Get Good

Written by Nadya Nayme

A growing number of people have forgotten how to learn and have given up on trying. People who are otherwise of at least average intelligence and have no physical disabilities. It’s unfuriating. You “can’t” do something? Bullshit. You’re lazy at best.

I’ve started seeing this in various gaming communities. Any level of difficulty harder than walking and chewing bubblegum at the same time has been deemed “inaccessible” or “impossible to learn”. “Easy Mode” is “not easy enough” and people demand a “Story Mode” where the player is essentially an unkillable god with infinite HP or damage given and taken has been tweaked so much that the only way to possibly die would be to put the controller down and go AFK for 20 minutes until the NPCs finally whittle down your hitpoints and kill you.

When pressed for their reasons it always comes down to “It’s too hard for me” or “I don’t have enough time.”. The former is what is most people call a “skill issue” and the latter isn’t a good excuse. You cannot get good at something without time. If your time is limited that only means that it will take you longer.

Not every challenging thing needs to be made accessible. The challenge is a large part of the appeal! If you make a challenge something that anyone is capable of doing it ceases to be a challenge and becomes another checkbox for people to tick off their list. Nobody flexes that they can mentally solve 2*2. However flexing you can quickly solve any 3 digit number multiplied by any other 3 digit number in your head very quickly becomes quite impressive! A great party trick to bust out once in a while too! The difficulty and lack of people who are capable of doing that are what make it so impressive. Nobody is impressed if you can solve 2*2 in your head.

If a video game is too hard - try practicing it instead of playing it. If you don’t want to practice because video games are meant to be fun - please remember that challenges are supposed to be challenging. Focus your efforts on a challenge you find fun instead of asking for a difficult challenge to be made easy.

Note that this is not an attack against accessibility in video games. Color-blind modes are great. High contrast modes are great. Alternative control schemes are great. Varying levels of difficulty are fine. Challenges naturally becoming easier over time due to powercreep is also fine - as the challenge equally loses the prestige it once held over time as it is made easier. Clearing something Day 1 will always be more impressive than clearing it on Day 1000. That is fine and the natural progression of many games. Even games that do not get changed over time can have better strategies developed that make challenges easier to complete or execute. But a challenge being difficult Day 1 is never a good excuse to ask it to be nerfed and made easier.

Instead - maybe you should “Get good.”