this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2024
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Honestly how is this gatekeeping? That word gets slinged around a lot and it using it here seems like it diminishes the real situations where the word is useful. So they're limiting access to the game from people who what? It's hard for everyone, they're not being selective about the difficulty somehow.
"Gatekeeping: the activity of controlling, and usually limiting, general access to something."
The lack of difficulty sliders make the game inaccessible to people who have no ability or desire for the unforgiving experience, nor any ability/desire to "Git Gud Scrubs". It's intentionally left out to exclude those people. That makes it "gatekeeping" by the definition for the word.
This is substantiated by the fact that a mode to make the game easier and a mode to make the game harder are in the top 10 downloaded mods for Elden Ring. If you leave out the loaders and modutils, those same mods are top-5. This is basically unheard of in most games.
You can argue that you approve of this gatekeeping, but it's silly to die on the "it's not really gatekeeping" hill.
Learning to play the guitar or code also doesn't have a difficulty slider, but people of all abled-ness manage it anyways. It's a matter of patience and practice just like any other skill.
But this particular skill has in-game mechanics like leveling up, upgrading equipment, and summoning up to two whole extra players to do the work for you. Then there's mods...
Games are about entertainment. They're not a career. Nobody is paying me to play a Fromsoft game. More importantly, nobody is gatekeeping the entertainment, immersion, and story of music or coding behind me being able to "Git Gud".
And let's look at music and coding. Since I can speak a bit to both. For music, OF COURSE there are difficulty sliders. When I took recorder back in school, they had 2 different versions of many songs. When I first learned Christmas music on piano, I learned special "simplified" tracks for the songs. I never "Got Gud" at music, but I still got to the end of the book.
And coding. Coding is the opposite of a Fromsoft game. You're surrounded by mountains of tools that try to make it easier. When I bring in a junior developer, I'm not giving them some unforgiving code challenge to power through. Maybe they'll never be good enough to design a specialized cache or optimize queries. So I give them the things they CAN do, and hold their hand so they always succeed. Junior devs don't ever fail, not because they "git gud" but because I set them up to succeed by this little difficulty slider called "how hard is this ticket to do and how much help do they need from me?"
Some songs have an easier version and a harder version, but being able to play a Christmas song on a piano doesn't mean you can demand to be able to play Korsakovs Flight of the bumblebee on a piano. You just can't play it, you have to "git gud" to play that song. And games are like songs. Some songs are easier, some song are harder. Some harder songs can be made easier, some can't without losing an important part of the song.
I feel like that analogy brings in an entirely different concept, the concept of a sherpa. You're sherpaing junior developers by giving them easier problems and giving them tips on harder problems. But a Junior dev won't magically know how to build a 3D engine or a compiler or something for an embedded system (just to give a few random examples). They still need to "git gud" to become a senior developer and be able to do those things. In fact I'd argue that software development as a profession is one of the closest professions to Fromsoft games, because you always need to learn new concepts or tools or ways to do things. Software development always challenges you the same way Fromsoft games challenge you. You can't just take a problem and be "could I get the easy mode version of this problem". And much like you sherpa junior developers so they could get better, some people sherpa others through Fromsoft games so those people could get better. Maybe instead of demanding an easy mode for your problems you find a sherpa who helps you get over them.
They're all skills that you have to develop, and things people do because they like doing them. And if you're not willing to learn to develop those skills, you won't be able to participate.
Zelda games aren't gatekeeping me when I die a lot and they don't give me more health. Portal 2 isn't gatekeeping me when I can't solve the puzzles and they won't give me the answers. Undertale isn't gatekeeping me because I'm bad at bullet hells and they won't slow down time for me. The whole point of the game is to develop a skill and overcome a challenge.
I already named several mechanics Elden Ring gives you to deal with the difficulty, and engaging with them is what the game is about. It can be as easy or as hard as you make it. If you choose not to utilize those options, that's your prerogative.