On Mighty N°9, via Rock Paper Shotgun:
First among them is the unwelcome inheritance of instant-death spikes on floors and walls, alongside many other environmental one-hit fatalities. The tiniest misjudgement or unfamiliarity around these things means instant death, and the frustration is because you have a positively archaic three lives and no continues per stage. It feels almost an affront, in an age where games save progress constantly, to be sent back to the start of the level to try again.
He continues:
At which point you have to acknowledge that this is a design choice, made thanks to nostalgia for a specific kind of challenge. And indeed some long-dormant region of my brain seemed to briefly stir, enjoying how easy it was to breeze through a level’s early challenges again, remembering to get a missed powerup, or take another route.
It really comes down to user experience and design going frontal against nostalgia and the trap of thinking that the past was really good.
It was not perfect, instant-death and boss battles were simply a design trend in the 80s because game designers were creating a lot of arcade games where the focus is to make you put more coins in the machine, thus hardcore difficulty and boss battles that you have to remember perfectly.
So playing Mega man was frustrating already at that time because it was super hard and it seemed kind of dumb because we were sitting in front of the TV in the living room, not standing in the arcade. Game’s style was so dope though. Fast forward to today where there are billions of new games each month, and we are more busy in our lives and I see how this design choice in MN9 still feels dumb.
However, and this is where things get interesting as the brain loves to grok when you go through something challenging, you will feel good. It’s not that it’s good game design, it’s just chemicals. But you will think, like a lot of gamers who can spend 5 hours straight beating a game that it’s a good game. Even if it’s flawed and that we know why (arcade influence).
Regardless of the type of game you’re building, I think being able to convey your game ideas, game designs without being brutal *while* being challenging is pretty much our main task. Which comes down to fairness to the player VS our systems. Example: instant-death on spikes is unfair and not consistent with the rest. Instant-death in Counter Strike is never, never unfair. Even when you’re a noob, you know or will know that you messed up.
That player’s feeling, happy and humbled and eager at the same time is really, really hard to convey and maintain. But when it happens bye here you go 200+ hours I’m coming!