Sadly, even if I’m moralistically in favor, there is so much insane computer science logic (and proprietary mechanisms) behind the process of compilation, especially on certain embedded systems where this issue comes up, that I doubt that could ever be pushed into law.
The case I see is like this: Many publishers increasingly argue that they don’t have a strong monetization plan for big epic singleplayer games unless they have a dozen forms of microtransactions. For Sony, the monetization plan for God of War is the PlayStation 5 - and all of the residual purchases that come after someone owns one. 80% of those purchases will be of games that are on both Xbox and Playstation - but went to the latter because God of War and Spiderman are awesome. With that in mind, the teams making those games can sorta just aim for awards, not perfect profitability.
This once again tires back in with patience and recognizing which parts are hard by comparison.
“Time to try Elden Ring! Hm. This first area I’ve spent 20 minutes in is too hard. I’ll go somewhere else. Actually, this other area I spent half an hour in is also too hard. I’ll go somewhere else. Hmm…actually…”
Not to mention, understanding the stat systems enough to respec can be hard itself. And, summoning people to help you often means you’re not learning or engaging with the game mechanics yourself (or, getting slaughtered by invaders - patience again)
There’s genuine reasons why those things as a form of difficulty adaptation do not work well for everyone. People get an inconsistent and unreadable experience, and conclude simply “The game is too hard.” Often, that statement is made with incomplete information, but that’s what they’ve got from trying to learn it themselves. Obviously, if you look up walkthroughs it’s boringly easy and has no sense of discovery.
Given its open world nature, I would bet the difficulty of the game varies greatly depending on where someone randomly decides to explore.
And, any repeat attempts won’t reveal much because on a second go the player will have experience with systems that will keep them safe or at least better conditioned around their losses.
Unfortunately, I feel like only console developers that long ago released their games for arcane bi-flagonal deprucified CPUs get to put out expensive anniversary editions. Everyone who owns Steam copies can still run it just fine.
I like the reactiveness of RTS, but if they can somehow negate the need to be “FAST” about it, I’d enjoy it more. It’s the eternal struggle of, if pressing a button does a good thing, how do you avoid a meta that involves hitting 8 buttons a second.
Something that could have potential is putting an in-game “communications limit” that limits/punishes you for enacting too many Actions Per Minute, and encourages you to find ways to delegate broad tasks to your AI units. eg: “Please make a base at this spot, focused on building Archers”
I think RPGs are a lot better at telling a story, but many of them don’t have interesting stories to tell. It’s also admittedly hard to develop that hook. So, while my most memorable games are RPGs, I usually get drawn more to FPSs.
The one exception to this feel is Half-Life 2. Something about the lack of ceremony behind level transitions, lack of objective markers or excess UI, and being “in” the environment in which characters are trying to accomplish their goals helps it feel more immersive. Sadly, not many AAA games have aimed to have expressive faces during gameplay since then to help sell the visuals.
I definitely play a few horny games, and don’t recommend them to anyone. In the other hand, I have actually skipped certain games, and hated some others, because they were trying to tell an engaging story and got hung up on cringey sexualization of their female leads.
As you said, it’s all up to consumer preference. It isn’t just watch-dogging and shaming of sexualization, it’s also that there’s a lot of people that find lazy sexualization to be disengaging and hardly unique. Plenty of the time getting the characters to look unique and interesting is also a challenge; and diversity often helps with that.