Would games benefit from being harder?

[DaHeckIzDat]

Do you think video games these days would benefit or suffer from being made more difficult? I think it could go either way. I mostly play story based games, like RPGs, so I don't mind the game being easy because nothing ruins the flow of a good story worse than having to repeat the same boss battle over and over again. Then again, even with RPGs it's possible for it to be too easy. The first Tales of Xillia had an awesome story, but it was dampened by the fact that I could mop the floor with all these supposedly super powerful bad guys they've been making a huge deal out of.

Also, if we're going to make games more difficult, how difficult should they be? Should they all be ratcheted up to Dark Souls levels of challenge?

[scotland]

Once apon a time, games were supposed to be both accessible, but ramp up quickly in difficulty. A good game had to accomplish that in a pretty tiny program. They were also incredibly expensive then. The games I dislike the most were the ones I spent my rare birthday or job money on, got home, and found there just wasn't much game there. With a small library, a good game was one that presented a challenge, even if the gameplay was repetitive.

This idea continued past just bringing home the arcade experience. Being hard and having limited lives, limited continues, having to start back at the beginning of a level, etc were techniques. Even cheap deaths, if avoidable by memorization, were not faults but features. (poor collision detection, sloppy controls, unavoidable cheap deaths - those are faults). Beating a game 'back in the day' was quite an achievement. The games I beat are still some of my favorite gaming memories.

Now, games can be huge. Massive. Speaking just about 1 player games/story modes, they should probably have some choice or difficulty levels. Build it to suit players of various skill levels. There should be all sorts of ways to make games easier and harder, so the potential audience is larger. Whether its a racing game or an RPG or whatever, I hope there are difficulty levels.