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"Uncommonly hard game" is not a genre despite what some people want to think. These games are Action RPGs. Yes, it's a unique take on the concept in some ways, but that's still the genre that it is. The game is designed to be hard. Cool. It can still be that. AND it can still have a lower difficulty option without sacrificing the integrity of the original experience on the non-easy difficulty AT ALL. Literally nothing is lost to the people that want that. NOTHING. It's not comparable to making a scary movie less scary. The genre and thematic content of something is a completely different thing. And my point with the guide thing is you're basically saying "These games can't have an easier difficulty because it sacrifices the integrity of the game and the work you have to put into it to overcome the challenge which is the point of these games! I did it by watching videos and reading guides on how other people figured out how to overcome the challenge, thus making it easier for me to do it myself." IE: The game teaching you the ins and outs via an easier mode and having to utilize external content to teach you the ins and outs has little to no functional difference outside of the method of the teaching. Excepting if the lower difficulty is just a completely cocked up "press X to win" scenario that doesn't actually teach you anything. More to the point: your anecdotal evidence on why the difficulty is important doesn't mean anything to the next guy down the line. Difficulty is rather relative anyway. I've definitely seen complaints about how they made this or that Souls game "too easy", etc. Some say nothing will top Demons Souls. Some say that was the easiest. I'm sure they could make an easy mode in one of these games and there would be people that bitch about it being too hard still. You can't please everyone, but my point is having the OPTION hurts absolutely nothing and no one regardless of the game. This is like Jimmy Page bitching about Guitar Hero and Rock Band games wanting Led Zeppelin because "you should learn to play it on a real instrument". I'll state it simply: I like the concept of and want to play the Souls games due to things that have absolutely zero to do with the difficulty of the game. That difficulty is a barrier for entry and I don't have the time to read or watch a damn dissertation on the intricacies of dodging, blocking and backstabbing (or whatever) to get into them without hours of frustration. Fuck me for liking the sound/idea of something and just wanting to have fun enjoying it and getting immersed I guess? Pardon my plebeian ways.

There is absolutely zero change to ANYTHING in a games given experience at one difficulty by adding an alternate difficulty mode. Nothing is changed about your experience or preferences. AT ALL. You saying you had to go and look at guides and stuff could be argued with the same things that are being used to defend not having a lower difficulty. You had to seek outside help to improve at the game. How is that better than the game providing a tool to teach how the game is played in a less strenuous environment? A difficulty difference doesn't have to be "lol press X to win". There are good ways to implement it and retain the integrity and feel of a game. Maybe gear upgrades are a bit more plentiful or stat increase happens at a sharper upward trend. Maybe the enemies attack a little slower, or leave themselves open to an attack or counter attack for a little longer. Maybe there's a few ridiculous attacks they can do that they won't on a lower difficulty or they animate more clearly before doing them. Even a difficulty setting like the "auto" one in Hellblade has potential. You start out at the default difficulty, and if you perform well, it shifts the difficulty up. If you start dying a lot it starts to shift the difficulty down. Therefore no matter where you are on the spectrum it will adjust to it and proceed to challenge you from there. Or even if they don't do something intuitive or interesting and it's just "do more damage, take less damage, enemies have less health" stuff, it doesn't matter. YOUR EXPERIENCE WITHIN THE GAME WILL NEVER CHANGE FROM WHAT IT IS AT THE DIFFICULTY YOU PLAY AT. Someone being able to enjoy and be challenged by the game at a lower difficulty does not take anything away from you except some weird need to feel superior to someone else in a fucking PvE video game. You can still urge a person to try it the "true" way with no change to such communities. It would just shift from "You should totally play this, here's how to make the attempt" to "You've experienced one level of this and understand the basics, now here's how to get the 'full' experience (for lack of a better qualifier)". The kind of gaming where this is even a thing is a goddamn recreational activity. You found the grind to "git gud" to be fun? Congratulations. There are a lot of people that never will. That isn't a good reason to cut them off from experiencing a game they have an interest in for a different reason. And "Watch videos on Youtube" is not a good answer to that. Some people do though I'm sure, but that's not for everyone either. More ways to experience something without affecting other peoples experience of the same thing is unequivocally a good thing.

90% of games I play, I will play purely for the story or some aesthetic that has nothing to do with gameplay. There's nothing wrong with having lower difficulties to give more people the option of that experience. There are ways to do it that isn't just "you basically can't die" and maintain some form of challenge without completely alienating people. Despite my preferences for games, I have no problems with challenging myself. I also have a fondness for going for trophies/achievements in games, and playing on higher difficulties for that purpose (otherwise I've always been a "default setting and done" type of person with most games). However, I have never gone anywhere near a 'Souls' purely because of what I hear about them from literally everyone. Have even got a couple for free through PS+ and never touched them because I ligitimately don't want the headache no matter how much I am interested in some of the story elements and things like that. If there was a difficulty option I might actually consider it and then push into the higher difficulty based on how I felt from there. It's entertainment software. There are (at least) dozens of different ways and reasons people enjoy this medium. It's stupid to limit the audience for something purely because of a "git gud scrub" mentality. Also, thinking about this topic reminds me of the video series Jim Sterling did where he would read elitist gamer comments as an 18th century french nobleman or whatever it was: