Game Introduces Easy Mode Called “I’m 35 and Have One Hour to Play This”

trashhalo@beehaw.org to Gaming@beehaw.org – 873 points – Game Introduces Easy Mode Called “I’m 35 and Have One Hour to Play This”
hard-drive.net

Aging gamers were reportedly delighted to see that a new video game called Eldric Quest has accessibility features catered specifically to people their age who do not have enough time to actually play a video game.

“I came back from the office at around 7 p.m. and was so happy to see this mode implemented because holy shit am I tired,”

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I know this is satire but I would definitely play a mode like this. I may only be 20 but a 10 hour shift plus nearly 2 hour train rides kill me

I mean many games usually have an easy mode.

I frequently play on it.

yeah I'm glad I've kind of let myself play in easy, I enjoy games much more that way

I only realized it was satire after I opened the thread and saw it was HardDrive, not only did it feel something a game would do (probably a New Blood game) but I was also genuinely stoked

Indeed! I wish they would standardize this mode and add it as an icon to the back of the game box.

Edit: Also I'm old enough that I think of games as coming in boxes, still...

It's not just about difficulty though; some games are designed to be really long. Looking at some of the RPGs out there, like Divinity: Original Sin.

Play a lot of jrpgs, I understand that too well. My playthrough of persona 5 has been going since the beginning of this year and I'm hardly halfway through the story

Dear god. I burned out around your age with a similar work schedule. Less commute but more work hours. Took me years to recover.

If your situation allows, please find yourself a better work and commute setup. Your boss isn't going to care that you're dying inside, especially when they've grown accustomed to everything you get done running yourself ragged. If you can, start doing less at work so you have energy to search for other jobs.

In some workplaces, it's actually better to let things slip so your boss can push for more manpower.

My situation is lucky not the worst. I am currently going to a technical school for medical work. And when I actually am at the place I work in it's hardly "working" much at all, a good number of days I literally can watch an movie between cases.

Honestly most of the feeling dead is the commute, which unfortunately I don't have many options for, can't drive plus no other job I find offers nearly as much as I make (coupled with the fact that this quite literally the only job of its kind in the area).

I also get along very well with my team (literally no drama) and management is pretty nonexistent and we all take a firm stand when they do.

I very much appreciate the concern however

The Steam Deck might be just the thing for your commute.

I actually have both a deck and a switch. I'm just too tired before and after work to play on my commute.

I feel you.

I have found that searching for game reviews with the term "Cozy Gamer" finds games that fit into that after work funk, for me, when I have that time.

I don't think it's the difficulty of games that makes them take so long for me. Just that everything is so bloated now. There's so much to do, but so little of it actually adds to the experience.

I appreciate that a lot of games have realised this and let you differentiate between "go this way to see the end of the game" and "here is some bullshit if you're not getting another game until Christmas".

Like sure, I could deliver every parcel in Death Stranding, and really get into the class fantasy of being a post apocalyptic Deliveroo driver, but I'm just mainlining the story quests at this point. Which is taking long enough on its own.

The new assassin's Creed games feel like this to me as well. I ended up feeling like i had sunk 4000 hours into Valhalla and just stopped giving a shit lol

I played Odyssey and the DLCs over 2 years ago, and I still feel kind of tuckered out on AC for a bit.

The only thing that makes me want to play Valhalla at some point is the Keith Flint lookalike singing Smack my Bishop.

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I would absolutely choose this mode without any shame. I already spend plenty of time in "Story Mode" difficulty; I don't care to spend hours of frustration trying to hit just the right dodge pattern for a boss because I no longer have the finger dexterity that I did when I was 20.

Real talk: I'd rather kill my hour bashing my head against something challenging then progress actively through something not challenging. "Beating the game" just isn't a drive for me. I play while it's fun, which often (but not always) involves the game being challenging, and often, unless the story has particularly gripped me, I don't care to "finish" it.

But that is me. A lot of people derive their enjoyment from progressing in games. Good, adaptable difficulty settings are so important for games, and the sooner we recognize that instead of shaming people for wanting things the be accessible, the better.

