Spelunky creator comes out against god modes in brutal games like his because 'The amount of satisfaction one gets from succeeding eventually is incredible'

pcgamer.com:

The question of difficulty is a bizarrely high-voltage third rail in videogame discourse. You can barely mention finding an Elden Ring boss a bit tough on social media without sparking some sort of global diplomatic crisis: Fathers denounce sons, sons denounce brothers, daggers are drawn and before you know it everyone is intensely angry and accusing one another of trying to kill videogames forever.

So I salute the bravery of Spelunky creator Derek Yu, who's been musing about the issue of videogame difficulty—specifically, whether it's a good idea for games to include easy-to-access god modes for players who get stuck—over on Twitter (via GamesRadar). 

Interesting discussion about god mode.To me, the reply is actually an argument in favor of sometimes NOT including god mode if you would like to push players out of their comfort zone. Often you want to meet player expectations, but like any other artform, sometimes you don't. pic.twitter.com/l44cYWLMq5July 7, 2024

Yu was responding to an anonymous discussion between two people, one of whom advocated for including god modes since players would only use it «when they're well and truly stuck.» But that didn't quite hold water for Yu. After all, he said, if a designer wants to «push players out of their comfort zone,» then giving them an option to run back to that comfort zone would be totally anathema to the point of the game.

Plus, Yu continued, sticking a 'break in case of emergency' god mode in a game's option menu risks destroying a beautiful feeling that will be familiar to any FromSoft fan: Walking away from a boss you're stuck on before coming back later and trampling them. «The amount of satisfaction one gets from succeeding eventually is incredible… you can rob people of that experience if a shortcut is too close at hand.»

That doesn't mean Yu is uniformly opposed to letting players go god mode, mind you. After all, «Not every game is designed around the extremes of frustration/satisfaction,» and «for each