Nifty Niche Games

I want to have this post made to refer people to in the future.

That post I made about how “Games don’t need difficulty settings”?

It’s by far the most popular post I’ve ever made on this blog. Which is fine, I get it, controversy gets a lot of movement. That’s not the problem.

The problem is that it’s popular because people took my opinion of “Games don’t need difficulty settings” and turned it (and myself by extension) into this ridiculous boogeyman of “NO GAMES SHOULD HAVE DIFFICULTY SETTINGS EVER! HARDCORE GAMERS ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN PLAY GAMES. WE SHOULD REMOVE DIFFICULTY OPTIONS FROM GAMES THAT ALREADY EXIST EVEN!”

Which in the course of discussion with ManchesterGameMaker I repeatedly pointed out was not what I was asking for. But that would require people to read my posts and not have a knee-jerk reaction to a boogeyman they only perceived.

So let me make this as clear as possible:

Games don’t need difficulty settings, but having difficulty settings is not a bad thing.

It just so happens that sometimes a games difficulty is a very conscious decision on the part of the developer, and as a result, the experience being presented is inseparable from that difficulty, because it was designed with that experience in mind.

And here’s the crazy thing;

That concept goes both ways, for easy and hard games, a point I made in my last post of that discussion. Just as the hard experience presented in Dark Souls is inseparable from its difficulty, the easy experience presented in Animal Crossing is likewise inseparable from that game as well!

Now for games that aren’t like Dark Souls or Animal Crossing, sure, the middle-ground is full of titles that are either designed to be enjoyed by players of varying skill levels or designed in such a way that the difficult parts of the game are secondary to a greater focus, like how the combat in Mass Effect is secondary to its story and characters. These games don’t lose any artistic integrity for having multiple difficulty settings because the challenge is not the focus of the experience or integral to the art.

So to re-iterate:

I get what you say, for some videogames, a certain difficulty is part of the developer’s intended way of enjoying a game. If the classic Resident Evil games had a super easy mode, they hardly would be any frightening, right? Sounds reasonable to not to offer this option.

Except it isn’t, in my opinion. Gamers have been disregarding developer’s intend since the dawn of videogaming- cheats, codes, gamesharks etc., all these things exist. And they destroy the ‘intended game experience’. You don’t like using them? Well, me neither. But fortunately nobody forces me to use them. So what’s the harm of adding more options? The developers can make it clear in the game, that they don’t recommend using them, since they destroy their intended experience, but they could still offer more options for people who want to use them anyway.

You know what else have people been doing since the dawn of videogames? Modding. If a game didn’t meet the need of a certain audience, they sometimes felt it necessary to take things into their own hands and create the game that they wanted to play. But people shouldn’t be forced to get that tech savvy only to play a game of which the developers thought only the gamer elite should enjoy. This is gatekeeping, in a situation where adding more options literally hurts nobody and is so easy to implement from the developer’s side.

I mean, at a certain point that’s totally unfeasible, but more importantly, let’s take that logic and apply it to your earlier example: We should make horror games accessible for people that don’t like to be scared.

That’s pretty obviously ridiculous, but your reasoning is there. Some people don’t enjoy being scared. So that’s exclusionary!

Some people don’t enjoy competition between players. So we need to make PvP games accessible to people who don’t enjoy that!

Some people have no rhythm, so we need to make rhythm games accessible to them!

No. Like it or not good art has vision, and vision is the artists ideas being presented as-is to the viewer. What the viewer takes from that is their experience, that’s undeniable, but if that artists ideas focuses on a hard or easy difficulty that is inseparable from that idea, then that’s the experience.

I didn’t bring any moralistic judgement like ‘this is a bad action or a bad artist’. What I meant to say is, that developers can and should be held accountable for their decisions- they are not exempt from criticism. If they decide to develop a super hard game only 5% of the players can complete, they can go ahead. Literally nobody stops them. Just as nobody can stop people from criticising it.

You say: “Because if you don’t like it, it’s not for you.”

This is where the biggest misunderstanding is. More people want to play videogames, and it would be so easy for the developers to give them the chance.

You know, I am playing video games since I was four. It would be easy for me to say video games don’t need difficulty settings, because I have the ability, the patience and will to beat a game on default setting. But other people do need other settings, either because they don’t have the ability or the patience, or they simply enjoy games differently, in ways other people don’t understand. They don’t play videogames because they don’t like. They don’t play videogames, because they aren’t a chance given. You shouldn’t need decades of videogame experience to play a game you enjoy, in my opinion. Feel free to disagree.