For me it's about the story, I basically only play games that have an interesting story (and some Vampire Survivors here and there). So I don't care for challenge or progress.

for me its like playing with action figures. pew pew. zap. I put up my impenetrable forcefield.

A good game should present a fair challenge but also not explicitly just waste your time. I like difficulty but when I feel my time is being wasted I just quit.

I feel this. Gaming for me is about getting better at the game, and playing with it's systems. I think it's why I typically gravitate towards competitive games over story ones. But having the time to master competitive games is proving more and more difficult as time goes on.

Depends on the kind of game I think. Certain games I do play for the challenge (FromSoft, TBT, RTS, rogue-likes and lites). Others I'm playing for Story (RPGs).

I think a good example of a game that was too difficult (for me) but had an engaging story that I wanted to play was Celeste. I hate precision platformers. But they Devs knocked that out of the park in terms of accessiblity options so I could tweak it until it was enjoyable for me, and enjoy a beautiful story with beautiful music.

I feel like a time wizard because I'm like 40, date several people, have a full time job, and still play games and read books. Where is everyone else's time going??

Is it kids? I don't have a kid. That might do it.

It's the kids. Kids take a lot of time. Most folks our age with kids don't have any time to themselves until it's 9/10 at night, then still have chores & work the next day.

Plus pets, home/vehicle ownership, commute times, etc.. Lots of things that some people have/choose to commit a significant amount of time. Sometimes it’s also not about the total time commitment, but the windows of time available. Things like kids/pets can make it difficult for games that assume you’re actually going to be continuously attentive over 20+ minutes at a time when you can be interrupted by breaking up a fight with the pets, having to let the new puppy outside regularly, hearing the cat about to hack up a hairball, cleaning up the ice cream the kid just dropped, etc..

As a dad with two kids who still finds time to play games. It's the kids. I have to give up sleep to do it.

Main reason games like Deathloop, Outer Wilds, Gunfire Reborn, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, etc. got their hooks in me so deep - something I can sit down, fire up to play solo (it's tough as hell to get friends together to squad in games when all your friends are also 35 and busy), knock out a 30min - 2hr play session, and put down without feeling like I'm in the middle of something.

Love how many games there are these days who play like this. Seems like rogue-lites do it best, but it's nice to see other genres making it work, too.

To be fair, that's also a list of very high quality games.

I know Death loop got a lot of shit for its AI, but it's honestly a criminally underrated game.

I've been meaning to try it out, it's on GamePass, but I worry that it's the kind of game that takes a lot of brainpower to "solve" while also requiring a lot of skill. I can do one or the other but both at once stresses me out! lol

Deathloop is great, I got it right around release and played through it over the course of a few weeks.

It doesn't take brainpower to solve. There's a whole time loop puzzle but the most disappointing aspect of the game was that it's a solved solution. The game spells out exactly what objectives to complete at which places and at what times. While you play through the game the first time you're uncovering twists and clues as to how to solve the puzzle but instead of letting you deduce a solution the games builds out a step by step list of markers for you to follow.

It's essentially the complete opposite of how The Outer Wilds, which has a similar time loop aspect with a puzzle to solve, handles it.

That being said, give Deathloop a shot because it's still a fun shooter with neat mechanics that lean very close to immersive sim levels of freedom.

Sounds good, I'll check it out when I get bored of Remnant 2. :-D

I enjoyed death loop but for me the main disappointment was that I thought I was getting a roguelite and the game wasn't really a roguelite.

If you like Outer Wilds check out The Forgotten City. It's somewhat similar in terms of the gameplay loop and is also good for short or long sessions.

I play an awful lot of games on easy mode now anyway, unless I'm going in specifically to learn the game (Fromsoft games for example). If I'm playing a random open world game or a FPS I'm gonna knock that difficulty down to make life a little easier.

Time. I'd rather not do this, but I get like maybe five hours a week to play. The days where I can sit down on weekends and just...game are long gone, and likely won't return until the kids are much older.

There's only a handful of games that made me turn down from normal, but when I do it's out of pure frustration and just wanting it to be over so I can play something else.

The end of the Control Foundation DLC comes to mind. There was a fight that was a red room, with red enemies, red health bars, and bullshit instadeath mechanics. Man, fuck that.

