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[s0]

I use emulators all the time, some RPGs, like Final Fantasy VII, cannot be played in a reasonable amount of time without them. Why? Speed up. There are 1:00 attack animations with no value, skipping them makes you lose power, it's ridiculous.

So I grind. In order to make grinding not take forever, I also speed up the grind.

ok but what does that have to do with disability? you keep shifting the focus from accessibility for the disabled to personal preference.

also i dont remember anything like that in ff7 and i dont remember ever having to grind but watever.

Imagine if I made a game with a high pitch frequency sound p 18 could not hear it. Unless my point was to make a game which nobody over 18 could play, then making it a lower pitch isn't taking away from my artistic vision.

except you've asserted repeatedly in this thread that player preference is more important than "the point"

[Squidly]

except you've asserted repeatedly in this thread that player preference is more important than "the point"

No, I didn't.

I said player preference does not ruin the point.

This topic was started with, and I quote:

Sure enough, in gamesettings.ini you could tune the intensity of the effects (great for epilepsy) and turn off dying, just enjoying the game for its visuals, tight design, and damn good music.

...

So I'm bringing up the question, should we, as Game Developers, be nicer to our players? Not tune down the difficulty for everyone, but instead give options. Would it, like what Robert D. Faeron (SYSNO's developer) says 'kill us?' Do we NEED to make these things like they are? Could we turn on achievements for mods, let Spikes bounce the character up and deal damage instead of insta-kill, the epilepsy, etc.

Could we let our players decide what game they want to play?

Disabilities were 1/3 of my point, but we focused on them as they were good justification, which they are.

But really the point is options.

My point is that artistic vision is not hindered if you give options to people who want to play your game a bit towards their way.

Like XCOM, you can put the options in a seperate menu. Disabilities are one reason to do this, but really some people want to see the worlds, story, etc.

If we're really talking about artistic vision, then we should recognize that the reason video games will never be as popular as movies or books is because there is a gigantic skill barrier and a lot of gibberish inbetween.

Want to watch Nico Bellic's immigrant to tragedy story? Gotta go through 100 or so warehouse shootouts first.

Want to see Cloud fight Sephiroth? Gonna grind for about 30 hours first.

Ever play Silent Hill? Most of those games literally have a puzzle difficulty option. The most famous example is the Anthology Books puzzle, where you have to sort Shakespeare Anthology books in a certain order to find a hidden code.

Easy difficulty has no writing, just two missing books, etc.
Normal has an obscure quote giving you a hint.
Hard requires a well versed knowledge in Shakespeare, where the codes come from sections in each play where a quote is located.

Some want to be scared in Silent Hill, some want to be scared and solve puzzles, some want to solve ridiculous puzzles and be scared inbetween.

Why do you think "Video Game Movie" cutscene compilations are so popular?

Anyways, look, if you don't want people to put down your game within the first few minutes like a ridiculous amount of players (statistically, look up GameInformer's trophy breakdown) do. Then go ahead. Be stubborn.

Just don't try to break down a step in the right direction.

[s0]

Some want to be scared in Silent Hill, some want to be scared and solve puzzles, some want to solve ridiculous puzzles and be scared inbetween.

yeah idk i don't like scary games. where's the No Horror Mode in silent hill?

basically as a developer you have 0 autonomy and are obligated to cater to literally everyone at all times. limiting options because you want players to experience your game a certain way is a big no no because someone might NOT LIKE(!!) the experience.

[Squidly]

Hey, don't strawman around here.

Buying a scary game and not expecting to be scared is DIFFERENT from buying Civ V with the great promise of modability and finding that all the mods in the world aren't legitimate and aren't valid and you better play the game our way or you're doing it wrong and all your achievements don't matter.

Silent Hill is not a puzzle game, it's a horror game. Taking away from the puzzles doesn't limit the artistic vision, because the artistic vision isn't the puzzles. If it were Fez, then yes it's a puzzle game.

You don't take away from your core design if you cater to the fluff, you let people see more of your core design.

If you can't recognize what your core idea is, then that's a problem in itself.

Look, I keep saying this - if you keep railroading like this, you're less of a game and more of a movie.

[s0]

Hey, don't strawman around here.

dude, you said literally this exact thing about spelunky and dark souls w/r/t difficulty earlier.

