In games, that commonly means that youвЂ™re going to believe that youвЂ™re a character, in a world, that can do certain things and needs to do complete certain goals. It basically means that, despite you being fully aware that something is not real, youвЂ™re going to pretend itвЂ™s real. One of the most critical parts of making any fictional work of media work is called suspension of disbelief. A huge part of my job as game designer is to trick you into believing you came up with a solution on your own, and that you did a great job figuring it out, even though weвЂ™ve been signposting and carefully preparing you to figure out the solution for hours. That might sound preposterous, but it is actually fairly critical to understanding why weвЂ™re having this discussion. Seeing a lot of the discussion that flowed out of that, I thought it might be a good idea to explain your average developersвЂ™ view on difficulty, and the problems with the term. In the days around that, John Walker of Rock, Paper, Shotgun released an article arguing for skippable bossfights, and before you know it, games internet was on fire again. This time, two things happened at once: UbisoftвЂ™s вЂњAssassinвЂ™s Creed OriginsвЂќ announced a tourism mode that has no challenge in it, and StudioMDHRвЂ™s beautiful indie release вЂњ CupheadвЂќ was really hard. Time and time again, difficulty comes up as a subject in the internet discourse, and time and time I see various misunderstandings about how our understanding of games and difficulty interrelate.

I love making and playing games that are both a test of skill and a world players can immerse themselves into. IвЂ™ve dedicated the majority of my last decade to making hard, punishing games. I spent more time making maps and scenarios for both вЂњAge of EmpiresвЂќ and вЂњStarcraftвЂќ than I did playing it, and I spent all my years since then making games and learning about games as a craft. I spawned photon laser troopers amidst Greek armies in вЂњAge of Empires.вЂќ I cheated to reveal the map of Starcraft so I could study what the AI did, as the level of English I needed to understand the tutorials would elude me for another year or two. Many of my favorite childhood games I learned using cheat codes. With the two cheat codes, I ran through the levels causing mayhem. It took me a while to realize the string of letters was actually two separate cheat codes: IDDQD for invulnerability, IDKFA for every key, weapon, and ammo. I was seven years old when I first cheated in 1993вЂ™s classic вЂњ DOOM.вЂќ The game came on a floppy drive, and the label said вЂњDOOM вЂ“ IDDQDIDKFAвЂќ.

There is a game