Welcome to the inaugural Question of the Week! Every Monday we will take on a different topic surrounding news or interesting topics about games or the gaming industry and open it up for discussion. Our three editors will give their perspective and you are welcome to give your own. Agree? Disagree?

The topic this week is: Does the difficulty someone has with a game cloud your judgment on their opinion of the product? What if you found the game easy? Is there any legitimacy to not having people who are bad at a particular genre review a game?

So that raises the question: why do you suck at video games?

Ian Y’s Take

I’d be suspicious of any reviewer’s, opinion of a game they’ve had great difficulty playing, especially if it’s negative. We all know how damaging frustrating gameplay can be to the perception of a game. We’ve all, at one point or another, put down a game because it was too damn hard. I, for one, will forever despise MS DOS games like the original Prince of Persia or the golf game World Class Leader Boards (“Looks like he fell in the pit, Jim”).

Looks like you hit the Prince, Jim.

Things get even more suspicious if I later play said game, and have little trouble with it. I can’t help but imagine the reviewer as some raging douche-canoe, yelling at his TV and kicking puppies because he can’t finish the tutorial. Or at least wonder if he played it at all.

But don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything inherently dangerous about reviewers playing games they’re bad at. The real issue is how objective he can be and his ability to distinguish which truly sucks, him or the game (because both are distinct possibilities). Take me for instance. (No, I am not that conceited, this is just the best example I can think of.)

At the recent Sony Holiday Press Event in Toronto, I spent 10 minutes thoroughly shaming myself in front of Jesse Abney, producer of Need For Speed: Shift, clumsily trying to negotiate turns while he touted his baby’s superb realism. I readily identified who at that moment was stinking the place up: me. And, even though I was having a terrible time, I knew exactly who would like it and why. And that’s what I believe is an important skill for a reviewer to have: the ability to balance personal judgment with what others might appreciate without compromising their integrity.

Faux Box Quote Of The Day, “It’s so awesome, it’ll make you yell at the TV and kick puppies!” – LeftStickRight.com

Tim’s Take

Difficulty is a multi-faceted term. If a game is difficult while remaining fair, we call that “challenging.” If it’s difficult due to faulty controls or poor development decisions, we call that “broken.”

That said, there will always be people who make challenging games look easy. I remember the first time I witnessed Ikaruga. It doesn’t take long to figure out playing it is walking into many hours of repeated death, but the friend I watched was an expert at this style of game. He blew past waves of enemies and fire like he could do it in his sleep, and my jaw has not recovered from its drop to this day.

But unless you’re Rain Man, few would get to the level of play my friend possesses in Ikaruga, or most any other challenging game, without an investment of time, and there has to be something rewarding about the experience of the game to keep people practicing. Even if you stink at Ikaruga — like me — these elements should still be evident to just about anyone and at least garner some respect toward the title.

Now let's blow this thing and go home!

If a reviewer excessively complains about the difficulty of a game without explaining the reasons why it is difficult, I would take their words with a grain of salt. On the other hand, if a number of people complain about the difficulty of a game without mentioning what is redeeming about it, it should raise a red flag that something more may be wrong.

Ian H’s Take

I do often find myself wondering how other people are moving through the same game as I am. Whether or not the difficulty curve that I am experiencing is vastly different than what an average person would. In most instances where I actual test these theories, it turns out that people who play games on a regular or even semi-regular basis take in some inherit skills and knowledge that complete escapes the non-gamer. Is it wrong that it took my sister two hours to get through a puzzle room of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess where it took me only a matter of minutes? Is that her fault for lacking some sort of inherit cognitive facility to know that a certain type of object is likely flammable, or an item I will possess in mere moments will help me move across a set of platforms?

I take a lot of perspective from my work as a software developer, where the general rule of thumb is that if the customer can not figure this out, you’re doing it wrong. Take this rule out of any User Experience designer’s book in that you have to design for your audience, and if you are making something for a wide audience that extends past just the fans of the genre or mechanical system than you need to make concessions for that. Like web design, it doesn’t need to be less flashy or simpler, but the experience must be guided in a way that those without the knowledge that a Contact Us page is always going to be along the bottom can still navigate their way across the site.

If you ride a dog like a horse, it will rain on your wedding day.

My skepticism meter does not automatically trigger when I read that someone has had great difficulty with a game. I find that reviews that offer that perspective to be insightful in a software development sort of way. It is important that they quantify the difficulty they had, and trust that they have made an effort to at least work through these difficulties. Certain things usually come out much later, though, and the reviews often glaze over areas that are well known after release to be startling challenging. There are games that I find difficult that others don’t, I can specifically identify Odama as one of those. That being said, I can gather the merits of the game purely from the mechanics it offers, even if my dexterity is not such that I can master it. If a reviewer has trouble, that doesn’t bother me. If a reviewer rants and raves about the difficulty without quantifying it or even offering any kind constructive solution to the problem, it seems to hold less water to me.

What’s your take? Feel free to discuss in the comments!