Friction in Games – How No Option Can Result in a Better Game

Gaming is bigger than ever before. Twenty years ago, gaming was a hobby only for nerds, but we’ve come a long way since then. Nowadays everyone plays no matter their age or gender. With that change came more accessibility options. This is great in many ways as most games can now be enjoyed by everyone no matter their skill level. However, some games choose not to give you any options — and there are good reasons for that.

Friction leads to emotions

My palms get sweaty. For two hours, I have been fighting Trobbio, the last boss in Hollow Knight: Silksong. With every try I learned more about his moves, tried to adjust my strategy and improve. I even went back to check my equipment and build to figure out what I could improve to have the best chance. I feel tired and exhausted but my will is not broken yet… and then it happens the perfect try, all goes well but at the very end I mess up, I’m close to dying, but with my last breath I manage the impossible. I beat Trobbio! I have done it! My whole body shakes from adrenalin and excitement. A rewarding feeling that isn’t easy to find in real life.

The question now is would I have had the same experience if there had been a difficulty slider. I personally think no. First, humans like to take the path of least resistance. The moment we know there is an “easy” way most people will take it. But the second reason is even more important. Designing a well balanced game is very hard and let’s face it, ninety percent of developers don’t even try anymore. Difficulty options give developers an easy way out. Design a boss that looks cool, don’t bother if it’s well balanced and then just dial the damage and HP numbers up or down. This doesn’t make for a well balanced game but it is the reality of gaming nowadays.

Quality of Life can harm a game

But friction is not just about pure difficulty — it’s also about earning a reward. My favorite example for this is Monster Hunter. I am a huge fan of the series and I was very excited for the release of Monster Hunter Wilds this year. In past Monster Hunter titles you had to prepare for a hunt. You had to go out and collect every single herb yourself to craft potions or collect nets, prepare traps, and so on. In a way it was hard work to get ready for a hunt.

Some will now say that this sounds boring and maybe in some way it is. But it also led to a more meaningful hunt. If you have to work for every single potion you will think twice before using it. Every single hunt feels more meaningful and has some sort of pressure attached to it from the get go.

Now I understand that Capcom tried over the years to reduce the “boring” grind to appeal to a bigger audience but Wilds overdid this. Granted Wilds had many problems but the biggest one for me was that it lost the feeling of being a hunter. In Wilds you sit down on your mount and it will automatically run to the next Monster. So you don’t have to track anymore. The same goes for resources like herbs. You pretty much never have to go around collecting them. Those elements lead to less thrilling hunts and replace the feeling of a true hunter with a typical meaningless grind game.

Games are Art

A lot of what I’ve said so far boils down to one thing: emotions. If we want games to be seen as art we have to allow them to invoke emotions in us. You can achieve that in many ways. With amazing worlds, characters, story and graphics. But you can also achieve this through gameplay. One of the reasons why Mario games are such a success is because the moment to moment gameplay invokes a feeling of joy in you. Same goes for a game like Animal Crossing. It makes you feel calm and cozy because it has a slow playstyle.

Now some developers want to invoke different emotions in us. They want us to feel scared, thrilled, excited, hopeless, frustrated and rewarded. For some games it’s crucial to not offer you any difficult options to give you those emotions and feelings. A game like Dark Souls wouldn’t have worked with an easy difficulty setting. Sure people would still have found something they like in the game. They still would have enjoyed exploring this mysterious world and had fun with the great combat.

But that’s not what the developer, Hidetaka Miyazaki, wants you to feel. He wants you to feel the struggle, he wants you to overcome the challenges and feel the reward of achievement afterward. That is his vision for the game and his art. Now you don’t have to like it but that is what art is. Art doesn’t have to be for everyone.

Acceptance

I totally understand the frustration some people feel. They see a game like Silksong that looks beautiful and mysterious and they would love to play it but they are not willing to learn the game or to experience any frustration. But in my eyes telling a developer who followed a clear vision and crafted a game to make you feel certain emotions, ‘Give me an easy mode,’ is like saying to an artist who drew a picture “I don’t understand the meaning of your art — redraw it into something clearer”. If we want games to be art and not just an entertainment product, we need to let developers make their own decisions and accept that something just isn’t for us. Not every game has to be made for everyone, and that’s okay.