Iirc I had a similar issue with base game Control. I wanted to experience the story but the combat really rubbed me the wrong way at first and I ended up knocking it down pretty early.

I'm 55 and I hate this. Yeah, I know, it's satire. So is mine. Kinda.

I am also 55. And every time I get spanked in Destiny 2 pvp I am reminded that my reflexes are now shit, and my days of pvp glory in UT and CS are decades behind me. I'm officially a pve player now.

41 yo here. Definitely feeling the same. What pve games do you play? I'm on xbox, just checking Deep Rock Galactic.

City builder simulators like Foundation or Cities: Skylines. Anything with a Pause button.

"Anything with a pause button."

Someone make this into a shirt with a cool gamer logo. I've found my gamer crew.

The consoles suspend button they all added last gen is a godsend for me. No cocking about with loading, finding a save point, etc. Just, on and off.

Rock and Stone! Deep Rock is a fun game. Especially if you have a friend or two to play it with.

Yeah just started it solo, guess it's more fun with friends. However I don't have friends who play online in my timezone. I'll try on the Discord channel.

I enjoy it solo too. Just depends on my mood.

Just completed my first solo mission. Took me 38 mins on easiest, and not completed secondary objectives, but got out there alive! Think it can be a lot of fun in groups, and read many good things about how friendly everyone is.

Oh, I meant pve within Destiny 2 but I get what you mean. Outside it all I always go back to Minecraft.

I played Destiny 2 but found it quite stressful and too hard for me.

Yes please. I have a kid. I can't die 20 times to a boss just so I can learn its moves and defeat it.

I tried Lies of P recently, made it to the first boss, and i just quit. This coming from someone who play dark souls, that boss is just too spongy and i have no patient to get through that, i have not much time to game anyway.

So i just get back to Project Zomboid.

That's the fun part tho. Either that or the game is just boring and can't even sustain the play time required to beat the boss. In that case don't bother, play a more enjoyable game.

That's not the fun part for everybody, though.

What kind of games are we talking about? For action games like Furi it should be the fun part

Figuring out how to beat a boss and execute that strategy is always fun. It just depends on if it's Zelda where you do it without ever going down or Dark Souls where one mistake can end your attempt.

really like the implementation. I remember playing the Witcher 3 on easy mode just to be able to go through the story and enjoy the fantastic scenery. One of the best gaming experiences of my life. especially on an ultra wide monitor

Currently playing through witcher 3 on my ps5 on story mode. Really loving it so far

yep, I just started playing the DLCs on story mode again. I beat the main game on regular some time back but now I just want to bask in the lushness of Toussaint without having to think too much about which buttons to press

"We’re here for you and we know that being 35 is really really really old, whether you’re willing to admit it or not."

I feel seen.

Do you know how defeated I feel having to select easy mode every time now?

Sorry I can't devote 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday to bruise my way through. I have yard work to do, dogs to entertain and a lady to woo

It's literally fine though because hard mode doesn't mean anything more than you do less damage and the enemies do more in 99% of the games out there. You're not missing extra gameplay or narrative. You just slide two real basic siders up and down.

As a 40yr old developer of a FOSS RTS game (not released yet), I generally aim at games taking from 20 - 30 minutes. This is because I usually have only about 1 or 2 hours to play games with the bois after work. Additionally, I am usually extremely tired, so I try to implement a lot of QOL features that make the game less arduous to play.

Recently a popular RTS game that uses the same engine as mine has had a lot of sweats complaining about widgets (Long story, but they are unsynced bits of lua code that can extend things. They have limited access to the synced state, but are still pretty powerful). Basically people complaining about a specific widget that will make your units try to stay at max range when in a fight. While this sounds pretty useful, in the case of players who are relatively decent with rts gameplay, it's more of an irritation to deal with than anything else.