Silent Hill is not a puzzle game, it's a horror game. Taking away from the puzzles doesn't limit the artistic vision, because the artistic vision isn't the puzzles.

what if i don't care about the developer's "artistic vision"? what if i dont like horror games and just want some fun puzzles to solve*? do i a) acknowledge that silent hill is probably not for me and go play some non-scary puzzle games instead or do i b) demand that silent hill accomodate my taste somehow?

why is it ok to be "precious" about your game's theme (horror in this case) but not about your game mechanics?

Buying a scary game and not expecting to be scared is DIFFERENT from buying Civ V with the great promise of modability and finding that all the mods in the world aren't legitimate and aren't valid and you better play the game our way or you're doing it wrong and all your achievements don't matter.

as about 10000 people in this thread have already said, it'd pretty much defeat the point of achievements. you could just, you know, not worry about some icons in your steam profile and use all the mods you want.
 
btw, you keep bringing up xcom EU as an example. i like xcom a lot but i have to say that none of the 4 difficulty levels feel "right" to me. normal takes waaaay too long until things actually start to pick up challengewise and classic and impossible are, imo, kinda tedious.

*(i actually dont really like either puzzle OR horror games haha)

[Lee]

You're comparing a man who's work was selfless despite his disability to working on games despite disabilities.

My point was actually that music is exclusive toward deaf people and you can't always be inclusive. You simply cannot change music to be inclusive for deaf people. Likewise some gaming experiences cannot be inclusive otherwise it changes them fundamentally.

It's like that QTE thing, God of War is absolutely nothing without its Quick Time Events, right? But it's also absolutely nothing if people can't play it in the first place.

This point is completely redundant as people can in fact play God of War. It's only one small subset of people that can't. And as you say it's integral to the game, changing that would fundamentally alter the game.

You bring up games which benefit from certain features and disregard the fact that other games benefit from not having them.

When there's a specific idea of the game you want to make -""artistic vision""- then you have to ask whether including something which changes that is worthwhile or not, and I'm not just talking about accessibility features.

we should recognize that the reason video games will never be as popular as movies or books

Ha, the worldwide game industry was valued at $78 billion globally in 2013:
Music industry - $16.5 billion globally (2012)
Movie industry - $88.3 billion globally (2013)
Book industry - $108 billion globally (2013)

We should recognise that video games are immensely popular and if you don't like one in particular there are plenty of others to try. If you want to be scared play a horror game, if you want to figure out the answer to puzzles play a puzzle game! Sometimes games are designed to do both at the same time! Options!

FOV sliders.

That one does affect the gameplay though, since it affects how much you can see around you.

Well... I do agree to some extent that it can give a small advantage competitively. But unless you allow ridiculous FOV settings I don't believe it's a significant factor. Because it's a bit more complex than just being able to see more. FOV settings should be set with respect to your actual focussed vision. An incorrect FOV is equivalent to running around with binoculars on (high FOV being looking down the wrong end):

http://i.imgur.com/C7qTAmo.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ZsR6n.jpg . I don't think it's fair to say that getting the game camera properly set up is changing the gameplay. If having more peripheral vision gives you an advantage then you can restrict the FOV range and remove multi-monitor support (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v504/F12Bwth2/FOV/TripleheadCompare.jpg which would be more like this, which is a clear advantage).

I personally get headaches on my friends console as the FOV is too low for his screen which is way too big for how close he plays (with not much room to back up). Other people get nauseous with an incorrect FOV.

[Sik]

FOV being handled like that is in part a result of the difference between 4:3 and widescreen ratios. Normally the ideal thing would be to make the FOV larger so things stay the same size on screen, but because it lets you see more instead games will keep the same FOV and cut your view vertically. Not hard to see how it tends to end up wrong. And monitors keep getting wider (we already surpassed 2:1), which will only make things worse over time...

Still, not to argue whether changing FOV should be allowed or not, but it definitely affects gameplay.

[Squidly]

what if i don't care about the developer's "artistic vision"? what if i dont like horror games and just want some fun puzzles to solve*? do i a) acknowledge that silent hill is probably not for me and go play some non-scary puzzle games instead or do i b) demand that silent hill accomodate my taste somehow?

why is it ok to be "precious" about your game's theme (horror in this case) but not about your game mechanics?

Mechanic. Not mechanics. Please refer to the core design diagram. A game is a series of layers built upon a single core idea, everything else is built on that idea but really isn't integral to the idea.

