Speed runs are either incredibly experienced people who have put more hours into a 60 minute game than most people do a game like Xenoblade Chronicles (and finish it) or they are people cheating using emulators.

I don't get the "difficulty" argument. It's clear that most people don't want impossible games, otherwise they wouldn't have become easier for the most part. I'm sorry, they HAVE become easier, because I'm able to get to the end of more games now than I have ever been able to, but you know what, I don't actually see that as a bad thing because I play games for this strange thing called enjoyment. 6th gen was still the best though. Jet Set Radio, Katamari Damacy, Outrun 2, Burnout, Code Veronica, etc. etc. etc. Really was the golden generation.

That's what I want. To enjoy a game. Not cursing f bombs at the TV every 2 minutes. The issue is the balance between easy as pie and Ninja Gaiden nonsense. Some games get it. Some go too far to the easy area. It could be because the game makers are constantly trying to make sure to not tick off people in some way. But don't pay attention when they do things like Fi's sugestion text.

It's also logical that games today are a bit easier and more forgiving, and i'm very happy for it. When i was 13 i had Contra on the SNES. It's a pretty hard game for sure, but after playing it for a month every day i could finish it (almost with my eyes closed) on any difficulty. But we are talking about a game that you can finish in like 40 minutes or so.

If games today would have the difficulty level of Contra or Ghouls 'n Goblins, that would just be insane. Think about mastering a game that hard that is 10 to 20 hours long instead of max 1 hour long. People would be throwing games out of the window.

In 10 years you'll know how rich feels.

Last I looked Rich didn't even have 300,000 subscribers, so I doubt his rant and a bunch of comments on one of his videos represents the older generation of gamers.

I pretty much agree but i need to go back to the 6th generation as i missed alot as i didn't start gaming alot till the PSP and PS3 were out. Have some of the older consoles though. 

Newer games have got easier for sure but they can be hard if playing on a high difficulty. Uncharted is really frustrating on crushing but is easy on lower difficulties. So i guess the entry difficulty is just lower but the challenge is there for most games if they want it

The fact that you can even say "Rich didn't even have 300,000 subscribers" says something. He definitely has an audience. Also keep in mind that you don't have to be a subscriber to watch the videos. The reality is nobody on Youtube has that much representation. You have these so-called Youtube celebrities who have millions of subscribers, but most of the general public has no idea who these people are. Even somebody like PewDiePie doesn't have very much recognition outside on Youtube and the internet. 

To say that Rich isn't successful to some degree would be ludicris. He makes money doing what he does. He makes enough money to the point where he can do what he does fulltime without having to have a regualr job like most of us. Shit, I would love to take the 40 hours a week I spend regualrly at my job and follow my passion. And again, when you actually have to say he doesn't even have 300,000 subscribers, that's implying he's very much capable of having at least half of that amount. Most of us could never be criticised in such a way.

As for the whole older generation argument, I can personally say most gamers my age that I've met have the same general complaints about a lot of newer games. I know people who abandoned console games almost entirely for experiences like World of Warcraft only to complain when Blizzard made Warcraft too easy. The only people from the older generations who I never hear any complaints from are people who outright stopped playing videogames years ago. They don't play games anymore so there's nothing to bitch about.

@OP: Aren't you incorrectly putting together every older gen gamer?
I started with Pong on arcades (and on a home console with just four hardwired games not replaceable), my first and only console was an Intellivision, then I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, started gaming on PC in the early 90's and bought my first own PC in 1997, but I miss just a few games of the 8 and 16 bit eras, I felt the real change, allowing complex and longer games to be played in more than just one gaming session, was the savegame, and since then I started preferring the PC because it started allowing saving games outside of fixed save points long before consoles.
With the savegame a game can be as complex as you want, as you don't lose all the progress made anymore, if something goes wrong you just lose what you did after the last save. So a game doesn't need to hold the gamer's hands anymore. But as I haven't much time to play, I understand if many people want some help to avoid frustration, my only requests are that games make helps optional and offer hard settings for anyone wanting them and that they keep on making games with large worlds and that last long.
BTW I hate when a game has points so hard that you end up beating them just by luck or exploiting a design glitch, I consider it cheating by the dev (like Philo Vance's author S.S. Van Dine considered cheaters those amongst his colleagues crime novel writers that didn't give their readers all the clues necessary to find the culprit).
And whether a game is old or new, I hate the ones with a bad user interface, for example I hate the PC version of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time because its automatic camera angle changes, coupled with control axes solidal with the screen plane instead of the player character, make it horrible to play with mouse and keyboard and even with a console-like controller I'd find it awkward to play, as I consider control axes solidal with the screen suitable just to 2D and isometric 3D games with fixed point of view, otherwise I virtually put myself into the playing character and I want the control axes to be solidal with it.
I also often consider bad for my tastes and habits default controls, but many PC games allow to customise them, and in that case I always found a setting that's at least decent.
But sometimes things don't go well even with customisable controls, in the first Hitman I never found a control scheme that satisfied me, but neither I could tell why, there always was something wrong for me that I couldn't identify for sure, so it always was try and miss and I gave up before finding the right one.
Positive and negative things happened in the far past like in the near one and in the present.
But this said you shouldn't consider elitists gamers that just ask that games be not too short and not mandatorily easy and that helps and easings be optional for those that want them (or need them for lack of time or because they want mainly a relaxing gaming experience) and hard settings available for those that prefer them.

I don't mind constructive criticism of modern gaming, as long as it's not a pile of bu@#$%t - looking at you, Sarkeesian) but I find it hard to sympathize with people who don't consider kids who started gaming on PS2 "real gamers" and cry about the olden days in every place imaginable... Back then, games were for select few individuals, today it's mainstream - wanting back the game mechanics that made games unappealing to the masses is not only unrealistic, it would also be a direct threat to the gaming industry if they get what they want. And claiming that you're a better gamer because you were a gamer since the humble beginning - is elitism

1. Agree about unappealing game mechanics, some were just bad, like it happens in every era, some others were just designed for a few gamers willing to try the same level countless times. Back then it made sense, but I don't miss it, I miss a minority of old classic that made me love them despite all the limitations and sometimes the frustration (but in my first RPG, AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin, I learned that I could grind a little, level up in deeper levels of the dungeon and avoid tougher monsters until I was strong enough, so progressing was still hard, but I almost stopped suffering the frustration of suddenly losing it, and I consider that design choice one of the first true progresses in games with larger worlds and longer campaigns).

2. Hey, but very often we just do it for teh lulz!    ( Except those obsessive-compulsive old platformer maniacs, those are more often serious when they do it )