it's not a skill issue

When I was 12 years old, I believed myself to be  god tier at Call of Duty. I'd always be in first   place sniping noobs across the map, and I even  started my own clan to make cringy edits that no   one would see. But what I didn't know was that I  was the one being played the entire time. You see,   most games make you think you're smarter than you  actually are. And there's a really smart reason   why they do it. And once you know it, you won't  let any game take you for granted ever again. So,   let's dissect some of your favorite titles you  didn't know were lying to you. You might need   some therapy after this and look at some of  the ways they control their difficulty based   on your skill level. And the third one is so  sneaky even I didn't see it coming. And it's   the reason EA got sued. Well, one of the many,  many reasons they got sued. Let's get into it.    In pretty much every game where you control  a character, you may have noticed something   super subtle while jumping around. I noticed it  myself when I was making my own tough platformer   game when I kept dying at every other jump. It's  not a skill issue, guys. It's called Coyote Time,   and yes, it is named after this guy right here.   It's basically a little buffer that the game gives   you to jump after you've left the platform. And  usually it's about five to six frames long or 83   to 100 milliseconds to do so. Uhhuh. But it works  both ways as input buffering also lets you press a   jump button before actually reaching the ground.   So once you reach it, it can jump automatically.    It's kind of like laughing at a meme before you  finished reading it or how I laugh at my own   jokes. I think games like Celeste, Hollow Knight,  and Super Meat Boy all use this trick. And this   way you can easily time hard jumps. Otherwise,  players would get very frustrated and not the   fun kind. This is not the fun kind. So, all of  those precision platformers aren't as precise   as you think. Oh, but the next trick is called  rubber banding. But no. Oh my god. But no, it's   not an actual rubber band. It's a much stretchier  subject than that. In fact, unbelievable to no   one, Nintendo is the main culprit of rigging your  childhood, specifically with Mario Kart. You know   that feeling of being first place so far away from  every other scrub that there's no possible way you   could lose until you get blue shelled and then red  shelled and then green shelled and heck, you might   as well collect the whole rainbow at this point  because now you're in last place and you were the   sucker all along. Well, Nintendo actually does  this on purpose to snap your confidence in half.    I'm not going to snap this. You see, every item  in the game has a different probability. And the   further you are away from the front, the better  items you always seem to get. But that's not all   because researchers, yes, Mario Kart researchers,  nobody told me about this at the job fair,   uncovered that the actual NPCs themselves  physically speed up or slow down depending on   how far away you are from them. They ran emulator  scripts on Super Mario Kart and found that the AI   completed the race 20 second faster if you were in  first place versus last. And you can get a lot and   done in 20 seconds allegedly.   But why does Nintendo do this if it's the source   of so much frustration and broken friendships?   Well, it's simple. It's so the game stays fun   and competitive for everyone at the table. Even  for your little cousin that keeps falling off the   sides. It's better for you, though. Nintendo wants  to keep you at that sweet spot between winning and   losing, giving you just enough hope that you'll  say, "Just win more time. One more time, please. "   So, while Nintendo wants you to have fun, EA has  a very different reason for doing the same thing.    For years, FIFA players, yes, they exist, would  complain about the momentum of the game. Your star   athlete would be about to shoot the winning goal  and then he fumbles and suddenly your shots start   missing like crazy. Now, while EA denied having  anything to do with this, and I know it's kind   of hard to read this, I need a better projector.   In 2016, they conveniently filed a public patent   describing a system to automatically adjust the  difficulty of the game, a system called DDA,   or dynamic difficulty adjustment. There we go.   But while they claim not to have used it in game,   what's the exact system they're hiding? Well,  the patent describes four subsystems working in   harmony until the Fire Nation. Okay, I'll stop.   And for this guys, we need to bring out the big   pointer for big points. The first one sets the  rules. Think of it like a hidden settings menu.    It decides how hard the game should be based on  your performance. The second one would group you   with other FIFA players. Yes, they still exist.   Who behave similarly to you and not by skill, if   that's even a thing in FIFA, but by your spending  habits and playing patterns. Are you a grinder,   a spender, or a quitter? EA knows all. The second  to last one is kind of creepy. It would predict

