Greg Costikyan has posted an article on Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment on his site.

His point is that there’s no place for Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in certain types of games. While he makes good points, I disagree.

Dynamic difficulty levels in games can make them more fun for some people while it will detract from the game for others. The key is - if you make it a user selectable option, you get the best of both worlds. Instead of three difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, Hard) add a fourth - “Dynamic” which lets the player choose to have the game change difficulty levels based on how they’re doing.

I don’t think games should ever be strictly dynamic (though I’m sure some of my favorites are, behind the scenes) but it should be an option. Otherwise, how will the player ever know if they’re getting better? How can they judge their skills against their friends’ skills?

There is a place for this in online games too. It has to be optional though. I don’t think I could ever have a fun game of Age of Mythologies against Bryan without some serious handicapping. How serious? I don’t know, but with Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment, I wouldn’t have to know, we’d just check off a checkbox, and play the game. Sometimes he’d beat me, sometimes I’d beat him. I’d be challenged trying to stop his single villager from decimating my entire civilization, and he’d be challenged trying to stop my unwashed hordes from overrunning his base.

If it can be done, I say do it.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “and these (handing books to Homer) should give you the grounding you’ll need in thermodynamics, hypermathematics and of course microcalifragalistics.” - Professor Frink