Tobold's Blog: Are modern games made for the right audience?

Saturday, September 20, 2025

Are modern games made for the right audience?

When last weekend I wrote about the pricing controversy over Silksong, Bigeye said that he had thought that I was writing about the *other* Silksong controversy, about the difficulty of the game. I won't do that, but I'll use it as a starting point for a wider discussion. What is the purpose of a difficult game? Ideally, if the developers get it right, and target the right players, difficulty in a game makes a player experience an obstacle to progression, which with some work he can overcome. That feels good, like a real achievement, and motivates the player to continue playing to overcome the next obstacle.

But what if the developers don't get it right? At the release of Elden Ring, it was reported that a third of players didn't get past the first boss, Margit, and nearly half not past Godrick. If an obstacle in the game is so difficult that even after an hour or two of trying it seems unsurmountable, a lot of players are just going to give up. As a result, they won't buy the DLC for the game, and maybe not even the sequel. I just used a cheat mod to play Elden Ring, because otherwise I simply wouldn't have been able to see most of the game.

In the board game space, the word difficult can mean two different things: Either a board game in which you play solo or cooperatively against the game itself is difficult to win, e.g. Robinson Crusoe; or a game is highly complex, which makes the rules difficult to understand, and the game difficult to play correctly, e.g. On Mars. Videogames are a bit different: People use other words, like complex, or "difficult to learn", to describe a game like Europa Universalis. But calling a videogame just "difficult" in the overwhelming majority of cases means only one thing: The game demanding a very fast reaction time, and you not being able to progress if you aren't fast enough. Search Google for "the most difficult videogames", and all results will be about games that are hard to beat because of reaction time.

There is a problem with that sort of difficulty. If the difficulty of a game lies in its complexity, that is something that can be overcome by studying the game. But for reaction time, there is a hard cap, which is biological. I could train reaction time for days, and not get below a certain threshold. And that threshold is age-dependent. The scientific link between age and reaction time is well established, and I as a 60-year old pensioner can't possibly beat a teenager in reaction time, regardless of amount of training. And I think game companies haven't realized how their audience is aging.

One of the famous game critics that complained about Silksong's difficulty was Yahtzee Croshaw from Second Wind. He is famous as a game critic because he has been doing the same style of game criticism for 18 years now, and has been involved in computer games even longer. He is now 42 years old. I would bet that two decades ago, he would have had an easier time beating Silksong, and his review would have looked differently.

The first video game I ever played was Pong, so that must have been in the late 70's. But even the kids who grew up with far more modern consoles, like the Nintendo Entertainment System from the 80's, or the Playstation 1 from the 90's, aren't young anymore either. And a lot of us are still playing computer games. The general assumption, based more on the toy market than on the videogame market, that the audience remains young because older people stop playing, simply isn't true.

This is further complicated by economic realities. Older people have always had more money than younger people, because they had the time to accumulate wealth or experience that translates into higher salaries. But these days there is an additional effect of rising inequality, which means that a large percentage of young people these days are poorer than previous generations were. Thus we get reports on how video game spending by 18-24 year-old Americans has declined almost 25% over the last year, much more than for older age groups. The $80 triple-A game simply isn't affordable for many young people.

I didn't buy Silksong. I never would have, regardless of ratings. It was very obvious to me, even before the discussion on the game's difficulty, that I wouldn't have the reaction time to enjoy playing this. In fact, I haven't played a platformer for decades now, as the overwhelming majority of these games are now simply too hard for me. That wasn't always the case, 40 years ago I finished Manic Miner on the ZX Spectrum, which was the really, really difficult platformer game of the day. I am able to afford $80 games, in fact I pre-ordered the premium edition of Europa Universalis 5 for €85. That is because EU5 does not have any feature by which my slow reaction time would lock me out of the game.