how long you're going to keep playing the game  before you rage quit or have better stuff to do.    Low bar, I know. So, it allegedly changes the game  to keep you hooked longer than you normally would.    It's kind of like a casino that locks the exits  right before you're about to leave. Or that one   church. And the fourth subsystem, I'm holding up a  four inside here. You just can't see it. Or maybe   I'm lying. It's the brain behind the brun. Every  time you play the game, allegedly, you give it   more data so it becomes better at predicting and  manipulating you. So, you end up thinking you're   actually better than the game, but the game is  just getting better at you. Allegedly. Everything   is allegedly here. Players claim that EA  deliberately made their teams weaker to push them   into buying more card packs. If that's not pay to  win, I don't know what is. So, of course, they got   mega sued in 2020, but they ended up open sourcing  their code to the plaintiffs and the lawsuit was   dropped. But nobody fully believes them cuz it's  EA. Come on. I guess that's what happens when   you're the boy who cried wolf. Except the wolf is  a patent filed in your own name. NDA wasn't alone.    Activision, another very non-greedy company, filed  a similar patent for their multiplayer matchmaking   system that would pair you with other suckers who  spent their hard-earned cash on the game, making   you want to own that gold shiny digital gun. But  that's a whole another video. Now, EA does this   to help you reach the ultimate flow state, the  sweet spot between boredom and frustration or   anxiety. It's a state I reached while writing this  big, beautiful script. Yeah, I'm about that. I'm   about that. Now, in the 70s, a psychologist named  this, I am not going to attempt to pronounce this,   discovered it after being fascinated with artists  who would just seem to get lost in the sauce after   completing their masterpieces. It's a magic  zone where you completely lose track of time,   even forgetting to eat because you're so engrossed  in the activity that you're doing. Look at that   focus. Pure focus. On the flip side, these other  two psychologists coined the term loss aversion   where losing feels twice as good as winning. So EA  of course takes advantage of this by introducing a   losing streak after you were winning. So, it feels  doubly painful and you want to do anything you can   to restore your former glory, even if it means  paying hundreds of dollars to form the perfect   team. He's very happy with that card pack. Are  you winning, son? But here's the ironic part.    EA didn't even invent this system. Instead,  they just found a way to monetize it because   Capcom got there first. Unlike EA, Capcom wasn't  doing it for the money. They just wanted everyone   to hear what are you buying one last time. And  to complete the full story of Resident Evil 4,   of course, not quitting when the going gets tough.   To accomplish this, they created an internal score   called game rank. A scale from 1 to 10 that  tracks your accuracy, damage taken, deaths,   and how many items you burn through. What do you  think your rating would be? I'm a 10 out of 10.    So, the better you play, the higher your score and  the more difficult the enemies get, becoming more   aggressive, dealing damage, and spawning more of  them. And vice versa, if you suck, there's only   going to be a few scattered throughout the map  that's probably going to run away scared when   they see you coming near them. One perfect example  of this is the crossbow archers in the castle's   water room. These guys only appear if you perform  well enough in the previous section. Honestly,   maybe being bad at games was the meta all along.   And here's the surprising part. Capcom didn't tell   anyone that this system existed. It's not even  in the patch notes. Instead, some nerds found   it while digging through the code. Curiosity, in  fact, did not kill the cat. They exploited it by   intentionally taking damage and dying early in  game to make the lighter section enemies easier   to kill. But instead of doing the usual AAA switch  up and patching it, Capcom decided to keep it as   a Hallmark system on how to keep your game alive  for many years to come after launch. Now, you may   be feeling a little betrayed right now. The games  you loved were lying to you this whole time. But I   want you to remember this feeling because we'll  come back to it in a little bit. This is you,   by the way. But first, what if a studio did  all of this, but instead of lying about it,   they advertised it? Well, Valve, yes, this guy did  exactly that with Left for Dead, one of the best   co-op shooters to ever exist. Hands down. Hands  down. Instead of calling it a difficulty system,   he branded it as an AI director back when AI was  cool. Just like a film director deciding when to   build tension and when to give the audience a  breather, it's basically a big brother that's   always watching you and your friends play and  getting smoked constantly cuz one of y'all always