But as a developer of this type of game, I have a vested interest in making players who aren't as good be able to compete with players like myself who are really good. If that means some (very) rudimentary AI will try to make your units behave somewhat intelligently when you aren't paying attention, I'm totally down for that. I find that as I get older, even though I am extremely experienced and good in rts games, I appreciate such tools existing for the players who simply aren't that great. I don't get my dopamine hits from steamrolling another player, I get my hits from good fights and satisfying battles. A lot of people I talk to make me feel like an outlier, but I know good and goddamn well that there are a lot of lesser skilled players that just wouldn't bother with speaking up.

I have a very large problem with games that don't respect my time. Elite Dangerous is a perfect example. I avoided it for a very long time because people went on and on about how hard it was to fly. Turns out, anyone who played descent 1 and descent 2 (And now Overload on steam (seriously, buy this shit, it's modern descent built by the original devs and it's amazing)) can fly the crafts with ease. The space combat is pretty shit tier. However, it's gorgeous, and super cool, BUT, the developers refuse to implement any sort of fast travel. The sheer amount of time that it takes to get anywhere is mind boggling. I would spent 6 hours flying on a day off, and still not manage to really get anything done. This is the perfect example of a game that does not respect my time. I HATE games like this. I try to understand that time literally is money. That isn't only a cliche. As you get older, you realize that time is a resource, and as you get older, you find that you have so little free time, that any time lost can be a really heavy blow.

This is sea of thieves for me. I had a friend who was obsessed with it, but you're basically required to dump multiple hours in to complete anything and even then .. You could get your ship sunk and lose it all. It's incredibly frustrating.

You have a name and/or link tothe game under dev? Would love to see it!

So I spent some time thinking about this. Imma send you a like to a vod of me playing against one of the other devs (he does all of the balance design) instead of linking it directly. It isn't done yet. It is fully playable, and on our discord there are some download codes for people to use if they want to play test with us.

Just understand at best it's alpha currently.

https://twitch.tv/videos/1873895670

We have a lot of good discussion on our discord and generally our dev chat stays open for all to read. A modicum of googling will find the GitHub and horrendously out of date wiki + discord and probably even our itch.io listing

Wow that looks really good. I like the map style of choosing where you started. And it seemed to run really smoothly performance wise.

Pretty sure a lot of people will embrace this mode if it exists. When you are an adult with responsibilities, beating a "challenging" game simply isn't a priority.

Easy....Stop buying new games.

This isn't a new game only issue tho. Plenty of games waste your time wether it came out this year, 10, 20, 30 years ago. It can be moreso worse in the past due to limits in game design such as only saving at set checkpoints (or even saving at all if you go back far enough)

I've heard it since the mid 2000s when EGM (Electronic Gaming Magazine) couldn't keep up with what was coming out for reviews with Xbox push for indy's (which lead to more tools and more flooding) plus AAA games. That was before phone games were even a thing. So everyone started to move to podcasts like real early circa 2005 and video reviews like gamespot would do. Same time Steam was slowly roasting in the background. Few years go by Epic also starts do some moves. 2011 Twitch basically becomes the place to review a game by watching someone play it. That feeling almost felt like you didn't even to play the game because you watched it. 2012 Steam gets early access. The Market has been flooded for a decade not to mention so many games became templates of each other. What's my point? There's a ton of great things to play in many different genres that go back to the inception of games. Find what you like and enjoy it. There's so much media today, one of the reasons save states changed over time. I will not watch every show or every movie nor all the books, comicbooks and manga or put in time with all my other hobbies ie drawing, painting, sculpting. Hard trying to keep up with your friends, some might be better off than you or have more time than you. You get older shit changes, people schedules change, you are more tired and sleepy and probably have more responsibilities. This is life, go for a walk outside come back in and do something you enjoy. That being said I do enjoy quality of life changes in some games but in others it might lose the soul of the game. TLDR There's too much of everything and it's overwhelming.

That's funny.

Reminds me of Dungeon of the Endless, where the difficulty modes were "Easy" and "Too Easy". Cheeky stuff.

All of the difficulty levels in Will You Snail are all variations on Easy, because the AI is trying to make fun of you.

