Every few months, the gaming internet erupts into a debate about difficulty. Should soulslike games have easy modes? Are developers who add accessibility options betraying their artistic vision? Is playing on easy mode cheating? These debates generate enormous heat and very little light, largely because most participants are arguing past each other about fundamentally different things.
Let me try to bring some clarity to the conversation by explaining what difficulty settings actually do, how good designers think about them, and why the debate matters beyond internet arguments.
What Difficulty Settings Actually Change
When most people think of difficulty settings, they think of simple numerical adjustments: enemies have more health on hard mode, less on easy. This is the most basic implementation, and it is also the least interesting. Modern games use difficulty to adjust a much wider range of variables.
Enemy aggression and attack frequency, the timing windows for parries and dodges, the amount of information provided to the player, the frequency of checkpoints, the availability of hints and tutorials, the damage dealt and received — all of these can be adjusted independently to create meaningfully different experiences. The best difficulty implementations adjust multiple variables simultaneously to create a coherent experience at each level rather than simply making numbers bigger or smaller.
The Difference Between Challenge and Difficulty
Here is a distinction that most difficulty debates miss: challenge and difficulty are not the same thing. Challenge is the feeling of being tested and having to work for success. Difficulty is the specific set of mechanical obstacles the game places in your path. A game can be challenging without being mechanically difficult, and mechanically difficult without feeling genuinely challenging.
Soulslike games like Elden Ring are often described as difficult, but what they really are is unforgiving. The mechanics themselves are not especially complex — dodge, attack, manage stamina. What makes them challenging is the precision required and the consequences of failure. A well-designed easy mode for a soulslike would not simplify the mechanics; it would reduce the consequences of failure while maintaining the core challenge of learning enemy patterns.
Accessibility vs Difficulty
One of the most important developments in game design over the past decade is the growing distinction between difficulty options and accessibility options. Difficulty options change the challenge level of the game. Accessibility options remove barriers that prevent certain players from engaging with the game at all.
Colorblind modes, subtitle options, button remapping, reduced motion settings, and text size options are accessibility features. They do not make the game easier for players who do not need them; they make the game playable for players who would otherwise be excluded. Conflating accessibility with difficulty is a category error that leads to bad arguments.
Baldur's Gate 3 is an excellent example of a game that handles both well. It offers multiple difficulty levels that genuinely change the challenge of the game, and it also offers extensive accessibility options that make the game playable for a wider range of players. These are separate systems serving separate purposes.
The Artistic Integrity Argument
Some developers and players argue that adding difficulty options compromises the artistic integrity of a game. The argument goes that a game designed around a specific difficulty level is a complete artistic statement, and adding easier options dilutes that statement.
This argument has some merit in specific cases. A game like Celeste, which is explicitly about the experience of struggling and persisting, would be fundamentally different if it had no challenge at all. But Celeste also includes an Assist Mode that lets players adjust the difficulty to their needs — and the developers have been clear that using it does not make you a lesser player. The artistic vision is preserved because the default experience remains intact.
The key insight is that difficulty options do not force anyone to play differently. A player who wants the intended experience can always choose the intended difficulty. Options expand access without removing anything from players who do not want them.
What Good Difficulty Design Looks Like
The best difficulty implementations share a few characteristics. They are transparent about what they change, so players can make informed choices. They are granular enough to address specific challenges rather than applying blanket adjustments. They do not judge players for their choices — no "are you sure you want to play on easy?" prompts that make players feel bad about their preferences.
Games like Hades, Disco Elysium, and Celeste demonstrate that thoughtful difficulty design can serve both players who want a stiff challenge and players who want a more accessible experience, without compromising the core vision of the game. The debate about difficulty is ultimately a debate about who games are for — and the answer should be: everyone who wants to play them.
Conclusion
Difficulty settings are a design tool, not a moral statement. Good difficulty design expands access to games without removing anything from players who want the intended experience. The debate around difficulty is often really a debate about gatekeeping — about who deserves to experience certain games. The answer, in almost every case, is that more players experiencing great games is better for everyone, including the developers who made them.
