When you flick the switch to hard, you usually only think of the design shift if the hard mode sucks. Daniel Boutros offers a great exploration of the issues with designing a hard mode for games, where sloppy design leads to pure trial and error progress and smarter work offers something more rewarding to careful and considered play.
Exploring the ways games can be tuned for harder difficulty, from time limits to resource scarcity and AI aggression, plus discussion of classic hard play, from Golden Eye, Halo, and Street Fighter moves. All up a great read if you want to pull back the curtain a little on why hard games are hard to get right.
Difficulty is difficult: Designing for hard modes in games [Gamasutra]
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