Apologies ahead of time as I'm a noob with the quoting system, here's hoping this works.
I think you completely misinterpreted what Jim was actually saying, he never said that ALL gamers that like a challenge are a elitist gatekeepers, Jim was taking aim at a very specific group of people that attack people for using cheats and mods to make games easier, he was not attacking people like you.
He is very specifically saying that anyone who wants a challenge should get over it when it comes to players wanting easier difficulties and how it supposedly doesn't affect them. It doesn't affect them directly, sure, but it does affect the medium for reasons I'll go into for your other point about homogenized difficulty. Jim is great, I love Jim, but I think he's doing the exact thing I talk about a lot and hyperbolizing the argument without looking at why people might feel the way they do about the medium/niche games, which I went into possible reasons why earlier.
It's not farfetched to me at all seeing how shitty big publishers are. I think it's only people on one side who are truly being asshats and that's the elitist assholes, I had one guy rage against me because I chose to exploit a glitch in that new Prey game(the infinite recycling glitch that allowed you to infinitely duplicate materials)those are the types of people Jim hates, not people like you. You need to stop taking every video like this as a personal attack.
That guy's an asshole, but anecdotal evidence aside, is irrelevant to the medium being discussed. That being said, nothing in my phrasing should have come off as "taking this as a personal attack." I apologize as I know text bias is a problem, especially in a topic as charged/heated as this one, but I didn't take this as an attack at all, simply commenting on the fact that he only seems to be really caring about one side of the argument.
I don't think difficulties are being "homogenized" at all, that sounds like a really silly argument. I liked how Shadow of the Tomb Raider had different difficulty sliders for things like exploration, combat and puzzles, i'd hardly call that homogeneous since most games just have binary "easy, normal and hard" difficulties.
One example does not a rule break. Majority of gaming these days is either shorter (your cinematic games) , or padded open world (Other games from big studios). I love BOTW's durability system, but the Master Mode was clearly not made with this in mind as it becomes a tedious grind dealing with the hp sponges and regenerating health in that game.
I believe majority of games are easy enough to be beat with little to no effort for a vast majority of people with even the slightest control of hand eye coordination, and that's fine because the gaming medium has become more accessible to more people as a result. A "Necessary evil" if you will in terms of the medium being more "hand holdy" to help with giving more people with less experience with gaming more room to breathe when going into it.
But the flipside to that is that MOST (not all) difficulty systems now are simply bloated HP values and/or ramped up bloated damage numbers, not only because most are built around "RPG" systems that are there for the sake of being there, but because the "accessibility" of gaming has made the "easy" the new "normal." While I myself couldn't care less as I'm more of a story guy myself, I'm not blind enough to pretend like gaming hasn't taken a huge dive in difficulty in a vast majority of cases and the difficulty settings present don't offer the people who want that difficulty a "good" option for difficulty.
And yet they are not constantly taking up threads to ask for hard modes for games and in fact most share the frustration of badly designed hard modes being simple bullet/damage sponges. I think that speaks more to the people who are thirsty for more difficult content. From games are rare examples where "Hard" is not just bloated time wasting hp inflation. Things like From Games and even DMC5 to an extent with its varied mob placement and changes in where enemies appear is interesting to people looking for difficulty because it presents something for them they just don't get out of other games. So when that has the potential (even if it's not a real threat) of being taken away from them, they are annoyed because it's telling them that the game they like should "reprioritize" to the ones who aren't into what they came to those games for.
Now does easy mode mean that hard mode would disappear? I'd argue Furi and Celeste say no, but there's a reasonable defense to be made about "bad difficulty modes" in gaming to lead people to believe what maeks those games "unique" could disappear if made to lean towards what other games already offered. Thus Homegenization.
I think it is you that is missing the nuance in this video, Jim clearly stated he would personally never use an easy mode in the From games and he's not demanding one.
I see his nuance, but I also see the same hyperbole I see in other posts about the subject. There's more to this argument than "it doesn't affect you" and "you're just gatekeeping." That's all I wanted to point out because that's what most people focus on and even in this thread sing praises about.
So what if people take he path of least resistance? Why should that bother you so much? Besides there's a simple way to fix that so that people are less tempted to switch to a lower difficulty-make it so that once you pick your difficulty at the start of the game, you can't lower it without starting a new game, that way if things get tough for you you'll be less tempted to switch to a lower difficulty.
I believe due to interactivity in gaming despite it being "entertainment" provides real feats of accomplishments for some people who like it. The same type of accomplishment people feel when playing personal sports or maybe doing puzzles/brain teasers in their free time. Games can test your brain in multiple ways and I think that different people come to gaming for different things.
I love JRPGs and strategy games because I love crunching numbers and figuring out the most efficient and interesting strategies to beat hard to defeat enemies. Other people love From games because it really tests their reaction times and maybe it lets them get a sense of accomplishment of overcoming something they don't get elsewhere.
The path of least resistance, at the risk of being meme'd out of existence, offers less for players and the medium as a whole. There's nothing wrong with it being there, or being offered. It's just when that's the standard and most games are so forgiving it provides nothing for an audience who seek out the difficulty and problem solving that maybe games of the past or certain smaller games provide them.
It's just when such a stink is raised when 1 game a year, out of all games, doesn't cater to that need I feel like the people who often tout the word "entitlement" don't understand how that argument can be used for anything. It doesn't bother me that there's an easy mode offered, in the slightest. I just see why people might be upset that the few games that actually scratch their itch might be defensive about the formula changing.
I do like your solution to being stuck on the difficulty and having to start over though, as it makes the player more engaged and has to make a decision if it's worth starting over just because ONE fight is too hard. Good idea.
