The Real Difficulty Isn’t Always Where You Expect It

We talk endlessly about difficulty in games. We debate the merits of punishing combat, of bosses with 3 distinct attack phases, of mechanics that demand frame-perfect timing. We’ve built an entire culture around the idea of ‘getting good.’ But we almost never talk about the other difficulty. The real difficulty. The cognitive load of simply existing within the game’s own internal logic. For so many of us, the hardest part of a game isn’t the gameplay; it’s the user interface. It’s the cluttered screen, the nested menus, the 23-step crafting process for a simple health potion.

When Design Becomes a Hostile Architecture

I was talking this over with a friend-well, less ‘with’ a friend and more ‘at’ my kitchen wall while my friend was in the other room. He overheard. It was embarrassing, but the point stands. I was trying to explain Emerson. Emerson A.-M. is a building code inspector I know. A man whose entire professional life is dedicated to ensuring that complex systems are navigable, safe, and intuitive for human beings. He makes sure exit signs are visible, that you can’t build a stairway to nowhere, that the wiring won’t spontaneously combust. He deals in the grammar of physical space.

And I imagine Emerson trying to play the game I was just playing. I picture him looking at the screen, not as a source of entertainment, but as a hostile piece of architecture. He would see the hidden crafting menu as an unmarked fire escape leading to a brick wall. He’d see the obscure icon system as a building where the bathrooms are labeled with abstract poetry. It violates every principle he upholds. It doesn’t respect the occupant. It doesn’t value their time or their cognitive energy. It’s just bad design, and for some reason, in this industry, bad design is often laundered into a feature called ‘depth.’

The Difference Between Skill and Annoyance

I’m guilty of this myself. I remember passionately defending a ridiculously opaque inventory system to a friend years ago. “No, you don’t get it,” I said, with all the unearned confidence of someone who has just spent 43 hours on a wiki. “Learning to manage the clunky interface is part of the skill ceiling!” He just wanted to know how to equip a helmet. I was telling him he had to first become a librarian of the game’s arcane knowledge. I was wrong. Completely, fundamentally wrong. I was confusing intentional, meaningful complexity-like learning an enemy’s attack patterns-with the pointless, draining friction of bad UX. It’s the difference between a challenging mountain climb and trying to climb that same mountain while wearing shoes filled with gravel. One is a test of skill; the other is just an annoyance.

It assumes the player has infinite time and infinite patience. It assumes their brain is a resource to be mined, that they find joy in spending 23 minutes cross-referencing three different screens to compare two pieces of armor. For a kid with an entire summer stretching out before them, maybe that’s a feature. For an adult with 93 things on their to-do list, it’s a dealbreaker. The cognitive energy required to decode a bad menu is the same energy I need to plan meals for the week or figure out why my taxes are $373 higher than I expected. When I sit down to play, I’m not looking for another job.

It’s a strange tangent, but I think about my vegetable peeler. It’s a simple, elegant piece of design. Its shape tells you how to hold it. Its function is immediately obvious. It requires no tutorial. It does its job perfectly and then gets out of the way. It is, in its own small way, a profound act of respect for the user. Now, think of a game that forces an unskippable 33-minute tutorial on you, only to leave you utterly confused about how to perform the most basic actions. The peeler was designed by someone who wanted to help you. The game often feels like it was designed by someone who wanted to test you, or worse, didn’t think about you at all.

A Glimmer of Hope: Prioritizing Clarity

The industry is slowly, glacially, starting to understand this. There’s a growing appreciation for games that prioritize clarity and ease of use, that see a clean interface not as ‘dumbing things down’ but as a foundational element of player respect. These are often the games that fall under the cozy umbrella, where the goal is relaxation and enjoyment, not a second shift of mental labor. Finding the best examples of this design philosophy can feel like its own quest, but the reward is a library of games that welcome you in instead of holding you at the door. If you’re looking for titles that get this right, the world of Cozy Games on Nintendo Switch is an excellent place to see this philosophy in action. These games understand that the adventure should be in the world, not in the menu that gets you there.

True Accessibility: Respecting Cognitive Energy

This is the core of real accessibility. It’s not just about adding options for colorblindness or remappable controls, as vital as those are. True, deep accessibility is a design philosophy that respects every player’s most limited resource: their cognitive energy. It’s about creating an experience that is as frictionless as possible in all the places where friction isn’t the point. A game can be brutally difficult, demanding everything of your reflexes and strategic mind, while still having a menu system that is as simple and intuitive as a light switch.

The Pleasure of a Well-Made Tool

I think about Emerson A.-M. again, my fictional avatar of good design. I imagine him after a long week of inspecting blueprints and arguing about the required width of emergency exit corridors. He gets home, pours himself a glass of something, and sits down to play a game. He opens the map. It’s clear. He opens his inventory. It’s organized and easy to parse. He wants to craft a fishing rod, and it takes him exactly 3 intuitive clicks. A small smile plays on his lips. It’s not about winning or losing. It’s the quiet, profound pleasure of using a well-made tool. It’s the feeling of being in a space, even a digital one, that was built with care. A space that was built for you.