I started gaming before gaming had difficulty settings. My first great obsession was Kaboom! on the Atari 2600 — fast, simple, endlessly repeatable. Shortly after, I moved to an Apple IIc, where I played every King’s Quest as it came out. In those early days, there was no “Easy” or “Hard” toggle — just the game, and you, and the stubborn will to beat it.
It wasn’t until my thirties that difficulty settings became common enough to be a real choice. At first, I stuck to “Normal.” But somewhere along the way, I realized: I never wanted to feel weak in a game. I didn’t want to scrape for gear or flinch at every hit point lost. In an RPG, I wanted to be the all-powerful sorceress, the rogue who can’t be caught — the kind of character I’ve carried, in various forms, through dozens of games over the years.
Now? I set most games to Easy without hesitation. Easy mode is about the feeling of being all-powerful, and not just for the character — for my mind. As a determinist, life itself is hard mode. Reality will push back at you in every possible way, and my higher consciousness is constantly engaged in that struggle. Games, for me, are a place to let that pressure drop. They’re not arenas for more struggle; they’re sanctuaries for the lower self to flex, to feel untouchable again.
Even in games where easy mode isn’t an option — like Fortnite or Apex Legends — I prefer lobbies where half the competition is bots. And no, I don’t feel guilty. If anyone on voice chat ever tried to give me grief about it, I could outwit them before they finished their sentence. But the truth is, no one really cares — and neither do I.
There’s a strange moralism around difficulty in games, as if playing on hard mode proves something about your character. In certain corners of gamer culture, “easy mode” is practically a slur — shorthand for not being a real gamer. But I think that’s just another reflection of the grind-ethic baked into our culture: the belief that joy must be earned through struggle, that anything worth having has to be fought for tooth and nail. I’m not against challenge — I just don’t believe every moment of life needs to be an audition for merit. Sometimes I want to explore a beautiful world, feel the rush of power, or see where a story leads without getting gatekept by an arbitrary boss fight.
I’m sure there are people who thrive on hard mode while living extremely difficult lives. I’m not judging that. I just know that for me, easy mode has value. It’s not about laziness; it’s about where I choose to put my energy. If I ever found myself in “Elon mode” — life secure, power and resources on tap — I probably wouldn’t play video games at all. I’d be too busy tackling world hunger, dismantling capitalism, and installing my Star Trek-style leftist utopia.
Until then, I’ll keep my escapes easy. I have no need to simulate struggle when reality already has me on nightmare mode. In a world that insists on testing your limits, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is press “Play” and refuse to suffer for it. For me, that means chasing the feeling I had on my Apple IIc, when the point wasn’t to prove anything — it was to lose myself in wonder, to feel powerful, to play. Life can keep its hard mode. In my sanctuary, I set the rules.