For example, the difference between Portal 1 and Portal 2 is a core idea of Portals in Portal and Story in Portal 2. Take away the story and Portal is still Portal, take away the Portals and Portal 2 is still Portal 2. Take away Mario's mushrooms and he's still Mario, take away his jump and he is not. Replace it with speed and you have Sonic.

Why all this? Because Mario had that weird Super Block you could hit that would carry you through the level if you failed about 10 times.

Did it ruin/harm the game? No.
Could you ignore it? Yes.
Did most people ignore it? Yes.
Did everyone ignore it? No.

Portal 2, on the other hand, was later compiled into a 'movie' where a guy speedruns through and you can catch all the funny dialogue with no (admittedly boring this time around) puzzles.

I keep saying this, and I want to make it very clear: Spelunky at its heart is a platformer, then a roguelike, then a hard platformer roguelike. When Derek Yu made the game he probably thought: Gee wouldn't it be cool to make a platformer that's randomly generated, then ridiculously hard?

When trying to think about what the core element is, think about what the game becomes if you switch it. Give difficulty options and Spelunky is STILL Spelunky, take away the roguelike and Spelunky becomes less of Spelunky and more of La Mulana, take away the platformer and keep the roguelike and we have FTL, Nethack, Dungeons of Dredmor, etc.

Or, honestly, as most of these things go I'm pretty sure the difficulty was a result of the RNG, as is most of ever roguelike ever and preserved for 'authenticity.' Whatever.

Either way.

Video Games aren't immensely popular, Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Angry Birds, and Grand Theft Auto are immensely popular. You know, the games that have massive marketing budgets and aside from the last one can be boiled down to one mindlessly stupid mechanic. It's like saying music is immensely popular thanks to Katy Perry and Mozart is somehow benefiting from all of this.

And your little cost per dollar argument breaks down when you realize that only 10% of gamers actually finish the game. Well gee, there must be a reason for THAT.

[Lee]

First of all... Do you actually play games? I'm serious. Some of the stuff you're writing blows my mind and doesn't strike me as something a "gamer" would say. Like "take portals out of Portal 2 and it's still Portal 2". At this point it's not even worth arguing the fact.

Video Games aren't immensely popular, Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Angry Birds, and Grand Theft Auto are immensely popular.

... ergo games are popular.

And your little cost per dollar argument breaks down when you realize that only 10% of gamers actually finish the game. Well gee, there must be a reason for THAT.

You just blatantly ignored the fact that the game industry is very close to the movie industry in terms of revenue (around 90% but the gap has been shrinking year on year). As you say a lot of games are not complete, but on the opposite end of the spectrum many games have hundreds of hours logged and some have thousands, it's extremely difficult to give an average game time. Just look at this: http://steamcommunity.com/id/eliashogstvedt/games?tab=all "Garry's Mod 34,156 hrs on record" (no book or movie can compare, you just can't read/watch that many times and still be into it) and yet he has a load of games without any hours logged and some with less than an hour. The thing is it doesn't matter if they get completed or not, the sale of a book counts whether it's read or not and the sale of a game counts whether it's played or not.

[s0]

Mechanic. Not mechanics. Please refer to the core design diagram. A game is a series of layers built upon a single core idea, everything else is built on that idea but really isn't integral to the idea.

ok so let me rephrase the supposed "strawman" from earlier: developers can decide on exactly 1 mechanic in their game and have absolutely 0 autonomy over anything else.

so basically, silent hill is "at its core" a "horror game" (which is actually a theme, not a mechanic) and that's not going to change, so that rules out the No Horror Mode i requested. but i guess it's ok to demand an alternate mode where the monsters would be replaced by other scary monsters such as, idk, vampires or ghosts. i mean it doesn't hurt the "core idea" right? it's 2047, why doesn't silent hill have a Vampire Mode yet?

Why all this? Because Mario had that weird Super Block you could hit that would carry you through the level if you failed about 10 times.

Did it ruin/harm the game? No.
Could you ignore it? Yes.
Did most people ignore it? Yes.
Did everyone ignore it? No.

actually "mario" didnt have that. some of the newer mario games do. and i thought it was actually pretty annoying in the games i played that had it because of the psychological pressure it creates. would have been better if there was an option to turn it off completely.

[Sik]

And your little cost per dollar argument breaks down when you realize that only 10% of gamers actually finish the game. Well gee, there must be a reason for THAT.

