Though you mostly just seems like your butthurt over how popular me and my game are.
Yeah, I'll admit that I don't understand why these games have been so popular. It's frustrating because they aren't really anything exceptional from a design, art, or compositional stand-point (sorry). I think most of my criticism is directed at the first game, less towards this new one, which offers better presentation but yes, I find this particular genre of games to be un-fun. It's not that I don't like to be challenged! I just don't like it when I have to perform the same task over and over again without any sort of reward.
Yet people do often like doing things over and over, in horrible, brutal ways. Even with modern design aesthetics (Dark Souls)! Some people like harsh learning. Some people spend hours every day trying to juggle. Other spend hours every day trying to hit a base ball. Others do speed runs of Super Metroid under intense, uncompromising standards. Others like more brisk, fun experiences. The spectrum of resistance potential players can enjoy is huge. It's fine if you don't like it -- there are plenty of popular things I don't like. But you should understand it, because it's a real thing. They might be a smaller segment of the population, but the deserve to be served by willing devs all the same and doing so is not inherently "bad design".
Lately I've been playing the original Spelunky on PC. This game is a good example of near-perfect design, AND it's extremely challenging. I've invested hours into the game already and I'm constantly wanting to come back for more. I'm sure we could get into all of the reasons that Spelunky works as well as it does, but I'm sure plenty of other thread do. I think the bottom line is that if you mess up in Spelunky it's entirely the player's fault. You failed to look before you leap. Your games, on the other hand, are completely unpredictable. It's like hanging out with somebody who seems cool at first until he sucker-punches you in the gut... again... and again. It's just not fun (for me).
First, there is no perfect design, nor is something like challenge and difficulty a neat little number line where "Oh, Spelunky hits all the notes just right". For example, I love Spelunky, but it was, FOR ME, just too damn easy and playing it, especially for score, became very tedious or even luck based (you need a lot of stuff going for you to be able to do things like farm diamonds from ghosts). Playing "casually" was just a formality in beating the game for the 100th time.
Now, that's all good and fine. I enjoyed the game a ton. Same for like, Binding of Isaac which I helped playtest and got crazy win/death ratios on. Difficulty means different things to different people and the type of difficulty they enjoy is ALSO different. Heck, with Spelunky, the balance is excellent when just playing to win. "Yeah you only fail because you made a mistake", but when you play the game at a high level, you get fucked over all the time. You play Castlevania and it starts off unfair and near impossible and becomes a very fair game about run optimization. They're thinking the same thing you're thinking about their games about the games you like, because difficulty can't be tuned perfectly for every skill level. Not that IWBTG is fair, but we'll get to that.
Spelunky might have hit a lot of great notes, but so did the Beatles and not everyone likes them. Perhaps Spelunky deserves more credit (in fact, I'd agree with that!), but it can't be everything to everyone.
You say that you're appealing to a niche, but I strongly disagree; your view count/downloads reflect quite the opposite. Gameplay footage of your original game has 1.5 million views on Youtube, which is more than the most-viewed videos of Spelunky, Super Meat Boy, and VVVVVV combined. The problem I have with that is that your games appear sloppy, lazy, and gimmicky compared to these other titles, which feature original graphics and themes, while yours uses ripped sprites and tiles and rudimentary gameplay that offers nothing fresh or new besides extreme masochism.
Okay sure, but keep in mind, not all those views are PLAYS. Some games are better to watch than others. IWBTG has a LOT of downloads and, based on that list, Spelunky is the only game that's free. So that's not a great metric. That said, you're right. Last time I talked about this someone said to me "That's not fair to say. People at my college were talking about how much they liked it". So okay, it's not expressly NICHE, but it's definitely a very particular thing... anyways, I think the foolish thing you're doing is thinking that the game does nothing fresh or new "besides extreme masochism"(one thing the game definitely does NOT originate. We both grew up in the NES era). IWBTG could not exist out of context. It could not be sent back in time. It examines, parodies and lampshades old games. It also does a lot with player psychology. The game gets in peoples heads. It surprises them. You might not find it interest or surprising when you play the game for 5 minutes (which I don't hold against anyone), but the people who DO play it CAN appreciate those elements. The game has a sense of psychology and absurdity that has surprising appeal. That's why many games that came after IWBTG stumbled. All the "IWBT-blank-" fangames or Abobo's Big Adventure (which had 10000000000x more visual polish than IWBTG but no sense of comedic timing) sorta fell flat, but IWBTG remained the king of it's weird little dumb pseudo-genre.
Look, I'm sorry for being such a dick about this and responding to your work so harshly; no doubt you've also worked hard to make these games and you loved what you were doing, which is great. I just disagree with your design philosophy entirely and it saddens me that it works so well. I guess traditional methods of game design are obsolete. I might as well stop developing now, because this era of consumers clearly isn't my demographic.
This is silly. Like Upthorn said, IWBTG appeals to old sentiments, not modern consumerism (Which isn't a real thing anyways, but whatever). Also instead of being so grumpy, bitter and defeatist about it, why don't you LEARN from it? I don't even mean this in an arrogant "I'm awesome" way. You can learn from EVERYTHING. So if a game you think looks like crap is super insanely popular, maybe you should stop and go "Okay, but why?" while not falling into a defeatist mindset. The sense of psychology and player prediction in IWBTG can definitely be used else where. The pacing and comedic timing? Telling jokes through stage design? This doesn't have to be linked to killing the player. That doesn't have to be linked to a hard game (though it probably helps). Heck, you don't even have to use any of it -- just being aware of it gives you more context to learn from other games you experience, increasing your expertise in general!
It's sorta like Chesterton's Fence. Don't take down a Fence until you understand why it was put there to begin with. If you're just going to dismiss something that's popular that doesn't appeal to your ideology, you're just going to lose out.
Also talking like traditional good design is dead is ridiculous and unfounded. People should be happy that weird niche games can achieve crazy popularity along with more focused, polished games. If IWBTG in it's "Hey guys check out my first game" laziness can achieve such popularity, well... that's a sign that there is a lot of potential design space in that direction. That's awesome! IWBTG only worked in it's barely finished state because that segment of the market was unserved.
Heck if I thought IWBTG was the future, I'd give up too, because I wouldn't wanna live in that world either, but fortunately it's a ridiculous idea.
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