>>48711578i understand how the term is generally employed. i use it more expansively since i do not see a distinction between "artificial" and "real" difficulty. a perfect example: dark souls. it appears hard on the surface, but with some practice, you can beat the game at level one without upgrading weapons, taking damage, or hell, even using weapons. the "difficulty" is the process of "learning the rules of dark souls," so to speak. therefore, all "difficulty" is ultimately artificial, since even games with "bad design to create artificial difficulty," can be overcome with knowledge and skill. hence, the people who claim a game is "hard" are just stroking their own ego. the truth is there is no such thing as a difficult game, since all games are just code breaking, once you "crack the code" it ceases to be "difficult."
another way to state this is "difficulty" in a game, is just the cognitive dissonance of your mind to either press on or give up. therefore it says more about the psychology of the player than about the architechture of the game world.
