‘Difficulty’ in games is entirely relative to individual players; what’s ‘ultra hard’ and ‘unplayable’ for one is ‘too easy’ and ‘boring’ for another. Meaning, it’s a construct of the realities that game designers create, delicately tailored to the perceptions of their audience. And accessibility – my focus as a consultant on games, working with AAA developers like Guerrilla to Indies like Gambrinous – is an area of game design that’s often deeply misunderstood; it’s about barriers, not difficulty. So, by focusing on “difficulty modes” we might miss wider opportunities of being able to welcome more players because they may perceive any number of barriers to playing well or pain/stress free as ‘difficulty’. I’m here not just as an expert trying to shed some light, but also as a passionate fan of gruelling games like Souls-likes who wouldn’t want to see any of their defining qualities diminished.
source http://www.ign.com/articles/2019/04/05/sekiro-accessibility-in-games-is-about-far-more-than-difficulty
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