TL;DR how much should players be expected to invest into a game before they start having fun?
About a month ago Ross played ~2 hours of Dark Souls on Twitch. When the stream recording was uploaded to YouTube, many heated discussions took place in the comments. Unfortunately, that comment section has become too messy and toxic to produce anything useful. That's why I'm bringing this topic here — I'm hoping for a meaningful conversation.
Souls games hold a very special place in my heart, and with Ross being my favorite YouTuber, I couldn't wait to hear his opinion on one of them. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Like many others, I was sorely disappointed by Ross's decision to rush through the rest of the game with cheats (invincibility and one-hit-kill). I admit, I might've been a little overbearing in my efforts to convince Ross to play properly, but I was desperate.
As I was one of the first to comment, I had an opportunity to get several direct responses from Ross. What he said boils down to, essentially, the same thing he's told us before: if a game starts feeling like work, he'd rather do actual work. I used to agree with this rationale — indeed, what's point of spending time on entertainment, if it fails to entertain? Now I see that this approach is too simplistic, it fails to account for many important aspects.
If the game is unbalanced, or bugged, then yeah, Ross's approach makes sense. But when it's not the game's fault? Such as when the player isn't paying enough attention, or is unwilling to learn, then what? Countless people struggle with Dark Souls (or any other game that has a learning curve) because of those very reasons.
The video of Ross playing Dark Souls for the first time:
He struggles, but he's doing pretty good for a first-timer (a number of people in the chat also corroborate this). But Ross himself doesn't think so, judging by the name of the video, and its description.
The second stream, this time with cheats:
Is Ross having more fun when playing with cheats like he said he is? He just looks bored and annoyed to me, more so than in the first stream.
Further reading/watching:
I found a video that talks about the value of challenge in video games:
Dark Souls Critique by Joseph Anderson (playlist link) — a level-headed, yet brutally-honest examinations of this game's various flaws.
I will edit this post and add more videos and articles on this topic when I find them (if you know of any, I encourage you to post them in this thread).
If any of you are interested in speaking your mind on this matter, I ask you to do so with civility and respect towards others.