“You shouldn’t need decades of videogame experience to play a game you enjoy, in my opinion. “- Here’s the thing, you don’t need that. Most games do have some form of difficulty setting but even for the ones that don’t, you just need a willingness to learn from your mistakes and get more skillful. That doesn’t take decades or even years, that takes patience, which isn’t an “exclusion”, because it’s not a disability, pr an impossibility. It’s a thing anyone can hone given enough reason, and if you don’t have that drive to do so in a game, that’s fine, but that’s not the art’s fault. It just means the art doesn’t get you passionate enough to do that. More importantly you don’t even have to have that patience because lots of games don’t focus on a singular difficulty, meaning they’re open to just about anyone.

Secondarily, video games as a medium are AMAZINGLY inclusive. I guarantee you that if you can think of a genre or theme for a game, that it exists, (probably for free!) on mobile devices. Mobile devices and the mobile gaming scene are available to and literally played by anyone. Most people don’t own mobile devices for games, they own them as miniature personal computers that opened a gateway to games. If your problem is “I want a fantasy RPG that isn’t hard like Dark Souls” or “I want a platformer that isn’t tough like Super Meatboy” you can literally find hundreds of them on the app store. That is the opposite of exclusivity, that is lowering the barrier for entry as far as it can possibly go without handing out smartphones for free, a solution that isn’t even possible for a game developer.

“ Why is only this one single way of playing allowed for some games? Because having more options defies the point of the game in your opinion? “

Yes! If an artist approaches their artwork with the intent to create a specific experience, in this case a hard one (though it could be an easy one, or a scary one, or really anything) then that is the point of the art being created, and modifying that means it’s no longer the artists work, it’s a compromised product built to be sold to as large a potential audience as possible (in other words, an entertainment product, not art primarily) and not the artists vision. As I’ve said before, in these cases the challenge IS the art, and inseparable from it.

You might as well ask for horror games to have options to not be scary for people that don’t like being scared. Would doing so be less “exclusive” in the sense less people would be opposed to it? Sure, it also completely undermines the intention of the work. If you want to make something that doesn’t potentially leave people out then I suggest you not make anything, because that’s not going to happen, and fundamentally making art for a specific purpose is something that most if not all art does.

I want to have this post made to refer people to in the future.

That post I made about how “Games don’t need difficulty settings”?

It’s by far the most popular post I’ve ever made on this blog. Which is fine, I get it, controversy gets a lot of movement. That’s not the problem.

The problem is that it’s popular because people took my opinion of “Games don’t need difficulty settings” and turned it (and myself by extension) into this ridiculous boogeyman of “NO GAMES SHOULD HAVE DIFFICULTY SETTINGS EVER! HARDCORE GAMERS ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO CAN PLAY GAMES. WE SHOULD REMOVE DIFFICULTY OPTIONS FROM GAMES THAT ALREADY EXIST EVEN!”

Which in the course of discussion with ManchesterGameMaker I repeatedly pointed out was not what I was asking for. But that would require people to read my posts and not have a knee-jerk reaction to a boogeyman they only perceived.

So let me make this as clear as possible:

Games don’t need difficulty settings, but having difficulty settings is not a bad thing.

It just so happens that sometimes a games difficulty is a very conscious decision on the part of the developer, and as a result, the experience being presented is inseparable from that difficulty, because it was designed with that experience in mind.

And here’s the crazy thing;

That concept goes both ways, for easy and hard games, a point I made in my last post of that discussion. Just as the hard experience presented in Dark Souls is inseparable from its difficulty, the easy experience presented in Animal Crossing is likewise inseparable from that game as well!

Now for games that aren’t like Dark Souls or Animal Crossing, sure, the middle-ground is full of titles that are either designed to be enjoyed by players of varying skill levels or designed in such a way that the difficult parts of the game are secondary to a greater focus, like how the combat in Mass Effect is secondary to its story and characters. These games don’t lose any artistic integrity for having multiple difficulty settings because the challenge is not the focus of the experience or integral to the art.

So to re-iterate:

I get what you say, for some videogames, a certain difficulty is part of the developer’s intended way of enjoying a game. If the classic Resident Evil games had a super easy mode, they hardly would be any frightening, right? Sounds reasonable to not to offer this option.

Except it isn’t, in my opinion. Gamers have been disregarding developer’s intend since the dawn of videogaming- cheats, codes, gamesharks etc., all these things exist. And they destroy the ‘intended game experience’. You don’t like using them? Well, me neither. But fortunately nobody forces me to use them. So what’s the harm of adding more options? The developers can make it clear in the game, that they don’t recommend using them, since they destroy their intended experience, but they could still offer more options for people who want to use them anyway.

You know what else have people been doing since the dawn of videogames? Modding. If a game didn’t meet the need of a certain audience, they sometimes felt it necessary to take things into their own hands and create the game that they wanted to play. But people shouldn’t be forced to get that tech savvy only to play a game of which the developers thought only the gamer elite should enjoy. This is gatekeeping, in a situation where adding more options literally hurts nobody and is so easy to implement from the developer’s side.

I mean, at a certain point that’s totally unfeasible, but more importantly, let’s take that logic and apply it to your earlier example: We should make horror games accessible for people that don’t like to be scared.

That’s pretty obviously ridiculous, but your reasoning is there. Some people don’t enjoy being scared. So that’s exclusionary!

Some people don’t enjoy competition between players. So we need to make PvP games accessible to people who don’t enjoy that!

Some people have no rhythm, so we need to make rhythm games accessible to them!

No. Like it or not good art has vision, and vision is the artists ideas being presented as-is to the viewer. What the viewer takes from that is their experience, that’s undeniable, but if that artists ideas focuses on a hard or easy difficulty that is inseparable from that idea, then that’s the experience.

Do you want to accept the fact that games are (or at the least have the potential to be) art?

Then you also have to accept the fact that art requires the viewer to meet and experience it on its terms.

Sometimes part of those terms are a tightly designed, difficult experience.

You can’t profess to have experienced a book by skim reading.

You can’t profess to have experienced a sculpture or installation from having seen a photo of it.

You can’t profess to have experienced a game if the only way you could see yourself “experiencing” it is for the challenge to be removed. The experience you get from that is fundamentally different (and weaker) than what was intended.

If you actually ever study art, the first thing you’ll learn is that the artists intention is utterly irrelevant. The artists intention has absolutely no bearing on someone’s experience.

I look at a Van Gogh and see some nice flowers. My neighbours sees the same piece and feels remorse over the time when they pushed a child into some mud.

We have both looked at the art piece and had an experience. Who has had the most valid experience?

Here’s the answer; It doesn’t matter. We have both felt something. Neither of us left the painting feeling like we didn’t get it. Some people will, certainly but art is open to interpretation. No one puts a curtain over the painting and says SORRY. UNLESS YOU’VE STUDIED ART FOR AT LEAST SEVEN YEARS, YOU WON’T EXPERIENCE THIS PROPERLY, THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED SO YOU MOVE ALONG NOW.

Have you even been to an art gallery? Every painting has a description explaining the artist’s motivations or annotations. Sometimes it just has a title because no one knows the artist’s intentions as they were no one special and it’s just a best guess at the purpose of the painting. “Girl with glass”. You can experience the art on its own, absorb someone else’s notes (easy mode) and maybe your experience changes maybe it doesn’t.

To insist that everyone either play it THE WAY THE ARTIST/CREATOR INTENDED OR LEAVE IT ALONE is so utterly fallacious it’s laughable.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I’m saying it seems. You believe that I’m trying to say that a bare minimum amount of experience is required to appreciate art. But that’s not what I said at all.

The amount of time one has spent playing games has little bearing on their ability to create perfectly valid opinions on the quality of a game. But in order to form those opinions they must still appreciate the art as it is presented.

If they cannot and insist that the art be modified for their enjoyment then they are requesting it be turned into a commodity for their needs, not a standalone statement by the artist.

Artists intent specifically refers to what you get out of the art as it is presented to you. Your example of Van Gogh is spot on! You and your friend both experience the art and take totally different things from it, Van Gogh’s intent may have been received or it might not, but that doesn’t matter.

Insisting that art does not need difficulty modes is like insisting that books shouldn’t be printed in braille.

Don’t flatter yourself too much though. The only reason my response was so shortly posted after yours was a matter of timing as I was travelling on the bus and I’m drunk enough to respond to this mess.

I think I got off track here though. You seem not to understand your own argument.

If that is not the aspect of the piece a person is looking to experience then that is not a failing of the art.