Honestly I hate the fallacy that builds around this. All developers seem to assume that 100% of the players must finish a game, completely ignoring the fact that most of them will eventually lose interest in the way (and in the case of games with bonus content, most players that "finish" it will be happy with just completing the main game). Not having 100% of the players finishing your game isn't inherently a bad thing.

[Squidly]

ok so let me rephrase the supposed "strawman" from earlier: developers can decide on exactly 1 mechanic in their game and have absolutely 0 autonomy over anything else.

Look, again you're twisting my words. I said that developers have a core mechanic, and they should let people adjust the secondary mechanics. This doesn't remove your autonomy as you can dictate WHAT that means.

Honestly, in the end it's your game. I'm saying CAN we be nicer? Yes. Do you HAVE to be nicer? No.

You are perfectly free to direct your movie the way you want.

so basically, silent hill is "at its core" a "horror game" (which is actually a theme, not a mechanic) and that's not going to change, so that rules out the No Horror Mode i requested. but i guess it's ok to demand an alternate mode where the monsters would be replaced by other scary monsters such as, idk, vampires or ghosts. i mean it doesn't hurt the "core idea" right? it's 2047, why doesn't silent hill have a Vampire Mode yet?

Wow, you should be a politician.

It's a core design diagram, the developers went out and said 'we want to make a scary game.' They then decided 'okay how's it going to be scary? Maybe a big fog and ghosts/creepy demon things/whatever.' They then said 'but we need something in between, okay, let's throw some guns and enemies in there, and some puzzles to seal the deal.'

...

Which is why combat difficulty and puzzle difficulty are the two modes you can adjust.

actually "mario" didnt have that. some of the newer mario games do. and i thought it was actually pretty annoying in the games i played that had it because of the psychological pressure it creates. would have been better if there was an option to turn it off completely.

Actually 'mario' had a guy flipping turtles and crabs coming out of pipes at the top. But who's counting?

So you're saying there is some added psychollogical pressure, that I dunno, a life system, limited save system, and increasingly difficult levels didn't already add? Please. If anything it was 'well now I can use this thing' or 'I can just ignore it.' It wasn't a way of saying 'you suck' unless you take it that way, it ALWAYS comes after 5 lives (?). Always. This is more insulting in level 1 then it is in level 60.

[s0]

Look, again you're twisting my words. I said that developers have a core mechanic, and they should let people adjust the secondary mechanics. This doesn't remove your autonomy as you can dictate WHAT that means.

ok, i actually sort of agree with that. but i also think it contradicts a lot of your earlier examples. for instance, i'm pretty sure GTA4 was designed to be an open world sandbox game with driving and shooting first and an immigrant gangster drama second. if you removed the open world and driving and shooting from gta, it wouldn't be gta, it would be a storycentric adventure game. conversely, if you removed the story, it'd just be GTA without a story. btw, it actually made sense to have a skip function in L.A. noire because the "gta" part in that game feels tacked on and the story and investigations (which are basically story quizzes) are obv the central part.

likewise, read or watch ANY dev interview about dark souls (or demon's souls) and you'll see that a particular type of difficulty is a core concept.

ff7 is a bit trickier, but i'd like to point out that many modern jrpgs (xenoblade and dragon quest 9 for instance) use timesaving mechanics such as the ability to avoid or disable random encounters, fast travel etc.

So you're saying there is some added psychollogical pressure, that I dunno, a life system, limited save system, and increasingly difficult levels didn't already add? Please. If anything it was 'well now I can use this thing' or 'I can just ignore it.' It wasn't a way of saying 'you suck' unless you take it that way, it ALWAYS comes after 5 lives (?). Always. This is more insulting in level 1 then it is in level 60.

obviously a different kind of psychological pressure. telling me i suck isn't really the problem. the problem is that continually having to "resist the temptation" to use it (because from a purely mechanical standpoint theres no reason not to) is stressful in a way i find unpleasant. i.e. why i said an option to turn it off completely would be appreciated.

the funny thing is that what you just said is basically the same thing i told you about civ5 achievements

p.s. almost every aspect of the game i'm developing right now is customizable/moddable.

[PianoHands]

I didn't quite read through all of this, as there's quite a lot of discussion going on here. However, I did want to make a quick comment on the "Make it so anyone can beat it". Keep in mind, I'm not combating the epilepsy issue by any means, or push this button super fast mechanic.

