, this isn't so, this is really hard, okay, I'm all right, all this, like it wants that all the time.

There's a console command in the game that you can basically let it show the debug menu that gives the director, like it labels how, like the current mood of the director.

And I remember seeing that for the first time, of just like, this feels like I'm playing almost like a tabletop game, and I kind of love that.

That's really, I didn't even know that was a real thing.

That's really, really cool.

Justin, you'd like Left 4 Dead.

I do like Left 4 Dead.

You probably would.

You'd love it.

You've never played it before.

I've streamed it before.

And it does all sorts of stuff.

I'm looking right now, right, just kind of interested in what it does.

And it does things like if, you know, lots of zombies are getting close to the player, then that will raise the intensity level because the zombies are getting close to the player.

Whereas if they are being killed farther away, it will lower the intensity because clearly they're not getting close to the player.

And it does that in order to try and make it so that you are having things that are right up in your face and you're having these moments.

And you're screaming with your friends and then running to the safe zone, and then you're trying to close the door to try and progress to the next level.

But there's a bunch of zombies rushing in.

There's really nothing quite like being like, oh my God, that was a moment.

Oh, we need a break.

Oh my God.

All right, I need to heal.

Yeah, that's why I never am able to do more than like one really good session of Left 4 Dead, because at the end of it, I'm just like, I'm winded.

I have.

Yeah.

I have just run a marathon in this game.

Talking about it, I actually started playing Left 4 Dead 2 a couple of days ago, single player, just to be like, I want to learn how to play this, because, you know, when you're playing with friends, it's kind of hard to understand how this game works.

I've just been playing through it single player, and it's like, wow, there's a whole bunch of nuances that I never thought of.

And I already knew about the game director thing, because it's hard to watch a video essay about Valve games without someone bringing it up.

And of course, Valve's much vaunted AI director.

Took the words right out of my ears.

But yeah, it's something that I can't even really think of.

I'm sure that definitely there has to be other games that have tried stuff like this, but I can't think of one that's worked this well.

What about Back 4 Blood?

Back 4 Blood, World War Z, there's a lot of the sort of Left 4 Dead clones that do the AI director or attempt to do the AI director.

But there is definitely a reason why Left 4 Dead is the gold standard for that.

And I think maybe the one that tried to do it the most recently would have been the Resident Evil 4 remake, or maybe it was Resident Evil 2 with Mr.

X.

With Mr.

X, right?

He was a dynamically difficult balance load.

Like he came in and did this sort of break into the things and attack you, depending on the intensity of the game at that point.

If you didn't have a lot of ammo, he might attack you and have a slightly slower walk.

He's just meant to make you shit your pants, and the game knows how to ease it on you.

I don't want to use the word edge, but...

But also put it there at the right time to make you be either like, Oh, God, not him right now, or I thought I was safe, why is he here?

It worked.

I had to take breaks from that game.

I mean, I was scared to cat in the first place, but I had to put it down for a few days at a point once he was in the equation.

I was like, I just...

My nerves are too shot from this guy.

Like, I am constantly on edge.

I cannot...

I cannot handle this.

Yeah, no, straight up, my hands were a little shaky.

I was like, OK, OK, we're not doing this tonight.

I'll come back during the weekend.

That's fair.

So, our Patreon question of the week...

Oh, I was just about to segue to that, do ya?...

from Racrox, which video game character would be the worst roommate?

And you know, I've been looking at this for a little bit, and I have one that I think would be a terrible roommate, but not for the reason that most people would hate their roommate, right?

I think that I would not want to room with Sly Cooper.

He's my homeboy.

I think Sly Cooper's a super cool guy, but I'm gonna get raided.

They are going...

he's...

I mean, like, my stuff might get stolen, right?

I feel like he's the type of guy who might take my sandwich.

He'd pretend that he's about to kiss you and then handcuff you to a pole and then run away with your sandwich.

Should we keep this to, you know, reasonable roommate figures?

Like, I'm not gonna say Shodan.

