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Initially posted in response to a post about game difficulty creating tension.
I think the idea of tension in a game and the idea of difficulty in a game are always going to be an awkward marriage at best. I mean, it’s tense the first time you die to a monster, but it’s not tense the thirtieth time. There are tricks you can do to work around this by making the player feel like they’re on the cusp of losing while secretly supporting them, but honestly, I don’t like most of those tricks anyway. I think at some point, you have to accept that the tension in your game is going to cease to exist for at least some of your players.
This is giving me a bunch of ideas for posts about video games and suspension of disbelief, so I think I’ll split those off.
I think the idea of tension in a game and the idea of difficulty in a game are always going to be an awkward marriage at best. I mean, it’s tense the first time you die to a monster, but it’s not tense the thirtieth time. There are tricks you can do to work around this by making the player feel like they’re on the cusp of losing while secretly supporting them, but honestly, I don’t like most of those tricks anyway. I think at some point, you have to accept that the tension in your game is going to cease to exist for at least some of your players.
This is giving me a bunch of ideas for posts about video games and suspension of disbelief, so I think I’ll split those off.