Adding an Easy mode, to a game that is designed to be hard and fair, means obviously that people will be getting a very different experience than what you have created. I saw some of you using art (as in paintings and such) as a comparison, so let's do that here. Imagine if the Mona Lisa had an easy mode, where the entire picture was larger, blurry, and missing several of the key brush strokes that make that painting what it is. Suddenly, it's not the Mona Lisa anymore, it's a poor substitute. Maybe some people want a poor substitute, that's fine, people will have the option to buy another game, especially if you include something in your description talking about the difficulty.

When my game comes out, I want them to play the creation the way I meant for it to be played. Not a version of it that circumvents all the things I like most about it.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

ya that was sort of part of my point earlier. there's like a "range" of workable difficulties for any given type of game, and if you go too much below or above that range, there actually *is* no gameplay in those ranges

this goes just as much for making things too hard as it does for making things too easy, too. you can see this in masocore games to some extent (like vvvvvv and such, especially prior to it being made easier due to beta testing; in its beta state vvvvvv was a nightmare, i sometimes took 600 deaths to get through a single screen). if a game is at the point where even an expert at that type of gameplay is dying 600 times for every successful attempt, and those successful attempts feel more like dumb luck than skill, then that really isn't "gameplay" anymore, it's winning the lottery basically

generally, masocore games can straddle the line between extremely difficult gameplay and lottery. so by playing them you can get a sense of how gameplay can evaporate if it's made too difficult. similarly, the easier you make a game, the less importance is placed on the player's choice, because no matter what strategy they try they'd succeed. if you succeed no matter what you do, it is not really much better than failing no matter what you do

so i'm all for easy modes, but i think we should resist the temptation of making the easiest mode so easy that it's no longer even a game. even people with cerebral palsy and so on wouldn't want to play a game where they win automatically, no matter what they do

[Ky.]

In my mind the problem of including new and less skilled players in genres where experienced players derive their enjoyment from the challenge has been a solved one for a very long time: Just put in cheatcodes.
No reason not to really. it used to be standard in PC games at least (certain genres).
Typing in codes for godmode and infinite ammo etc. is so much cleaner than weird "adaptive difficulty" bs.

Everyone knows what's going on and that they're not getting the "intended" experience or whatever but can have fun messing about just the same. Needing no tricky extra incentives to play "as intended" or algorithms trying to guess the optimal enjoyment difficulty for arbitrary play styles and skill levels.

I really honestly cannot agree more with this. Cheat codes are amazing, and don't necessarily have to be "hidden" either.

Spawn a tank and use the all-weapons cheats in GTA3 and go nuts. Mission too difficult because the controls are horrible? Tank.

[Lee]

Honestly, in the end it's your game. I'm saying CAN we be nicer? Yes. Do you HAVE to be nicer? No.

You are perfectly free to direct your movie the way you want.

This is a complete reversal on what you were saying before. Although I think it's good if you've changed to a more lenient stance.

I also think the Mario "Super Guide" is extremely annoying, and a bit humiliating. Like being told "Hey, you suck. Hand over the controls and let me do it... idiot". The problem is that (modern) Mario games are pretty easy but you die just because you're doing it as fast as possible.

It's not a small minority of players that hate it either. Nintendo has received a lot of flak for "hand holding" and over-tutorialized games. John Blow and Phil Fish have quite publicly slated the entire Japanese gaming industry for this (turned into 'Phil Fish hates Japanese games/people/everything').

Going back to the first post, you hail SYNSO2: Squid Harder as highly configurable. But it's not really. There are two game specific configurable input preferences (autofire, turning arc). One minor gameplay/difficulty option (blades circle the arena boundary to stop edge and corner camping). And it's nice to include them as options but hey hardly make the game more accessible.

Honestly the rest of the options just add very distracting visual effects. There's two effect tuning options which range from 'playable' to 'why the fuck is this even an option'. And laughably the game also has a closed captions option that only serves to be extremely distracting graphically. And I doubt setting is safe for epileptics, they just make the game potentially harder and trippier.

And lastly the un-killable mode, the only truly applicable accessibility focussed option. When it comes down to this I think it's a pitying rather than empowering option. I personally think is a misguided attempt at the "everyone's a winner" school of thought. And it's definitely not a substitute for an easy mode.