Or the Colossus from Shadow of the Colossus.

I'm not gonna say Metal Gear Sahelanthropus.

Yeah, you don't want Shodan.

I'll keep it to a humanoid person.

Okay, let me think.

Um...

Worst?

Why is my phone going off?

Um, worst?

Sahelanthropus is calling.

Human, humanoid roommate.

The Marauder from Doom Eternal.

Let's see.

Why?

That's what he says in the game, you know?

And then he's like, and then he dies.

I'm gonna have to go with...

I'm just scrolling through my Steam.

I'm just trying to refresh my memory of any video game.

Alright.

Cargo Volgian from Metal Gear Solid V, the Phantom Pain.

Oh yeah, dude, he'd keep punching me.

That would suck.

I don't want Deadman.

Yeah, oh my gosh, I scrolled past Death Stranding, and I'm like, no, Sam would be a cool roommate, and I just kept scrolling.

I didn't even think about Deadman.

The thing with Sam is he'd walk off across America, and you'd just never see him again.

He'd never be home.

Yeah, he would pay his rent, hopefully.

It was kind of the thing with Sly, I was thinking about.

That's just free income.

I could suck when Sly's around, but he just goes off to France or something, and you don't see him for months, right?

He'd be one of those roommates that you're like, yeah, he pays his rent.

I'm going to say What's-Her-Face from Bioshock Infinite.

Elizabeth?

Yeah, because she'd keep throwing shit at me.

Hey, Trav, here.

Catch.

Trav, here.

Catch.

It's like, I'll open up a portal to another dimension.

Here, Trav.

Trav.

I need to replay that.

Catch.

I do need to replay Bioshock Infinite, actually.

Bioshock Infinite was the first one that I played.

Not the best first impression if I wanted to understand the series, but man, I had a lot of fun with the game.

Right.

I mean, I played it because Bioshock One was too scary for me.

Which is very funny going back to it now, because it's like this is very not scary at all.

Maybe, maybe just like as an adult, I'm just like, what is this?

He's like a little screaming child.

I don't know.

I think Baby Mario is scary.

I was thinking Toadsworth would be a terrible roommate.

Toadsworth?

Toadsworth would be like, well, this is for the princess, so.

He'd just wake up in your business.

He'd like wake up and get out of blah, blah, blah.

Like he doesn't have a concept of personal space.

You'd wake up and you'd just be standing by your bed looking up at you.

He wouldn't say anything.

Yeah, because he's not tall enough to clear the bed.

So he's just looking up at you and he's like, Master Mario, I need you to go save the princess again.

He probably smells like the mushroom people don't shower.

Let's be honest.

They're literally mushrooms.

But they are fun guys.

Shut up.

If you want to give us a Patreon question, where can you go, Chris?

Gosh.

Well, actually, we just opened the door.

There's so many avenues to ask us a Patreon question of the week.

You can go, ideally, to patreon.com/crub.

You can even just throw two American dollars at us, and you get access to the spreadsheet to give us some questions.

I think they can see one to the Discord server too, right?

I don't remember anymore.

Let's say it does.

If it doesn't, we'll get you a link anyway.

But just go in there and put as many questions as you want.

Give us two dollars.

Fill that sheet up.

It is the pinned post.

If you're a YouTube member or a Twitch sub, you get access to those Crubscriber Discord channels, and it is pinned in Crubscriber updates.

Please give us questions.

So that way we don't have to keep dancing to Brody's whims.

Yes.

Please, for the love of God.

Yeah.

But I think that that is...

I think we've done it, boys.

We've made a pretty good episode.

I think we had...

I actually had a lot of fun with this conversation.

And I hope that you guys at home listening have as well.

I got to work on my openings, but yeah, I had a great time with this.

It was thrown on me at the last second.

I just got to put that out there.

That's not true.

You asked for this.

I had three years to prepare.

Yeah, you asked for this.

I'm going to say this on behalf of everyone at the Crubbening.

Thank you for watching, guys.

If you liked us, please watch more.

That's it.