Why is it so harmful there's an audience lobbying for accessibility, but the audience defending artistic vision above all is definitively the right one? There are mundane, practical reasons for both.
Woah, let's not conflate difficulty with accessibility. Those are two separate things. Accessibility is allowing the student in a wheelchair enough ramps and elevators so that they can get to their classroom. Accessibility does not mean that there's an "easy mode" version of the midterm.
Being able to play the game (accessibility) is different than being able to beat the game (difficulty).
But to answer the question, because the "lobbyists"
are harmful. In their ideal world, they would have developers spend less time on making a good game, and spend more time on making difficulty options.
Speedrunning isn't the intended way to play a game. Yet you don't call it wrong.
Yes, I absolutely would. Speedrunning is the wrong way to play a game. There, I said it.
The argument you're making is that someone who "should" play games a certain way isn't, but the correct ways all boil down to "If you want to discuss games, you have to meet an arbitrary threshold of what I deem should be important."
If the "you" in "if you want to discuss games..." means a games journalist, then yes, that's normally how it works. Each person needs decide whether or not a journalist is worth listening to. This is an entirely subjective process. If they don't pass that criteria, then they get disagreed with. For example, I'm going to consider your entire publication incompetent if one of your people can't get past the tutorial, a la Cuphead.
If the "you" in that sentence refers to the general public in open forums like these, then I can't remember the last time I saw that happen. I'm aware of the trope of "Oh yeah, you say you're a gamer? Then name every video game ever! Ha! You're not a real gamer!", but I can't say I've ever seen that actually happen.
Yet any gaming community has had at least a handful of "I'm trying to get my partner /child / friends into games, what games should I use to introduce them?" threads. Turns out by trying to enforce arbitrary thresholds of behavior that weeds out accessibility for decades makes games really unintuitive, and professional critics have noticed and are speaking up. Now you're trying to enforce the arbitrary standards on them, whole cloth, because... You're convinced they don't know what they're talking about? You think they're not really attentive to games? You think games are perfect and should be above criticism? I'm not sure I'm really getting where these standards are coming from, but they always boil down to gatekeeping in a way that isn't helpful, useful, or good.
Yes, I'm convinced these "professional critics" don't know what they're talking about. I've seen them struggle with the controls. I've seen them struggle to grasp basic concepts. They've proven to me that they don't know what they're talking about, and that they have no business being "professional critics".
Again, you're generating a clear Us and Them in this discussion. Game critics are all folks who play games.
Do they really? Then why can't they beat the tutorial? Why don't they know how to move around in a 3D environment from a first-person perspective? Why do they want easier difficulty modes when the rest of us can play on "normal" with no problems?
If they did, I'd expect them to talk more about things like game mechanics, but instead it seems like they just want to talk about politics. For example, one headline reads "Rock Paper Shotgun Author Nate Crowley Claims Nemesis Promotes “Violence Against Women,” Takes Issue With Jill’s Attractiveness in Resident Evil 3 Review". Granted, this is only what it "seems" like, because I stopped listening to games journalists a long time ago. If they want to win me back, first they should stop making absolute fools of themselves every other week.
Celeste is a game with a wide variety of accessibility options, but playing "as intended" without those turned on enables achievements and certain accolades within the game. But those who want to experience the game for the game's experience can just dial down the difficulty and play through the story with enough tools to not have to struggle through hours of precision practicing.
And that's a great thing that nobody has any problems with, because this is a new IP.
There's a game called Code Vein, which is basically Anime Vampire Dark Souls. It's a lot easier than Dark Souls. Everyone was fine with this because they didn't take Dark Souls and alter it so that it appeals to more people, they made an entirely new thing. Nobody has a problem with it because it's a new IP.
People get upset when an existing IP is changed to include a different demographic (often at the expense of the original demographic), not when a new IP is made to capture that different demographic.
So what most critics are asking for isn't actually going to harm what a game could be, it just wants to amplify
potential accessibility practices that can make games well-suited to wider audiences.
I disagree. I don't think you can take something niche and turn it into something "well-suited to wider audiences" without ruining it. Like I said above, If you want to make a new IP suited to wider audiences, by all means go ahead and do that. If you want to take something people love and change it, no, that's bad, don't do that.
However, putting in a mode to Street Fighter V that introduces wider parry windows and easier links could have been accomplished without taking away tournament-level skill viability. Tournaments just won't use that mode, same as the Smash scene doesn't enable big mode or items.
I played a game like that. I think it was a guilty gear or something. They have an "easy mode" where you can just repeatedly mash a button and the game will pull off the best combos for you. I tried it out. Did it teach me anything? No. Did I improve at the game? No. When I turned it off, did I get absolutely destroyed by everyone else online? Yes. So why does this easy mode exist?
Just so that my dad is able to pick up the controller, mash buttons and beat the CPU? Has my dad been "included" into the fighting game community now? No, because everyone knows that he isn't playing the game "the right way", or "the way the game developers intended".
Best case scenario, fighting game tournaments will hold a side-event where they invite all the dads to play on easy mode and mash buttons. But then you haven't "included" them into the community, you've created two separate communities, one for all the dads that play on easy mode, and one for everyone else. Is that what you want?
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