I'M FEELING ARGUMENTATIVE.
Gamasutra Man says games are too much work and rewind button is necessary.
This is the correct reaction because there are these things, as other posters have noted, called "check points". Or difficulty modes. He seems to be decrying problems that have solutions. And he has no real excuse for not going to Gamefaqs, but requiring the typical person to find a walkthrough site they probably haven't heard of is a tad unreasonable.
But the article does have a point and you seem to be arguing against it SO
At what point did it become necessary to remove failure from the equation? Has our society started to fall so friggin' far that this is the lengths we're going to in order to seemingly preserve what I find to be a 'you're a special unique snowflake' politically correct mentality that makes us psychological weiners?
None of these follow. At all.
People are paying for a product to be entertained. If they are pissed off about a game, then it has failed for them. It is not a reflection of societal decay or any such psycho-bullshit.
Strangely enough, the populace at large are not masochists and do not play a section over and over because the game has thrown down some metaphorical gauntlet. They stop playing. Because they are not having fun. The horror.
Videogames are becoming more popular, and therefore are (and from a business standpoint
should) become easier. The days of increasing playtime with difficulty walls are over (beyond those few throwbacks, anyway).
Another thing that bugs me is that no one seems to address a pretty big issue of an auto-pilot feature: The Gameshark Fallacy.
The Gameshark Fallacy is where one finds that they have the means to remove any of the effort involved in given task, but relies on their will being strong enough to resist the temptation. As soon as you give into that temptation, chances are you will tell yourself 'I'll only do it just this once!' and before you know it, all your materia is maxed, Cloud is packing 99 levels and the Ultima Weapon before you get to the Guard Scorpion at the end of the first mako reactor.
The "Gameshark fallacy" is a textbook slippery slope fallacy. There is no reason to do it more than once. And I'm not seeing the problem with playing like that. If it's an option, anyway. I imagine most people would want
some complexity out of their games.
This idea is pretty much doomed to failure. I can't see any reason why the people that this option targets (and even the people it doesn't) wouldn't just going out and rent the game for a couple days and go along for the ride then return it.
Because it's fun, is a decent game, and has replay value? Or is a game judged on how time consuming it is?
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I probably wouldn't have bothered with my standard wall of text post if it weren't for posts taking their hardcore gamer (hate that word) smugness
seriously.
"Oh my god, people want games to be fun and accessible (re: easy) for them. These people are idiots! Morons! ENTIRE WORLD IS BABIES."
It's like art snobs decrying the masses for going to popcorn flicks.
Look at what you have become.
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Dudes, I need some opinions.
This post is your fault.