Difficulty vs time. A personal favorite.

So, you've just finished some raid/dungeon in World of Warcraft, or sat down and finished/worked on some large project in modded Minecraft, or even played through some boss battle or dungeon in a RPG.  Ask yourself, honestly, do you feel like it was a long (whatever) or a hard (whatever).  Try to pick one or the other, it's kinda important for this exercise.

Sometimes you'll find something that nails it and you can't decide which.  Sometimes you'll find something that makes you wonder why you spent so much time on it.  Sometimes you'll find yourself amazed you even managed to do it at all, or you got as far along as you did.

What an game devs are relying on you to be unable to do is tell the difference between something being hard to do because it's actually hard to do, or something being "hard" because it takes forever to do.  I Wanna Be the Guy is hard because it's HARD.  Minecraft with Gregtech (sorry, it's just SO easy to pick on it) just takes FOREVER to do things.

Could all the Gregtech fans please put down their torches and pitchforks?  Thank you.  Now you're thinking, "It takes so many more resources to get the best stuff, it must make it harder!", or "Without Gregtech I have the best stuff so fast, so it must make it harder!"  Many variations of the counter argument have been shown to me, but I just can't buy it.  Making something take longer does not make it harder.  It extends your play time, sure, but it doesn't make it harder.

Please don't bother with your real life examples.  We're talking games, they really don't compare well.

Oh yeah, also I'm not bashing Gregtech here, I actually like the mod (mostly), I just don't agree with the claims that it makes it harder.

Time is an aspect of progression.  "I want player X to have to put at least Y hours into reaching point Z."  Making Y bigger does not make the game harder, but making the game harder can make Y bigger.  (Insert screeching car noise here)  Wait?  Didn't I just say time isn't difficulty, but then I said difficult things can take longer, so it requires more time?!  Yes!  There's a big difference there.

I Wanna Be the Guy requires patience, practice, and a willingness to fail over and over.  And over.  Then a few more times.  Things like Gregtech and most RPGs do not require that willingness to fail.  You just grind it out and you can eventually do just about anything the game allows.

Take Disgaea, one of the main aspects of the game (talking the first here, I've only played it and the second so I lack perspective to talk others) is grinding your level higher and higher.  You can quite easily, but very time consumingly, grind your way to the point there is absolutely no chance at failing.  At the same time, you also have to achieve at least a minimum level, or there is nothing you can do BUT fail.  So there is a time requirement, you either spend Y hours or you can't make it to Z.  If you go over Y, you steadily reduce difficulty.  Spend long enough past Y and you one shot everything and it's all laughable at best.

Time can reduce difficulty, but it's still not difficulty in itself.  Being unwilling to invest enough time can make something impossible, but it doesn't make the task itself harder.  Altering the task to force your players to spend more time doesn't make it harder, but making the task itself harder can make them spend more time.

Games that make things harder will make you spend more time honing the skills and knowledge to get farther.  Making a game harder means making it easier to fail.  Making me sit down and press a button over and over for an hour longer doesn't make it harder, but making me press that button at exactly the right points in that time limit, or changing which button I have to hit or I have to start over does make a game harder.

Opinions and you.

My god.  I'm sitting here stumbling over my first blog post.  I feel...I feel so new.  Possibly even noobish.  Time to get this over with so if I come back to this years later I can cringe and ponder deleting it just to strike this horrible moment from my life.

Anyway, what you'll find here is a load of opinions.  Mostly mine, sometimes other people's opinions.  Remember that, it's actually kinda important.  I'm not here to state fact, well, most of the time.  If you disagree with me, GREAT!  Just keep the raging insanity and cries that I'm wrong to a minimum.