brainwave about the game difficulty wank

[yvannairie]

Do self-identifying gamers get so mad about people wanting accessibility options because they read that criticism coming from a place of entitlement (or preference, to use a less harsh word) as their complaints about the lack of preferred features/content?

Can it be that simple?

It would explain why they seem to mentally add "and that's why it's bad" at the end of "this game lacks accessibility features" and then argue that the germ jurnalists are dishonestly not judging the game by its own merit. You also see this pattern any time a journo says anything positive about a game's diversity -- the argument the self-identified gamer sets out to debunk isn't "this game is good and diverse" but rather "the diversity makes this game good"

Comments

[feotakahari]

Fans of just about any game genre will argue that their genre is in danger of dying out as the masses get their hands on it. Jim Sterling argues that horror is not and will never be mainstream, so the more a series tries to appeal to a mainstream audience, the less it will have to do with actual horror. JRPG fans welcomed Bravely Default as a “real RPG” by contrasting it with games like Final Fantasy XIII that tried to be less niche and were therefore not “real RPGs.” The only genre that’s immune to this is strategy games with way too many menu sliders, and I think that’s because Paradox Interactive is single-handedly keeping it afloat.

The upshot of this is that if appealing to a wider audience = the death of your genre, and accessibility means appealing to a wider audience, then disabled people must want to take your games away.

[yvannairie]

I mean, I feel like the consideration of genre is... a different thing than the appreciation of difficulty as an aesthetic (what most people who do difficulty wank focus on) but... you're not wrong.

+1