Revisiting: Difficulty vs Accessibility - A responsibility for the developers, not for the players.

[Nautilus]

Veknoid_Outcast said:
This is a tough conversation to have because there are no objective standards of quality when it comes to difficulty. What's easy for you might be impossible for me, and vice versa.

Now, I agree that it's unrealistic to demand an "easy" or "hard" mode from a developer, when that feature is not among its list of priorities. At the same time, I think it's totally fair for a consumer to cry foul if a game is pointlessly easy or painfully difficult -- to the point where it robs a game of its purpose and sense of fun. We evaluate games how we wish them to be, not how the developer intended them to be.

I agree to a point. I believe that there is a difference betwenn a game being fair but hard, and just being plain hard. If the discussion is about not the difficulty, but rather the game being unfairly hard, then I agree that it's something that I don't think no one wants, be it intentional or not.

But If a game is designed in a way that your death or failure to make progress in a game is your own fault for not understanding the game well enough or not being skilled enough, is it really the game to blame? I completely agree that said player has every right to be angry and cry foul, and even in some cases he has a point, but most of the time that happens, is pointed into games that are acclaimed for exactly the things that those people complain about. In which leads me to think: Is it really the game fault(in it's design, balance, and so on), or is the game simply not for him?

That's what I mean.