Twitch streamer and artist AshleyRoboto has spoken out about the simmering debate over difficulty settings in games, and has stated in very plain terms to "let people play games however they want to."
Alright. I have never understood why this topic is a big deal for some. Absolutely, I get the reason that a game might be exceptionally tough or only offer the one setting for the experience. That's a decision made by the designers in order to serve the overall experience that they're trying to deliver. I get it. Be that as it may, I might enjoy Demon's Souls. But, the whole image of it being a punishing journey and a real test of your capabilities... there isn't a difficulty setting for someone like me who has an interest in the world it's set in, but isn't up for slogging away at the same boss battle over and over. It's an amazing achievement to complete these games, and even go as far as to 100% them. I don't want to spend hours upon hours with a scowl on my face to make it there, though.
And, just to be clear, yeah, I play games on "nightmare" settings as well as "narrative" settings. It's a personal choice, and that's exactly the point that AshleyRoboto explains in a recent stream of hers. While playing Kingdom Hearts, viewers in the chat were criticising her for choosing the "easy" setting. "Let people play games however they want to. Are you seriously roasting me for trying to play a story that is notoriously one of the most convoluted lore-based games in existence?" she said. It's true - the series is a mishmash of Disney and Final Fantasy characters who inhabit a multiverse together and cross timelines to stop the villain Xehanort from destroying and rebuilding realities for his own nefarious gains. Please don't ask me to elaborate any further than that because I do not know. I do not.
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"Not everybody wants to play games to be absolutely infuriated and in pain the entire time... Stop gatekeeping how people play games, it's so f*cking boring!" continued AshleyRoboto. Hear, hear. There are so, so, so many games out there and I'd like to experience and enjoy them at my own pace. At the moment, I'm playing Maneater, Cozy Grove, and Persona 5 Royal, and those are all on different difficulty settings because I'd like to not spend the whole year on just these three. Radical thoughts, I know.
The clip of her chatting has gotten a lot of attention, and at least one strange equivalence that compares playing a video game with running a marathon. "Not only does it not matter what difficulty you play on, having a lower difficulty mode is great for accessibility, so maybe just let people play how they want," concluded the streamer.