Now Silksong certainly doesn't have an affordability problem, and thus works well as a game targeted at a younger audience. But I can't help but feel that many large computer game companies didn't get the memo. The first Final Fantasy game was released in 1987, but most people who played it at that time wouldn't enjoy the latest release, Final Fantasy XVI, because the series has morphed from a turn-based RPG to an action RPG. The majority of triple-A game releases of the past years requires the audience to be able to meet a certain reaction time requirement. Very few games have a slider to slow that requirement down. If the people who can afford $80 games can't play them, because they are too old and too slow, while the people who can play these games can't afford to buy them, the industry has a problem.

- posted by Tobold @ 6:05 PM Permanent Link

Comments:

Silksong is also strange because even amongst hard games it's fairly unique in just how quickly its difficulty ramps up and how little downtime you get as a player.

Silksong in the first hour starts to throw basic enemies at you with more complex movesets than many of the bosses in Hollow Knight. The difficulty doesnt gradually go up as much as start you basically where the previous game ended and then ramp up even further from there.

The cherry on top is that unlike Elden Ring and the lessons From Software learned about not egregiously punishing players for dying by forcing long run backs, Team Cherry have gone the opposite direction and added some of the most grueling runbacks I've ever seen in a videogame.

One particularly bad one forces you to do an entire zone filled with poisoned water, traps, and randomly spawning enemies who also happen to be flyers and can respawn. Once you get to the boss area you're then forced to fight through waves of enemies before the boss spawns and yes if you die this all has to be repeated including the waves of enemies. Of course there is a very well hidden bench which cuts down this runback from the full zone to half the zone but good luck finding it on a blind playthrough.

Silksong is legitimately the first game that I've beaten and was so exhausted from playing it I have no desire to play it again despite thinking it was a great game.

# posted by

Bigeye : 21/9/25 06:48

I always think that developers should make games that they want to play and if there's an audience for it great.

# posted by

Janous : 21/9/25 10:24

Bilewater? Yeah that area is a nightmare, that said I think the game is well balanced around the intended difficulty, part of the difficulty. Given how there are multiple paths through the game and how some ability combinations trivialize bosses it does seem like the difficulty is partially there to encourage at best, and enforce at worse, exploration.

# posted by

Anonymous : 21/9/25 21:17

I think it is the key for great games. Without passion they can make a perfectly fine game, but passion is necessary to go further than that.

And passion means the game is created by game dev, not by producers.

On the other hand, adding a reaction time slider is an excellent idea ! But it might not be doable for all games. If you take the last Doom, there is no 'reaction time window' to be adjusted. And slowing projectile and monsters would change the feeling of the game.

# posted by

Anonymous : 22/9/25 09:05

My view is that there are so many games that there's plenty of room for those that are 'not for everybody'

# posted by

Gerry Quinn : 22/9/25 13:43

@Tobold I am 100% in sync with this article. I actually bought Silksong and Hollow Knight when it came out over the hype, and because -- precisely because my aging reflexes make some games less fun now -- I've been experimenting with trying different game types to see if I can find a comfortable niche that isn't just "walking simulators" and "turn based tactical." After one hour in original Hollow Knight I realized this was a 2D soulslike with all the punishment....then read that Silksong was actually harder, and Steam graciously refunded me my money.

I do have a secret unique cheat code for some games, though: my son, who is 13. If I hit a rough spot (as I have in the past with Doom Eternal, for example) I simply call him in to get me through the offending boss monster or gruelling platform level or whatever it is. Watching him complain I play on "normal mode" and not the hardest difficulty level while he does things I couldn't even think of to defeat the boss in one or two tries was pretty impressive. I'm trying to play Wu Chang: Fallen Feather right now, for example, and I love everything about this game until I get to another soulslike boss. When that happens, its time to call him in (assuming I can't beat it after watching a playthrough "how to beat this dude" video first). Without my son, I would have given up on Wu Chang already, despite loving the graphical style, interesting story and world design.

# posted by

Doctor Futurity : 24/9/25 19:15