Shadows Die Twice & # 39; and difficulty vs accessibility

For those who have listened to the social media talk about video games in recent days, you've probably noticed a few frequently repeated buzzwords.

There is "difficulty" and "accessibility", and a lot of discussion around the tension between these two concepts. There is also "Sekiro" and "FromSoft", a reference to the recently released game Sekiro: the shadows are dying twice of Dark souls and Transported by blood Software developer.

I will be the first to admit that online video games talk can sometimes seem inaccessible to a wider audience. But I also think that this example deserves to take the time to understand, so let's go.

What is this game?

Sekiro is a game in which you play as a ninja in a fantasy version of feudal Japan. You have a big sword, a mechanical arm and a sly bag to shoot to clear your way through an army of enemies.

Software games are known for their high level of technical challenge, and Sekiro is no exception. Instead of using sword chops to reduce the health of each enemy, you are slowly degrading their posture – their ability to repel your attacks, by and large – while maintaining yours. Break their posture and you gain an opportunity to deliver a quick stop of a fatal blow.

In practice, Sekiro battles are a deadly dance. You read all the pictures and watch for any precious moment when you surround an enemy. There are different sound and visual cues that you enter with time and experience, and that's where the game lies: continue to put yourself in a threat until you learn about it. behavior, and then use that knowledge to overcome it.

The big challenge lies in the details. The enemies move quickly and without any reliable reason. They appear in different groups or are hidden until you cross an invisible line. Bosses and minibosses, SekiroThe biggest tests of, show a greater variety of movements and hit harder in general.

I play games both personally and professionally for a very long time. Sekiro is by far the hardest I have ever played. I doubt that I find time to master it or even finish it. Many people have come to the same conclusion, and that is perfectly correct.

So what is it?

After some time Sekiro published March 22, people began to suggest that From Software could perhaps lighten up a bit. Where games like Dark souls and Transported by blood gave players the ability to gradually increase their power until formidable threats became more manageable, Sekiro do not do the same thing with the RPG style upgrade.

What else, Sekiro it's not online at all. In previous games, an online connection provided access to a number of benefits, including useful notes written by the player, and, most importantly, the ability to call for outside help. . Most of the time, a stranger can enter your game and, yes, choose to ruin everything. But they could also help and be helped in return. Even the toughest bosses become trivial from 2v1.

Sekiro ditches all that. There is no online game. There is no leveling based on power. It's a game without any kind of safety valve. Either you start to master it … or you do not master it. And if you do not, well … you miss a whole series of beautiful and challenging games.

Games do not make "easy" difficulty settings – or any sort of adjustable difficulty – by design, but Sekiro ditches any pretense: there is no help to find. As many have pointed out, "easy" is a relative concept.

"I myself have occasional chronic pain that is relieved only by a corset, and when I put it on, I'm ten percent more clumsy with a controller, which makes Sekiro ten percent stronger. Can I get up to reach that extra ten percent? May be. Should I wait to? It's a different question, "wrote Joshua Rivera for Kotaku in an article, saying that an" easy mode "had never ruined a match.

Rivera added, "Some people with disabilities may not need adjustments, but that's exactly the problem: the word" hard "means different things to different people."

Difficulty vs accessibility

That's where we get to the heart of the conversation around Sekiro. A faction of Software Software is opposed to any suggestion to make the game more welcoming to a wider audience. They claim that such a move would torment From's artistic intention, as evidenced by the studio's past games and general philosophy around what constitutes challenging gameplay.

But it is not quite true. That these fans really believe in the importance of preserving From's "artistic intent" or that they are just (unconsciously or not) keeping them "for the elite players only!" game, they forget that the difficulty is subjective. Interpretations of what "hard" means vary enormously, especially when you accept that not all players have the same physical or cognitive skills.

In addition, all of these "except artistic intent!" The arguments overlook another fundamental fact about video games: there is something exciting, even rewarding, to break the rules as they are written. As Waypoint's Patrick Klepek has explained, longtime players are not really strangers to this idea.

People have always looked for different ways to play a game, and we hypocritically associate the terms "easy", "effective" and "fun" with anything that makes us situational. The players had the habit of holding their PSPs in a strange way, a method called the "claw", in order to properly control the Monster Hunter's camera. Capcom probably did not plan that! Cheat Engine, essentially a Game Genie of modern times, is a software entirely dedicated to allow you to cheat. Each person has a story in which she passes through a wall, or watches a boss sink into death and celebrates this canonical advancement.

It cites a wider range of examples than this one, from classic cheats like the Konami code – which Contra (among others) much more accessible for all players of the day – towards modern examples of "cheesing", or using blind spots in the code of a game or programming AI to claim a any advantage.

So the difficulty is subjective. It's ultimately a function of design and is based on how the creator of the game perceives the audience. Accessibility is a totally different consideration. As an advocate of "accessibility, inclusivity and diversity", Cherry Thompson wrote for IGN about recognizing barriers.

Games are, at the base, a set of barriers designed to create a challenge, mixed with the illusion that you solve everything yourself. There are times, however, when developers have been able to create obstacles we do not know exist. That's why we test and that's how we end up accidentally excluding players, especially disabled players, that we would like to include. We deliberately mitigate and remove obstacles throughout the game's design (Sekiro does so through his frequent checkpoint idols and stealth indicators, for example). in spirit, we will inevitably have unintentional barriers.

Accessibility is eliminating or mitigating these unintended barriers. Obstacles that arise and prevent a large part of the audience from enjoying the game at the same level as the target crowd.

The Thompson feature discusses the various improvements that Software has made in accessibility over the years. Discreet volume sliders, larger text on the screen, and the ability to remap control schemes have made the studio's different games more accessible without sacrificing the emphasis on technical skills. that is, control over the controls and mechanisms that are at the heart of every encounter. in a game of.

But, she adds, this does not mean that there is no room for improvement. This is really the crux of all accessibility discussions as a result of SekiroPress Release: For all "git gud" angry gamers, as Klepek calls them – people expressing concern about more accessible access. Sekiro represents a betrayal of De's central focus – they miss the point.

Steve Spohn, COO of the charity AbleGamers, has summed it up very well in a thread on Twitter on Friday.

It's not like it's a new conversation. Every day, new game examples are progressing and allow for optimal accessibility. As Thompson pointed out, even creative teams such as From From embrace a certain dogmatic attitude towards the difficulty, have shown their ability to grow and improve.

But there is always room for improvement, even if there is full of creators there who get it. I am here to explain all this because I think that the community should be a full participant by reminding the creators that the difficulty is relative and totally opposed to the creation of games accessible to all types of players.