I really love his Nitpick Theatre but he doesn't do it often.

I'll say this. I was a bit confused as to the point of the video. I mean he talks about Dark Souls... but the Souls games are Playstation oriented and not PC oriented. I kind of just assume hes lumpibg crpg fans with elitists ... which is why originally I thought the video was meh. If he's just making fun of elitists though, that's fine. 

It seems like all my favorite users disagree except spem D : 

Here you go : http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8537004

Thats not a perfect post becuse its oldish and also a reply. Ideally I could make a whole thread about it ... but im lazy

These "genuine concerns" are nothing more like strawman arguments that fits their agenda. Proper game design is able to cater to both ends of the spectrum. Shitty game design is not.

ROTFL! Anyhow, I've got nothing against easy mode, as long as the hard mode hasn't been dumbed down.
Usually I play in hard or nightmare mode since the first time, I just avoid permadeath modes and I save often but keeping some older saves to undo irreversible horrible mistakes, because I have no time to start games again, and I also like to try stupid things every now and then just to see what happens.
When I read the Deus Ex sequel had been dumbed down, and when I had to deal wth split levels in Thief III and indoors to be loaded, without continuity with outdoors, in Morrowind, the former one due to wrongly assumed console gamers tastes, the latter two due to XB small RAM, I felt exactly the same as the aristocrat about consolization, and I'll never thank enough Sony and MS for finally equipping PS4 and XBOne with enough RAM to at least match or exceed most PC games minimum requirements.

Every form of entertainment is working with inducing emotions. Fun, sadness (for instant sad war-dramas as movies), fear (horror-movies) and so on. Some games are produced around the accomplishment of overcoming an obstacle, a challenge. Take away the challenge (easy mode) and the games don't have left much. So someone playing an easy mode would feel the game is lame. This also is matching people who would like the challenge but pick the easy mode because they are unsure.

So the question is: why add something that would by design suck?

Because at the end of the day it's up to the player to recognize that they're missing the true experience.  I've played all the Souls games starting with Demon's Souls and when I played Dark Souls III, the game felt incredibly easy.  But I knew that was because I'd hardened myself to these games' style of challenge with prior games, so it's understood that my viewpoint of "Dark Souls III is easy" is finished with an asterisk.  To this day, Demon's Souls holds the greatest challenge and significance to me because of that, with that same credit going to Dark Souls for the majority of fans who started with that one.

The same goes for a player playing easy mode.  Many casual players know they suck and are just there for the story and fun of gameplay - look at the Fire Emblem 3DS games.  So many people enjoy those three games' gameplay enough on easy mode that it lends itself to enjoying the story. People playing these games still experince the spectrum of emotions you mention without the game being hard as balls.  It is up to the player to realize they are not experiencing the game "as it was intended."  On the cutting room floor, the artist must decide - do I want to forgo "artistic integrity" and make my game accessible and make money, or keep my "artistic integrity" and hope my smash your controller masterpiece goes cult classic?  Again, Fire Emblem is the perfect series to see both paths.

Is it so hard to believe people could still enjoy Dark Souls on an easier setting?  People like medieval settings and knights in shining armor and swords and dragons - Game of Thrones is the most popular show on bloody televison.  Yeah people love the story and drama in GoT but lots of shows have great stories and are cancelled after a season - see Firefly and others of it's same fate.

A lot of games even go as far as putting subtitles to their difficulty settings - with easy modes often described as "for players who want to enjoy the story without much frustration."  Take a friend of mine for example, who couldn't enjoy Mega Man games because they were too hard.  But Mega Man 10 has an easy mode and they played that.  After finishing it, they play on normal to try and get more into the game that was intended.  The experience of the artists creative direction is still there for aficionados to enjoy, while easy mode is there for everyone else.  

I've always thought this argument sounded like "only stick shift cars should exist because that's how a car is meant to be driven.  Automatic transmissions are for casuals."

This idea that a games difficulty is "all it has going for it" is an insult to game developers, especially AAA games, where millions and millions are spent to make high production cutscenes for story and lore, fully orchestrated music pieces, ultra resolution graphics and textures and pay high quality actors for voice acting and motion capture.  If a game has no other redeemable features than "it's really hard", then by design it sucks.  80's and 90's arcade games are remembered fondly, but if you take your nostalgia goggles off you can see your Battletoads and many others with their artificial difficulty were designed that way solely as a black hole for kids quarters.  And they fucking suck as games for it.  

I have to disagree with you here. Battletoads doesn't suck as a game, it's hard, it's unforgiving yes but it's also has great level design, responsive controls, great personality, a nice soundtrack and diversity (every level is different from the others).

That being said, I don't oppose having an easy mode in hard games, I just feel you picked the wrong game to illustrate your point because Battletoads has a lot more going for it than just difficulty.

Honestly though, I think I picked the best game.  Because Battletoads is the most popular game I could think of with artificial difficulty.  I was thinking Super Ghouls and Ghousts before, but that game tells you from the moment you jump what kind of difficulty it's going to have.  With the excption of a few cheap enemies(those fucking Arremers), the game is designed around it's characters abilities.  Battletoads has high functioning player characters but you're still fucked over by it's got awful level design and enemy placement/spawn rate. 

It has 94 on Metacritic! It seems great on your own but of course even better in coop. It seems to be one of the best RPGs of all time. Haven't started yet due to to lack of time but every review and let's play I've watched hat mich mehr rattig auf das Spiel gemacht ;)

How is this the first time I've seen or heard of Jim Sterling dressing up and making himself look a fool?