You know, I’m not quite so sure.

Yes. Somethings are tricky and require some modifications to make it more user friendly, sometimes just to even make it possible! However, I’ve been thinking back and you know what I realised, I do actually quite like a challenge. To first explain this, I’m going to use the example of flying a helicopter in the modification for a popular PC game Battlefield 1942, called Desert Combat. Invariably, whenever anyone came to the mod, they would see a helicopter and think “Oh wow! Cool, I’ll fly that!”. They would then get in, take off and do a rainbow shape before landing on the propellers. It was almost an initiation. However, though time and practice it became possible to become extremely good, a very tricky adversary to eliminate. There was this gap between those that had practiced and become good, and those that hadn’t.

Then Battlefield 2 came out. Taking its lead from the popularity of the mod, it based itself in modern day combat, stole a few of the developers and introduced helicopters. It was quite exciting, until you played it. There were praises and problems as with all games, but my (and a few others) personal gripe with the game is that they appeared to have made things easy. As a decent helicopter pilot from DC, you could jump in and fly with relative ease in these new choppas – so all’s good? Nope. They were a lot less maneuverable meaning dog fights of the speed and insanity of the old DC days were gone. Why did it go? Some suggest it would be to make it more realistic, but I don’t buy that. I believe it is about making it easier, for the average Joe to dive in and play.

Great news! Now everyone can fly! True, true. But the sacrifice seems so rich to make it seem a good idea. Why lose the speed and manoeuvreability, the fun and the skill out of such an individual aircraft? … when the answer is to ‘make it easy’ – was it really worth it then?

I say no. I say screw the people who don’t want to practice at something to be good! This problem goes deeper than just helicopters in computer games though, it’s throughout our everyday lives. We are making things easier without thought for the intangible side-effects. Don’t misunderstand this point, ‘intangibable’ is the key word here. Inventing the car made things easier for people, but it was a tangible benefit in not just time, but in economics also. What I’m meaning should be thought about better is where things are changed to ‘make things easier’ when actually, they’re not broken.

It’s that old saying, “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”, I guess. Endless tweaking, if you don’t know where to stop, can lead to the road of mediocrity. (So I’m told ).

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