The team behind Ubisoft's epic stealth sequel on the art of providing a challenge without alienating your audience.

Many games are ruined by developers' desire to ensure they're accessible to as many players as possible, according to Alex Hutchinson - the lead designer on Edge 245 cover star Assassin's Creed III.

"A lot of games have been ruined by easy modes," he asserts. "If you have a cover shooter and you switch it to easy and you don’t have to use cover, you kind of broke your game.  

"You made a game that is essentially the worst possible version of your game."

It's a problem unique to videogames, he continues, lamenting the fact that this is the only creative industry that needs to provide difficulty options.

"It’s like if I picked up a book and it said, 'Do you want the easy version or the complicated version?' [Game designers] can simplify the language, you know; we can make it two syllables."

Lead gameplay designer Steven Masters chimes in to stress that, in spite of this position on easy modes, the team's goal isn't to make a challenge of each passing moment in the game, but to make sure they are passed well. And a big part of ensuring that that's the case, is playtesting, which the team has been conducting since January. Ubisoft is taking the task very seriously, setting up two labs and ushering in a fresh batch of players each week.

"I have crazy data analysis tools for these things," Masters explains. "I can reach in and pull a video of any moment in a playtest; I can sort different events and say, 'Okay, I want to see when this guy got detected and then failed within 30 seconds', and watch that.

"So in terms of difficulty balancing we can do quite a lot of fine tuning. It’s something that I look after very closely just to make sure that everyone’s having a good experience. We don’t do it on the fly but we take a lot of care over it."

Hutchinson adds: "We’re not trying to make a brutally difficult game, so we go through all the playtest data and make sure it works."

It will still be challenging, of course, and Ubisoft is building on the optional objectives system it ushered in with Brotherhood: executing any given target won't necessarily be difficult, but doing it in style will up the ante considerably.

"We’ve got some missions like the reveal mission that was that big battle on bunker hill, thousands of NPCs on screen and such," enthuses Masters. "We can let you get through that pretty straightforwardly, but we can put a lot of constraints in like 'don’t take any damage when you’re coming down there' or 'assassinate the target without being detected'.

"When you’re standing in the middle of this incredibly fortified scenario it’s a serious stealth challenge. It’s really difficult and we’re going to challenge you on all of your different skills and abilities."

http://www.edge-online.com/news/assassins-creed-iii-devs-easy-mode-often-ruins-games

I completely disagree. For that to even have a chance of being correct, it was have to establish that all easy modes are the same. Like with DMC and Kingdom Hearts where easy mode simply inable's auto fire or auto dodging, or in Bethesda games where easy mode just lowers the enemies stats a bit at the cost of experience points.

At the end of the day, easy mode is just a name.

This is laughable. Are they actually talking as if Assassin's Creed games give the player a challenge?!

Apart from the very first one, Assassin's Creed is easy mode and while I absolutely love the series, the lack of any form of difficulty options or challenge is a huge problem.

Are they talking about their own game ?

And I always thought it is rather strange, the main character can climb every single building in the most unrealistic way, but not the trees...

Not all games should have modes period, but among those that do, there shouldn't be an "easy" mode as distinct from a normal mode. I feel that Nintendo actually reached a good solution with their superguide, where if the player demonstrates significant difficulty with a stage, the game gives you the option to do the stage on autopilot (or give you super powers, like the Golden Leaf in NSMB2), options which you can use as you want to (like using the autopilot only to see what you should be doing, rather than actually letting it progress for you)

In this way the core experience isn't dumbed down, but those who need a leg up are given it.

I don't think I agree with him. The game is stealth regardless of the difficulty, unless you make it ridiculously easy (which is out of the question).

Within it being Assassin's Creed, there are degrees of difficulty different gamers may find easier than others.

Assassin's Creed are so Damon easy anyway an easy mode would ruin it, but I think the whole "dumbing down" argument is a good one.

Easy modes are good for the casual or younger gamers that don't have a lot of gaming experience but still want to play through and enjoy the game.

You gotta love the way people put down on the young and casual gamers like they are something inferior.

I remember my gaming skills being at their best when I was a child and most other children as well. Even in FPS games, I see children giving grown men a run for their money like its nothing.

When did gaming become a primarily adult thing and not for younger audiences I wonder?

I would topple games on their hardest difficulty when I was 10.

I don't agree, they should make game difficulty that is playable by new players and hardcore players a like. I hate games that are notoriously difficult, but games that are too easy are kinda boring. There need to find a balance in difficulty to keep things interesting