Should developers make their games easier with new versions?

Question

It seems that the game Angry Birds is becoming gradually easier with new versions. Maybe so people get the illusion of progress and satisfaction of breaking new records?

I would like to know if gradual small modifications of games to enhance the sense of improvement and learning by users is known/common/standard practice in game developing. (I don't mean to say that there is anything wrong with such a practice.)

Answer 1

I think there are a few reasons why games may get easier (or appear to do so)

• A side effect of maturing code. Fixing bugs, adding new features and polishing existing features can all have the effect of reducing difficulty. So these games may actually be getting closer to the developers intended level of difficulty, where as they started too hard. For instance, in your example of Angry Birds, subtle changes in the constants of the physics simulation can have a dramatic effect on game play. These could have easily changed the difficulty of the game.

• Marketing purposes. Developers may also change the difficulty of the game for marketing purposes. Making a game easier can expand your casual user base.

• Direct user feedback. Users may complain about a specific level or feature of the game that's difficult to use.

• Game statistics. Many developers are building in reporting into their games. Particularly with level based progress games (like Angry Birds). These reports can tell developers how much progress users make, number of retries on a particular level and when the user quits the game. All of these statistics can be valuable in detecting trends in player behavior. If a developer were to see that a significant portion of players retried a certain level multiple times, then quit the game, they might take a look at that level and see if it's too difficult.

So should developers take any of the above action? Like most things related to humans, it's a balancing act. The number of variables involved in the decision is enormous and ever changing. Since no one knows the exact recipe for perfection, it's impossible to know if the changes you make will make the game better or worse. Even then, most any change will be received as bad by some and good by others. The best course will depend on the game and the developers and their obligations.

Answer 2

While I have never heard of it being done through patches explicitly, a common way of getting the same effect is to have dynamic difficulty in a game. The game is made easier/harder based on the players performance or some other heuristic. This can often be a bit controversial, much like auto-aim in first person shooters, but the answer to your question is; yes it is common and is appropriate where it makes the game more fun for the target audience.

Through patches I have only heard of the game being made easier/harder in cases where a mistake was made in the design.

Answer 3

Some games are difficult to play because the controls are difficult. If you look at the early Angry Birds, you never really know where the birds will fly.

Later revisions make the controls easier, by showing preview of the curve the bird will fly. At the same time they can make the levels themselves more difficult.

The effect is that the player feels more in control, and this is a good thing.

Compare parkour in assassins creed to parkour in mirror's edge - in creed the player feels much more in control. Granted, the scope and focus of the games is different, but in general, player feels much more bad ass when parkouring in assassins creed than in mirror's edge.

Other examples of great controls include super meat boy and the knytt games - make it as easy and as natural as possible for player to control the character - in other words, make the game easy to play - and then build a challenge to the player. The result feels fair - the challenge isn't to learn controls, but what the actual challenge should be.

To answer the question, whether games should be "easier" in new versions.. I don't feel that is the case; should they improve in new versions? Yes.

Answer 4

I noticed this happens frequently in MMOs so I thought this would be worth answering for this particular genre. In particular for each update the old content becomes easier while the new content takes a considerable amount of time to complete. So.

Why would developers make their games easier with each new update in MMOs?

• It gives lower level characters a chance to catch up to some of the high level characters. This is desirable because many players aim for the high-level 'just-released' content.
• More players in a level range leads to more competition and more fun (easier to find groups/guilds/clans/parties/PVP).
• It also motivates the higher level players to keep playing - if they give up, they'll be passed by newer players (and lose control of their server depending on the mechanics of the particular game).

Examples of this happening:

• Blessed Spirit Shots and Herbs in Lineage II. Initially it took years to obtain level 75, it can now be achieved in a few weeks.
• Rest XP in World of Warcraft

Answer 5

this might actually be a combination of things that are going on with the game, and the player simultaneously, but for different reasons.

1: the player may be learning the game to the extent of being able to master the tools they are given in a First Person Shooter becoming more and more accurate with a gun that is designed to have issues, or learning a different strategy to complete a given situation. these are all bases for player improvement (which some of the other answers have stated, or alluded to.

2: it may be to do with the difficulty curve of the game (there are multiple, but I will only talk about specifics here). as a game progresses it is expected to present more, and more challenges to the player, and by nature the player is needed to gain more, and more skill to proceed (see 1), and by virtue the game can continue to increase the difficulty of the game itself. the most common of these curves are linear increasing, increasing step function, and (one that I dislike, but is still used) logarithmic.

3: it may also be that the tools that are given to the player directly modify the difficulty curve by bringing it more toward a linear constant, or a fractionally increasing linear. though it should be said that with these new tools can also greatly increase the difficulty because the player is expected to have more of an advantage otherwise (this is where we get the step function difficulty curve where the steps are increased every time the player earns a new tool)

when all of these parts are used in tandem if one, or a couple are under-, or even over-expected then the game can easily become too easy or too difficult, or just seem that way.

like in your example of Angry Birds. as the game progresses the player is presented with different bird types that have different abilities that should conform to the given puzzle. so it is expected that the game still has a difficulty curve, but because each puzzle is in isolation of the others they must be evaluated individually instead of on a curve, and by nature the difficulty of a given puzzle is independent, but the game overall should still conform to a curve.

as a note that this answer only considers player skill, and never takes into account luck.