treefroggy There’s a degree of masochism that is required to appreciate all but the most player-friendly games, imho. I’ve had a harder life than most people though, so maybe I’ve just mastered the stoic enjoyment of my own misfortune and struggle.
Heh… I love this, as a statement/concept. Both parts of it.
For one, yes, I agree, the threshold for a game to be truly “player-friendly” is quite high. Must be something to do with the interactivity of the medium, as well as even the earliest origins of games are an abstract representation of often competitive games (like, say, Ping Pong). Interactivity + competition implies some degree of friction, and, maybe this is a perspective borne largely of the times, one could say that We’ve Come A Long Way From Pong, and that maybe a lot of what makes games “player-friendly” is that they can very masterfully create a convincing and immersive illusion of that friction… or, at least, they have gotten to the technical point where they can amplify the friction experienced by the player vs. the interactive challenges presented by the game into friction that feels many times more intense than it would be otherwise. A movement you measure in millimeters to press down a little plastic button on a controller translates on screen into embedding a 2 metre long 300 pound magical sword into the brain of a dragon, and at this point the tech can make that feel relatively convincing.
So games as leisure and entertainment and either being a friction amplifier, I think it makes sense for more validating and purely entertaining experiences to be more popular, that seems pretty consistent with most forms of entertainment, or even really any kind of art, which, to be clear, is not a negative judgement. But maybe games have the unique ability to instill a sense of friction that is amplified, or, more often these days, freely customizable for individual preference, which is itself a huge mechanism for player-friendliness.
I guess games like From Software’s masochistically tinged games appeal to people who are just into that specific challenge aspect of the experience, or certain kinds of emotional experiences. It’s like, not everyone gets enjoyment out of reading War and Peace.