Obviously being able to tweak game specific preferences is a good thing. But the options here are incredibly game specific. Most are not really applicable to other games.

There are some things that can be done to make a game more accessible without changing your game or how it plays one bit (as listed before). The problem I have only arises when you change the game for the sake of accessibility. Like with the Mario Super Guide, it's not even an option.

One thing we can talk about in regards to how we can be nicer is by allowing modding. It doesn't change the default game experience and may not even be used at all by some players.

It's easier to just allow modding by simply leaving certain data in external game files instead of having them hard-coded into the binary. It's easiest for people to mod if left in plain text or easily editable format (Cortex Command). Although some see it as unprofessional.

The "professional" approach is to pack many external files into a single data file (it is somewhat beneficial as it decreases loading speed, has better disk space usage, and reduces disk thrashing). But a lot of developers will simply use resource packing to obfuscate resources. Despite that it's quite likely that players will work out how to unpack them for editing/mod making purposes, as is the case for Cave Story and FTL for example.

Either of these are quite easy to do and is probably beneficial to development as well.

[Squidly]

Wait a minute, no it's not a reversal. At no point did I say "You HAVE TO BE" nicer, I said "CAN." I said you are free to direct your movie however you please, just keep in mind you're more of a movie the more you limit choices.

I think of games as giant puzzles, and if you think that's a boring way of looking at it then I'll tell you that I never get sick of Sudoku.

Anyways, puzzles are meant to be solved. Every boss fight, every platforming sequence, should be a giant puzzle. Jump here, jump there, dive here, jump there, it's what made Super Mario World so ridiculously fun, you could RUN almost the entire game, and everything was that much harder, that much trickier, and that much more satisfying, but really, the skill barrier didn't get that much harder, you just needed to know what places to jump to and what places to avoid, for example, in a lot of cases jumping on a flying koopa gives you that boost without ruining your momentum to get to a hard to reach platform meant for an 'elevator' block.

Now keep in mind what I just said had SKILL there too, you had to jump at this point etc.

That's the part you can adjust.

Games are essentially puzzle + skill, more ridiculous games like CoD are really stupid puzzles with even less skill (There's a man right there, shoot! And right there, shoot!) and games like Street Fighter are competitive puzzles where the puzzle is tricking and predicting your opponent. The more 'skill' you put in there, the more frustration you have. Nothing is more frustrating then doing zig zag motion punch to shoryuken because you knew he was going to duck, replied at the right time, but screwed up the input by a fraction of a semicircle because the game has a choke iron grip on what it considers right and wrong (you know it's a problem when it's easier to uppercut in real life then it is to uppercut in a video game.)

What I'm trying to say is, just because you're disabled or don't want to waste 600 tries, doesn't mean you don't want to solve the puzzle. Trying and failing is good, hitting that portal at the right time while flying through the air is very satisfying, but it's NOT satisfying when you have to try 30 times to get it right. Portal is actually a good game because once you figure it out, you can do anything in 3 or so tries, if it takes more then you're probably doing the puzzle wrong.

So, if your game is a puzzle, you should let anyone who solves the puzzle continue, if they want to make it not that easy, let them, if you don't want to make it that easy, you can, but keep in mind there are people who physically CAN'T.

[Farage]

This is actually pretty insightful for me right now... sometimes i wonder if making a hard game as the only option is the way to go.
I think at all the times that doesn't give you a choice, like Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy and totally get away with it.
Maybe theres a way of doing this without making the player feeling like its actually his fault that he "died"?

[Kytin]

This is actually pretty insightful for me right now... sometimes i wonder if making a hard game as the only option is the way to go.
I think at all the times that doesn't give you a choice, like Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy and totally get away with it.
Maybe theres a way of doing this without making the player feeling like its actually his fault that he "died"?

The player should always feel like it is his fault he "died". Anything else is bad game design. If it's not his fault, who's fault is it? There is only the player and the game (ignoring multiplayer for the moment). If the player is not at fault then the game must be. Who wants to play a game that "kills" you even when you do nothing wrong (i.e. are not at fault)?

This isn't to say that games should all be hard. On the contrary, a game that is too hard risks having the player decide that it's the fault of the game that they are doing badly.

A certain level of difficulty is neccessary to convey the desired experience to the player. This is inherent in the nature of games. A game with no challenge is not a game at all. It is, at best, a toy.