Gaming to Gamers

Are we as gamers getting better over the years? Or are games getting easier than we remember?

I can remember the days when I would sit a struggle with a problem and it would take me forever to either brute force the solution, or give up. Nowadays if I encountered such a problem, I would just use the internet for my solutions. The same can be said for video games over the years. Whether it was a strict time-constraint, misunderstanding of simple problems, or even a steep learning curve. We as gamers have always been able to achieve impressive feats.

So there comes a point where you may have asked yourself. “Why do the games I play seem easier than what I remember?” Don’t misunderstand me here, I can easily point to infamous examples like *Turbo Tunnel* from BattleToads and say they easily rival even modern games in terms of difficulty. The types of games I’m looking at have a different view depending on who you ask. Some players believe games like Elden Ring is way too hard, others will say the opposite or it wasn’t challenging enough.

The way I see it is the more you play a game, in a way it gets easier for you as you learn from your mistakes you learn what the game will “let” you get away with. That still doesn’t mean that the game will get easier, but that says you as a player are learning how the game is played. Where the question comes in is for games of the same franchise, like how every Kirby game will have Kirby with more or less the signature suck up bad guys and copy their abilities.

Here’s where stuff gets interesting, I am willing to guess that if a rookie player picked up a brand new game they are unfamiliar with, they will more or less struggle with the game somewhere along the road. Yes they can just lookup the solution, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t learning. They become familiar with the mechanics of the game. Thus when a new game in the series drops, not only will it most likely retain the core mechanics, it will throw in several new ones. The idea is this player still can both play and finish the game, while retaining how fun it was to play.

However in my cases, and maybe for some others. Sometimes when I finish a game, I felt the game was too easy. Not because it actually was easu but because I am already familiar with the game i played from a predecessor. Thus in some cases, a player may choose to end their playthrough then and there and move on. Others may restrict themselves by setting challenges on themself. Like the Nuzlocke challenge for Pokemon. They could even set a harder goal, speedruns are a perfect example of such challenges.

I believe that we as gamers seek to find some fulfillment from the games and sometimes just a normal run is too easy for us. So we seek out new heights, always striving to go beyond every believable expectation. It’s not a bad thing to be clear, rather the whole idea as itself is something that can be considered a milestone for the future.