"As Hollow Knight: Silksong once more raises the ugly discourse over gaming difficulty, there's one aspect of the whole discussion that I think goes missed by people on every side: people play games for different reasons. It sounds stinkingly obvious, but there's a nuance to this that I think is best summed up by believing or disbelieving the following statement: It's fine if someone can't complete a game."
"Video games began being about insurmountable difficulty as players chased high scores, knowing all the while that the only ending in store for them was a GAME OVER screen. At the same time, video games began being about telling a story, guiding a player through a narrative or series of lands and levels to reach its conclusion. Whether in the arcades or via text adventures on the home computers, gaming was born with this dichotomy,"
"In recent years, as genres increasingly twist and meld, the distinctions between "types" of games have become effectively meaningless, leaving no clear distinction between those two sides. No one is right, everyone is right Let's repeat that once more: no side is , and context is everything. But the point here is: that context is deeply ambiguous and confusing, and no one has a firm grip on it. Hence the issues."
Hollow Knight: Silksong has reignited debate over gaming difficulty, centered on the premise that players pursue games for different reasons. Gaming history contains a dichotomy between games designed for insurmountable challenge and high scores and games designed to guide players through narratives to a conclusion. Genre blending has blurred these distinctions, especially amid the popularity of soulslikes and roguelites. Context determines appropriate difficulty expectations, and that context is often ambiguous and contested. Arcade monetization historically encouraged designs that were difficult to beat, while narrative-driven formats encouraged completion and resolution.
Read at Kotaku
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