this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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Forgot what made me think about this topic but I've been considering this for a week or two... Curious what you all think.

When I mean "hardest" "video game", I mean whatever game that you find objectively more difficult than all other ones on the market, as long as it's a video game. I guess exposure to different genres/types of games can influence the answer to this question a lot so... Hence I was curious about your rationale.

I have a pretty solid answer & rationale but I guess I shouldn't share that in the main post to bias results...

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[–] Soup@lemmy.cafe -5 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

A lot of games made in the 90’s were difficult. But that’s before entitlement struck the gaming community and the “I need to beat this game in a weekend” turds were dictating how games turned out.

[–] xhrit@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

Games made in the early 90’s were made for cartridges and floppy disks with limited memory and couldn't contain a lot of content so difficulty was used to increase playtime.

[–] Soup@lemmy.cafe 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

Nice theory, but no. Just look at WoW as a perfect example. When it launched in the early 00’s, overland content had a bit of a difficulty curve to it. It was clearly intended to be somewhat challenging overall.

Other MMOs that followed had the same thing. ESO being a perfect example. In many places, and I recall it well- just doing side quests was risky. LoTRO is another good example.

Then over the years, the player base whined and the developers caved in to appease what was and still is called: “the care bears.”

The vocal majority of players that got tired of the grind and the difficulty, and whined their way into changing the overall feel of games to be winnable under the easiest of circumstances, and the last amount of time.

ESO is a soloable joke of a game and WoW is a cartoon. Now, difficult games are a niche novelty.

[–] xhrit@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

When an MMO launches it normally has little content and uses difficulty to pad playtime, especially subscription MMOs like WOW and pre-one tamriel ESO. Typically an mmo reduces difficulty of old content over time, when new content becomes available.

I do agree that the effect is much more pronounced the more popular a game is. LoTRO at least added some of the overworld challenge back with an optional difficulty slider after community backlash, and I'm not sure that a less niche game would have bothered.

[–] Soup@lemmy.cafe 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

With all due respect, I think that a load of excuse mongering. Everyone knows that casuals complain to developers all the time. And that they get their way because they threaten to quit/cancel their subs.

This isn’t a giant secret. It’s pretty well known in a ton of games.

[–] xhrit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

it is a well known industry standard design philosophy.

"At the time, a console title cost something in the realm of $100 in today's dollars (or over €85-95), which made each game purchase an investment requiring long consideration and thoughtful planning. At that price, every game needed to last weeks, if not months, to justify the investment. Most games achieved this with the good old “Nintendo-hard” philosophy: Brutal challenges make a relative dearth of original content last longer."

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/09/too-much-of-a-good-thing-mourning-the-slow-death-of-the-retail-game-store/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_hard

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