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For the most part, I was thinking of the single player experience when writing this post, and it seemed to be a logical choice at the time given the examples I had played.

Still, I do agree that the multiplayer aspect - high score tables, profile achievements, online bragging matches - is where it’s all headed now. The “best” isn’t necessarily the one who just finishes the game because apparently millions of other people have already done that.

I still remember the time before the internet, when every kid thought they were the only ones who managed that score/level 99/a time of under one minute in some game. Now, it’s all competitive. Maybe that’s why some people have moved to the more relaxed side of casual games.

I have to agree on the idea that what makes people stop playing difficult games is the lack of a sense of reward after a difficult accomplishment. I’m sure people won’t mind playing to the point of frustration if there was an alternate path to be taken, or if the certain impossible challenge was optional, but had a greater form of reward in the end. For example, FF7’s Emerald and Ruby weapons are the toughest in the game, which were gladly made optional to beat. Can you imagine the frustration of people if those two bosses were required dead to advance the story?

The difficulty of a game can also stem from bad control, such as the case of the original Castlevania where Simon Belmont lacked mid-air control of any sort, thus once false jump can get you killed. Contrast this with Mario, while not armed with a whip :P, was still easier than Castlevania due to its mid-air control while on a jump despite the two being platformers, albeit in different styles. While not entirely the fault of developers, I can imagine that it can be taken as an unforeseen result in the stage of game development.

On a somewhat related subject, what if you already have beaten a difficult game? A certain trend I see in games right now is the greater support for multiplayer and PvP opponents, where all the fun that’s left in a game is beating another person and becoming the best in the world. I’m sure people can relate, especially those who really spend time honing their skills on a particular game (Street Fighter for you as an example, and AC for me XD, and those people claiming high scores in shooter games).

A good example I can think of is Tekken. Jinpachi isn’t the final boss, DT and his Brian 50%-er would take that spot XD. But you get the idea right? The reward now stems from being the best, or at least the pursuit of being the best, which makes some games more re-playable than others. DT is now the man to beat at least in our case, and everyone who has fought him now works hard in their own little way in order to beat him someday… I’m sure his motivation is partially in line with this.