Recently I’ve been following the debate on Feminist Gaming Matters about the inclusion of easy modes in games. This is not a new debate – it seems to rear its head every couple of months somewhere. And, as is often the case, the argument focuses quite heavily on Dark Souls, because…well I don’t know. There are hundreds of games out there, many of them difficult, but somehow DS always floats to the fore of these discussions, therefore, I’ll be focusing on it quite heavily here too. I’ll try and make this conversation wider, but a lot of the arguments I want to engage in use SoulsBourne as examples, so of course I’ll discuss them here.
I would like to highlight that this conversation has two distinct, but interlocking parts to it: making games easy allows players who, for whatever reason want an easier experience e.g. new gamers, younger or older gamers, less skilled players, etc. The second, and more important strand related to making games more accessible for players who are disabled, which could include a number of features, one of which may be an easier level of difficulty. I would like to engage with both of these points, but I will start with the former – the inclusion of a general easy mode for gamers who just wish to have an easier/more relaxing time.
This ended up being way longer than I expected, so I’ll be splitting my thoughts down into separate blog posts. Look out for more in the future. Feel free to give me your opinions – both on the arguments outlined in this post, and on others you have regarding this topic.
Finally to give some context to this piece, I suggest you also read this editorial on RockPaperShotgun, and this video by Mark Brown.
Fionn Plays 