got to keep running off like what are y'all doing?   The big director does this in four stages. And for   this we need to bring out the big pointer. First  we have that buildup when you hear that terrifying   sound and you hear the horde of enemies coming to  mass mob you. Then you have the peak when you're   in the sauce fighting for your life, running out  of ammo and on the last matted pack. And then the   fadeoff or the spawning of the enemies kind of  slows down and those little suckers start to die   off and then the silence that comes after the  calm before the storm. And don't you think that   the big director isn't paying attention to all  of this? If your team's health is critically low,   that means you suck. But you're going to start  finding painkillers in some really random places.    And you might think, "Wow, these zombies really  have kind of a drug addiction at this point   because this isn't normal. " It treats the team as  a single unit. So technically, when you die, it's   everyone's fault. And it manages everyone's stress  levels. So if you just got mobbed three times in a   row, your possibility to get mobbed a fourth  time is much lower. But your buddy over there   who's been coasting and cruising the whole time  should start sleeping with one eye open. But Left   4 Dead isn't the only one pulling the strings in  the background. Naughty Dog uses a similar system   in The Last of Us, and they just so happened to be  about zombies as well to adjust their aggression,   their damage, and the availability of items. As  if the clickers needed any help with that, but   okay. Now, EA, Capcom, and Valve have all used the  same system, but Left 4 Dead had a good feeling   associated with it because Valve was transparent  about it. Who knew that communication would be   the key to a successful relationship? But while  Left 4 Dead reacts to you, Forza does something   completely different. It learns how you race  over time and even races against you while you're   offline or asleep or both. And that's some really  cyberpunk stuff right there. They create a drivear   and yeah, that's a name trained on neural  networks on millions of real player laps and races   in other players games earning you credits while  you sleep. Now, that's what I call making your   money work for you. It even picks up on your bad  habits. So, if you cut corners or break late,   then you should have your license suspended  for the safety of the general populace. Now,   every system we've looked at so far. Mario Kart,  Resident Evil, and Left 4 Dead, they all have   something in common. They decide how hard the game  should be. But there is one studio that refused to   make that decision entirely and instead lets the  player suffer. Very Darwinist of them. Is that   how I say that word? Darwinist. Dark Souls. You're  either good or you're not. You get no difficulty   settings, no adaptive AI, and nothing that would  make you feel good about yourself. In Miyazaki's   own words, and no, not the Studio Gibli one. I  got confused, too. If we really wanted the whole   world to play the game, we could just crank the  difficulty down. turning down the difficulty would   strip the game of that joy, which in my eyes  would break the game itself. In other words,   he's probably a little bit of the sadist in  a way, with all due respect. All jokes aside,   he really frames it as fairness because everyone  has the same opportunity from the start, except   that one guy who played it with one hand. That's  just insane. But if you think about it, real life,   you don't start with the same opportunities. On  the flip side, you have games with infinite menus   and a ton of accessibility settings. With Celeste,  one of the hardest platformers that was ever made,   you have a full assist mode. You can slow  down the game, give yourself invincibility,   and even award yourself with some extra dashes.   The developer, *Maddy Thorson, said, "Ultimately,   we want to empower the player and give them a good  experience, and sometimes that means letting go.    Sometimes accessibility and difficulty aren't  mutually exclusive. And I am losing my voice a   little bit here. This does pose an interesting  question though. Is dynamic difficulty even   ethical? If a game is always softening the blow  for you, will you ever grow? I mean, real life   doesn't soften the punches punches. It's kind of  like using chat GPT. At some point, we're not even   going to be able to think for ourselves if we just  keep relying on these external systems to do the   thinking for us. So maybe the game beating you is  the point. In my opinion, it doesn't really matter   unless you do what EA did. Obviously, make the  game you want to make. And if people are going to   complain, then let them. Too bad. Wmp. There's  always going to be people complaining. Heck,   just look at some of the comments below. Yeah,  I'm calling you guys out. Players will always   find fault with something. Is it manipulative to  them? Maybe. Does it matter if they're having fun?    I don't think so. So, while most of your favorite  games were lying to you, some of them were lying   to help you. A little white lie. It's kind of like  when you promise your great granny on her deathbed   that you're going to get married within a year.   And if you want to keep learning how games work,

I have two splendid videos right here.   And oh my, and you should wishlist my   platformer with no difficulty settings. It's  down below. Boom. Bye. What are these two?