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So.....Animal Crossing New Horizons is a huge hit and has sold a giga-fuck-ton of copies. Yet, I see a bunch of bad takes about it.
Now, this isn't a defense to say New Horizons is perfect, it's not. It has some annoying quirks and could greatly benefit from some QOL changes. This thread isn't to defend or praise those choices.
This really isn't about Animal Crossing. This is more about how gaming is the only medium I know of that is constantly asked to be dumbed down and made more accessible for everyone.
And by accessible, I'm not talking about disabled gamers. I'm talking in terms of design. Level and world design is not just a way to get people to perform actions, but also express an idea or communicate a theme through that action.
And when I see how people hate on Animal Crossing for not being as easy as the aesthetic and art style might imply. Surprise: a game still has legit gameplay.
Again, not just AC. I went through it with Doom Eternal and it's need to have weapon specific weaknesses for a lot of enemies. It extended the play time, long after I accepted the design Id was going for.
The point isn't whether or not it's good or bad or the best idea, it's more about how certain complaints obscure the intention of design and that leads to a lot of people not learning how to play a game. Either a game holds your hand or it tosses you into the storm.
But the biggest problem with this is: only gaming has this issue. Mr. Feels (y'all know him) has talked about how show viewers will put an excessive amount of hours binging at once, multiple seasons, just to 'avoid' spoilers for an upcoming season.
Hell, people have marathoned fucking Marvel films, even when the connecting threads are in the post credits.
Movies, tv, books: it's somehow became acceptable that a multi-hour commitment is expected to get the most out of a series before the next chapter comes out. But let one game bog you down for an hour or make it clear there's a slow burn at play....
Some games can stand to be easier but it just seems like madness to ask people that are playing to learn how it works or understand some the mechanisms of why a game feels the way the does.
And this seems to hurt tech a lot: I've worked in so many places that just wants to dumb, dumb down complex flows to one button because nobody wants to be bothered to learn how it works.
In the end, if something sucks, it sucks. But it should be because it's bad, not because you won't bother to try a little bit.
