Many Mac users aspire to program their own games, but complicated
coding languages like C++ often scare off the majority of them. What
many Mac users don't realize is that it takes a lot more than knowledge
of a few languages to make a game - it takes many hours of planning,
experience, and testing.
One thing that has always puzzled me about game creation is how
developers decide on the difficulty of a game. Since there is such a
wide range of gaming talent (from the novice gamer to the expert), it
is hard for developers to determine how to please everyone when it
comes to how challenging a game should be. To find out how developers
decided on the difficulty of a game, I talked to a couple of big-name
companies including MacSoft, Presto (creators of the Myst series), and
French Touch (makers of the new hit Water Race).
In terms of difficulty, there are two types of games - those that
let you choose how challenging a game is (easy, normal, hard), and
those that don't. Those that let you choose the difficulty are often
shooter, action, or racing games. Those that don't let you choose the
difficulty tend to be adventure games like Myst and Escape From Monkey
Island. When it comes to choosing the difficulty of a game, developers
that give users an option to change it have an easier job.
How developers determine the difficulty of a game varies with the
size of the company they work for. For big companies like MacSoft, they
often bring in a group of testers to evaluate if a game is too easy or
too hard. "We will invite groups of people to come in and play the
levels and try to determine whether or not the level is too difficult.
If you've got good level designers, you generally don't have to make a
lot of changes," Darn Harnett, a PR manager for MacSoft told me.
More independent companies like Pangea may not feel the need or have
the resources to bring in a large group of testers to provide feedback
on a game. "The difficulty generally evolves on its own. We don't start
with a preconceived notion of how it should be, but rather we just see
how it goes, and we tweak it if we think it is too hard or too easy,"
stated Brian Greenstone. Unlike many companies, it would be difficult
for Presto Studios, creators of the Myst series, to implement "easy,
normal, and hard" modes into its games. This presents a problem, since
some gamers may have more experience with the game or be better at
puzzles.
However, Presto Studios feels that everyone should be able to beat
Myst III: Exile, the latest addition to the Myst saga, no matter what
their gaming background is. "... [We] educate the player and prepare
them for the challenges ahead. A lot of the Ages are filled with things
that you've never seen before, and we can't expect players to be able
to look at them, and just through their design figure out what they do.
When making Myst III we decided that we had to educate the players
early, by putting interactive elements in the very early stages of the
game that they could play with. Things that they didn't necessarily
realize would be related to something they might encounter further in
the game. When they approached a puzzle later on in the game, we wanted
them to have something in the back of their mind, something that they
had seen before that they would intuitively relate to the challenge
that was placed in front of them," said Phil Saunders, creative
director for Myst III: Exile.
Even though you should be able to complete Myst III: Exile (with a
lot of time and a few walkthrough books), don't feel bad if you don't
perform as well in French Touch's Water Race. "We tuned the 'hard'
difficulty [level] so that the best player we could find was not able
to win all the races all the time. Finally, I guess a very, very good
player racing in this mode should win about 2/3 of the races," replied
Pierre-Olivier Latour when I asked him whether or not the average gamer
should be able to complete all the courses in Water Race.
No matter which method they choose to decide on the difficulty of a
game, all of the developers featured in this article have done an
excellent job of not making their games too challenging or too
easy.
If you do get too frustrated with a game, you may want to take
Westlake Interactive's developer Mark Adam's advice: "One good source
I've found when I got stuck in a game (particularly an adventure game
like Tomb Raider) is the plethora of fan sites on the web with hints
and walkthroughs. Its a good free way to get some assistance when you
just don't know how to get past a part of a game."
