Hit Points, in case you haven’t come across it before, is an incredible free newsletter from friend of Eurogamer and former Edge editor Nathan Brown, delivering insight and commentary on the videogame industry. We’re delighted to be partnering with Nathan to provide a platform for some of his pieces, continuing with this from earlier this week on Elden Ring and the question of balance. If you like what you’ve read, do head over and subscribe!
Many years ago, I spent an evening in the pub with a cohort of fellow game journalists. Among them was the wonderful Graham Smith, who these days is doing audience-development stuff I shan’t pretend to understand at Rock Paper Shotgun, but I believe at the time was editor of PC Gamer. I was stressing about something I had to write: a post script for the Edge review of the PS4 launch title Killzone Shadow Fall. I knew I wanted to talk about AI, both in the game and in shooters more broadly, but wasn’t entirely sure what to say or how to say it (I was a fraud, and still am). Graham said something that helped it all click into place, and which I have never forgotten. “People say they want good AI in shooters, but they don’t. If FPS AI was perfect then it would be just like playing online against the people at the top of the leaderboard. It would be awful. When people say they want good AI, what they mean is they want to fight enemies that make them feel smart when they beat them.”
I effectively wrote up that conversation, or at least what I could remember of it through the hangover, and just about made my deadline. But Graham’s words have stuck with me ever since — and not just because, after the issue had gone on sale, a reader emailed to say what a good, thought-provoking piece it was (again: fraud). No, what I took from it was that there is often a difference between what we say or think we want in our games, and what we really mean.
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I’ve been thinking about this lately in relation to balance in games, and specifically, unsurprisingly I expect, about balance in Elden Ring. The main trigger for it, apart from my own dozens of hours (and hundreds of deaths) in FromSoft’s latest — and the near-constant stream of videos in my Twitter timeline of pals being one-shot by various enemies in the game — was this thought-provoking sort-of-review from the little-known videogame YouTuber Dunkey. Perhaps you have heard of him.