Figured the crowd here might be interested in this topic.
I had the opportunity to do this week's Friday Editorial for Gamepro. My rant of choice: challenge in games, how it's misperceived, and why we shouldn't pass up on difficult stuff.
That was an enjoyable article, thank you for sharing. What with dirt simple achievements it seems like you practically get rewarded for turning the game on these days, a little difficulty would do some of these modern gamers good..
great article and I agree with you 100% especially about most gamers not knowing what is good hard and what is bad. Instead they see it as all the same and even worse is that many gamers idea of hard is a Jrpg game or boss that isnt twitch hard, but hard in a grinding put 100hours into the game and youll automatically win hard. Or just purely hard in a totally random roll of the dice way.
Fair twitch hard games like shmups and good retro games will probably never be popular again even with the challenge gamer type as their idea of a challenge is totally different to what ours is.