Hard for Whom?

Today I was playing The Best Game Ever Made - which goes by the alternate title of Bioshock - when I noticed how vague the wording is on most games' difficulty settings. Games (including Bioshock) often have three difficulty settings: Easy, Normal, and Hard. But framing different difficulties in such absolute terms isn't very helpful at all. It doesn't give the player any cues as to just how difficult the game might be - what's easy for a veteran gamer might be very hard for a novice. At the very least, I think games should use more descriptive terms, although this really amounts to calling a rose another name. Just slightly better is adding descriptions to the difficulty options. Bungie's Halo series does both, by using more novel terms and giving a (sometimes humorous) description of the potential experience. For example, the description of Halo 3's most difficult mode, "Legendary," reads "Tremble as teeming hordes of invincible alien monsters punish the slightest error with instant death... again and again." This definitely gives the player a clearer picture of what to expect!

Some games have taken an even better route by attempting to adjust the difficulty dynamically according to a player's skill. This approach isn't without its problems - most notably how to determine "skill" - but it seems to make more sense from the perspective of immersion; how often does one get to choose their preferred difficulty in life? The most engrossing game is often challenging, but not frustrating. Dynamic difficulty adjustment helps to ensure that the game maintains a constant level of challenge for newcomers and old hands alike. I'd like to see more games experiment with approach.