This is how gaming dies. Easy mode should be forbitten as default and game should be always at hardest diffuculty and focus on challenging content and not grind. Hard challenges keep everyone busy, dosnt matter if you have infinite free time if you suck gaming. That should be the direction of a real game and not this no sense cringe "don't have time to farm, here pay 80$ for your season-extraExp-bigEzRewards". Fucking ridicoulus. Fucking Devs should actually rewarding the player who spend little time that the fucking no life grinder. Damn make % base drop chance -10% chance of legendary loot for each hour of the day log inside the game and gg.

I'm unsure if this is satire.

I've googled and couldn't find this anywhere, and this user's comments are quite in line with what they've posted now, so I'd go for stupidity and gatekeeping over copypastaing

You imply that easy mode = grind. I'm not sure why, they have nothing to do with each other. You can grind hard content just as much as easy content.

Damn make % base drop chance -10% chance of legendary loot for each hour of the day log inside the game and gg.

Man, for someone who wants things to be "hard", you really want to be rewarded for time spent, as opposed to skill. Hilariously, you're the target audience for those $80 content skips: people who want to feel like they're good, whether or not they're actually good.

You're out here talking about "no sense cringe" while posting nearly illegible drivel about how you feel entitled to success because you have more hours to kill. Step back, get some perspective. Most people have made their time valuable. It's not on them if you've failed to do the same.

Id be screwed because im one of those annoying twats who log in and afk just to keep abreast of chat until I get some time to play.

I think you missed the minus sign there and misread this, I will translate it: "The chance for rare loot to drop should be continuously reduced by 10% for every hour you log inside the game. I.e., you should receive rewards for completing difficult challenges rapidly, that is, skillfully." The implication seems to be that if the challenge is hard and you are not good at it, and are just throwing yourself at a wall repeatedly, or the challenge is non-existent/mindless (chore simulator), if you are repetitively doing either and grinding hours away, they are one and the same, and neither is a meritorious achievement. I think this is an interesting angle, as very few games reward skill expression or eureka moments as a momentous achievement. The vast majority, genre and budget irrespective, rely on the (easier to implement) crutch of locking progression behind pointless tedium, so given enough hours sunk in, everyone can win. It is interesting to think about how, whether, and under what conditions games could reward the above.

This is one of the opinions of all time.

This is Beehaw, we expect you to be(e) nice here. Gatekeeping isn't nice.

Besides, there are people who play games that are of all skill levels and time constraints, and they deserve to be able to enjoy games as much as you do. Have some compassion.

Here's your gate to keep. I think you dropped it.

@banana_meccanica @trashhalo man you sound like me 25 years ago lol

I did grow out of it.

Twentyfive years ago exactly when most of the game have stopped to be competitive. Now go to work grown man that loot boxes don't pay by itself.

Now go to work grown man that loot boxes don’t pay by itself.

i have no idea why you are so vitriolic and generally cringe about this opinion, man. even if you were correct (you're not) and not gatekeeping (you are), it's just not a big deal in the way you make it

I actually agree with what you’re trying to say about microtransactions cheapening competitive games. It’s why I stopped playing competitive games altogether, but introducing proper casual modes for singleplayer or PvE co-op games for no additional cost to increase accessibility only helps increase the number of potential players. The existance of casual modes does not have any correlation with competitive games or takes away from another player’s time invested into the same game, and it will not cause the “death” of video games. The reason why people are disagreeing with you is because you’re blaming other players as the cause when it’s actually corporate greed with overinflated MTX and excessive season pass shit that’s truely killing the industry.

Corporation actually make their decision on how players approach the videogames, this greed is accept and even need it by exactly this kind of consideration about making game relativity easy. Competition isn't the only enemy as mine opinion, it's this approach to gaming that makes everyone want to win easy and fast because "it is fun" till the next game, because games dies in weeks, even days, after realise. The best game of this lastest years was Elder ring, not an easy game but still love by all. People are hypocrites who cries about having bad games and when you ask them what they want you realize that actually they wanna the bad garbage they deserve. I'm sure what a good game needs for be fun, and its the challenge, something we will never find by keep accepting trash or telling others to be gate keeping of stuff, that mean never understand what actually a gate is, looking for quality dies on this and always will.

Easy there, tiger. You will get there, don't worry.

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We will have an AI/AIs one day that create tailored games/simulations on the spot with is own world, story, characters etc.