I was therefore hesitant to even try the game, but the unique premise and art style won me over (also Annapurna Interactive has yet to publish a bad game). Those are two video game genres I have never been very skilled in, and that often involve heavy gatekeeping. Sayonara Wild Hearts (SWH) calls itself a “pop album video game”, but at its core it is a combination of a runner game and a rhythm game.

Then I played the newly released Sayonara Wild Hearts this weekend, and it changed my mind. Not that games should inherently be challenging, as was immediately disproven by Twitter user XCK3D, but that it is OK for some games to be hard by design. He later clarified his point was to say not *all* games need an easy mode.Īdmittedly, my first reaction was to agree with Kern. Kern responding to the Ars Technica article on Twitter. Taking that challenge away would negate a game’s emotional impact. Kern and his supporters argue that a challenging game builds resilience, and that having to try something over and over again until you succeed is exactly what makes notoriously difficult games like Dark Souls such a rewarding experience. However, Orland found a prolific detractor in Mark Kern, a former producer at Blizzard Entertainment and one of the key people behind World of Warcraft. Kyle Orland summed it up very well in his article for Ars Technica, in which he advocates for all games to include ways to overcome gatekeeping (locking portions of the game until certain levels are beaten). The recent reveal of a “super easy mode” in the much anticipated game Death Stranding re-ignited a debate within the gaming community about whether games should be challenging, and whether measures to make games more accessible are actually detrimental to the gameplay experience.

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