There is no denying the popularity video games have gotten in the last few years. With this explosion in popularity has come new players looking to get involved with established video game franchises and genres. Seeing a new market video game companies have begun to cater their games to newer players.
The shift has come with varying levels of success for companies, and usually with large community backlash. Veteran players feel, and rightfully so, that the games are becoming dumbed down. This is especially common with street fighter V, a game that followed up on the immensely successful Street Fighter IV. Street Fighter IV did a lot of things right in terms of gameplay, it had a decent skill curve, meaning people that were completely new to fighting games, could pick it up and with practice become good. and for people that were skilled with fighting games, Street Fighter IV did offer a high level of advanced competition and tactics. Was it a perfect game? No, but what is ever really perfect?
In any case, Street Fighter IV got noticed as one of the premier fighting games and attracted tons of new players to the franchise. Seeing the swell in popularity, Capcom's next big entry to the series was in many ways supposed to be a continuing trend. It would both appeal to new players and hold the attention of long time veterans. Unfortunately what resulted was a game that was too appealing to new players. Some of the biggest critics of Street Fighter V are the most experienced players lodging concerns with more advanced parts of the game. Things such as walk speed of characters, while not deal breakers for more casual players, make a huge impact on upper-level play.
The constant debate of accessibility in games is going to be a continued sticking point, especially as gaming communities have pushed to become more inclusive to everybody, more hardcore players will see the reduction in certain advanced tactics as dumbing the game down. And while more people coming into games is good, making games more simple is not a good way for games to advance themselves.
video games are supposed to have a level of challenge to them, and if you find a game being too difficult for you, you have a few options: the first is to turn down the difficulty of the game. Obviously, this doesn't help in online games or games that don't give you the option to lower the difficulty but that brings us to item number two, online guides. The internet has exploded with guides for almost every single video game possible. If you don't know what to do in a game, it's a good bet that someone on the internet has a walkthrough on what you should be doing. Option three is to just lose. Losing functions to teach you what you did wrong. And by losing repeatedly, you learn to adapt and fix things you are doing wrong naturally. Finally, if the game is still too hard no matter how many guides you read, or how hard you keep trying, maybe the game isn't for you. There is no shame in walking away if a game is too hard, it has happened to everyone, not every game is for everybody and acknowledging that is important.
