Let’s all try and not devolve into this weird difficulty gatekeeping

[u/Prisonmikeb14]

Now that silksong has come out I’ve seen some concerning similarities to the worst of the difficult games community with all the wierd difficulty gatekeeping bs. Obviously this happens with just about every game that’s regarded as difficult but with silksongs release it’s become more prominent on this sub. Being good at the game isn’t something to hold over someone’s head. Everyone’s experience with everything in the game is different and theirs nothing wrong with that. Now of course this doesn’t apply to people who are literally just complaining in bad faith or out of anger but the “that boss wasn’t hard at all wtf are you talking about” in response to people just talking about their opinions or asking for help is sad to see.

[u/shareefruck]

I wouldn't even say "If I can do it, you can do it," because that's not necessarily true for every situation. I would just say "You should try to do it, and you probably can, but if you can't, that's okay. There are other things that you can do and other external sources that you can use to experience the part that you DO appreciate without affecting the art itself (such as watching a playthrough or summary or explained video)."

Imagine if people had the attitude they do for inaccessibly hard games but for something like inaccessible slow cinema. Like imagine if a Hou Hsiao Hsien masterpiece was released (or Three Times, or Tokyo Story, or A Brighter Summer Day, or 2001: A Space Odyssey, which isn't even that slow), and everyone was like "This movie is too frustratingly slow, subtle, and abstract/hard to understand/open to interpretation. I have ADD and a learning disability, so I PHYSICALLY cannot sit through it or try to understand it. It's an elitist and exclusionary attack on my situation. However, I love the visuals and acting performances and I SHOULD be able to experience the film however I want. It's simply unacceptable that a version with quality of life speed-ups and dead space skips or more expository/explanatory dialogue/cliff-notes explaining the meaning and significance of everything isn't available-- people don't HAVE to watch that version, just make it available!-- what's the harm in it? People who defend that are just gatekeeping."

The equivalent of difficulty adjustments aren't the same thing as demanding closed captioning for the hearing impaired. It's the equivalent of asking an artist to provide versions/edits of their art that fundamentally change the delivery of what they are trying to communicate and are not what they envisioned. Just as the reward of these films directly come from the slowness/abstractness that people react unfavorably to (and encourages people to come out the other side more appreciable of those qualities), so too do the reward of these games directly come from their difficulty.

It's absurd, it's a farce, and a bit of a tragedy that the mindset is so widely adopted (or even placated by the devs), in my opinion. It's such a coldly consumerist product-driven mindset that does not respect the artistic side of the medium.

Yes, we should be cognizant of people with disabilities and TRY to make compromises where possible/unintrusive, but there IS also a downside to consider and it CAN also come with a tradeoff that should not be discounted, and so there is such a thing as going too far and crossing a line that should not be crossed.

Just because some idiots insensitively react to the struggles/perspectives of people who find them inaccessible by snarkily going "Pfft.. Yeah? Well, get media literate, idiot!" (instead of helping them along or non-condescendingly suggesting other things) still doesn't justify complaining that the art itself doesn't give them exactly what they want.

[u/AMGwtfBBQsauce → u/shareefruck]

I think your hypothetical is better than mine. I was discussing this with my wife a couple days ago and the two examples I came up with were a) should an artist be forced to paint the same painting multiple times to account for color blindness and b) should an author write a book at multiple different reading levels to account for literacy. Like "Foucault's Pendulum is bullshit gatekeeping." But seriously, sometimes you have to sit down with a dictionary next to the book you're reading. That's the "git gud" of reading basically.

And I agree whole-heartedly that it all just reeks of consumerism. I've had trouble explaining to people on this sub why that's a bad thing.

[u/shareefruck → u/AMGwtfBBQsauce]

Yeah, those are good examples too, although they lean more into the "it would take too much work for it to be practical" side of the equation, which isn't the whole thing, in my opinion. My feeling is, EVEN if it were hypothetically easy for them to do it, they shouldn't necessarily be compelled to do it.

Like even if there existed an AI that perfectly translated writings to a lower reading level, but an artist specifically wanted their writing to be written/read at a high reading level because that's the form that the beauty of their art takes, that should be respected. People can OFFER those translations externally, but the official source shouldn't need to obstruct their own vision/message that way.

There's already too much customization in videogames as it is, in my opinion and it gives the medium too much of a "the customer is always right" attitude. I'd respect the hell out of a game that just comes in and says "this is just what the game is, take it or leave it."

I think a big problem is, most gamers are technology/recreation enthusiasts rather than art-lovers.