And asking for the art to be changed so it can be more easily consumed waters it down, with the intent being it can be more easily consumed as entertainment.

No one is asking you to change “the art”. The game still exists in its original form for those who wish to see it. You can still get on that plane and simper at how wonderful it is for you to have that experience.

Yes, to a degree difficulty is “exclusionary”, in so much that it prevents some players from progressing when they hit a roadblock they do not wish to put the time into unraveling. But it’s important to point out that ultimately that exclusionary barrier is on the player, and rarely anything else. The example of flying to Paris is rooted in what is a financial impossibility for many folks, something that they cannot possibly do anything about. Difficulty in games is a matter of honing a skill (outside of physical disability of course), and as a result can be seen as a term of experiencing the art. It is only exclusionary in that people allow it to be (as is perfectly fine), but ultimately it is not a failing of the game.

Let me be clear, there is certainly “bad” difficulty. A hard difficulty is not an inherently good thing of course, and many of the replies to this post have touched on that. As one person pointed out adding health points or extra enemies to an encounter does not a good experience make, but that is a problem separate from the issue of difficult games. Spelunky immediately springs to mind as a game with one set, hard difficulty that does not succumb to this pitfall, and I would argue it is a better experience as a result of that targeted approach to difficulty and the experiences it brings with it.

Your point about prints is a good one, and admittedly where the analogy falls apart (as they all do eventually). But I would again point out that in many games the challenge IS the art, or at the least inseparable from it. A print at least captures the essence of the piece while missing the details, but if the essence of a game is difficulty, then there is no way to modify it without watering it down and losing that essence.

I suppose, as a creator, I have to ask; Why would you even want to intentionally create something for mass consumption that you know is literally impossible for people to engage in?

The reality is we’re having this conversation because recently the topic is in focus because a big name developer CHOSE to add an option to their art which allows players to access their medium even though it was expected to be an inherently challenging game.

People aren’t crying “why aren’t you making games easier for me?!” They are crying “why are you making it easier for them?!” Yet, the artist has presented their piece in the medium they chose to.

In my honest opinion, there isn’t any valid reason to not add difficulty options to games.

If you want the simplest response I can think of though: Games that never needed them have had a hard mode added for years and no one has ever complained that this feature is offered because casual to semi-decent players got by on normal and anyone who wanted to feel challenged played it on hard.

Now game developers realise that they’ve been missing a core part of the crowd they’ve been trying to reach including the physically disabled and suddenly everyone has to git gud and difficulty options are for simpletons.

 My goal is to make an experience, one that does not cater to every possible player, but rather hopefully finds an audience that appreciates it for what it is, not what it could be if only it were blunted for everybody. I made another blog post a while back about the so-called indie-pocalypse that goes over my opinion that the root cause of it is that indies don’t take the risks needed to differentiate themselves from the crowd, and this is kind of an extension of that concept.

The only time that that has not been the case is when I have been employed as a developer when working on Candy Cauldron. In that respect I was not an indie developer, I was being paid to develop a game with the intention it would be profitable, but on all of my independent projects the audience has been secondary to what is my vision of the project.

I will have to admit I’m actually not sure what game or developer you are referring to on difficulty modes being added, I think it might be Fire Emblem which is not actually a franchise I have much experience with.

I don’t agree that no one complained about hard mode options in games though, because oftentimes those hard mode options rely on extremely shitty ways of increasing difficulty that DO hurt the experience (bullet-sponges) rather than offering more engaging ones.

Do you want to accept the fact that games are (or at the least have the potential to be) art?

Then you also have to accept the fact that art requires the viewer to meet and experience it on its terms.

Sometimes part of those terms are a tightly designed, difficult experience.

You can’t profess to have experienced a book by skim reading.

You can’t profess to have experienced a sculpture or installation from having seen a photo of it.

You can’t profess to have experienced a game if the only way you could see yourself “experiencing” it is for the challenge to be removed. The experience you get from that is fundamentally different (and weaker) than what was intended.

If you actually ever study art, the first thing you’ll learn is that the artists intention is utterly irrelevant. The artists intention has absolutely no bearing on someone’s experience.

I look at a Van Gogh and see some nice flowers. My neighbours sees the same piece and feels remorse over the time when they pushed a child into some mud.

We have both looked at the art piece and had an experience. Who has had the most valid experience?

Here’s the answer; It doesn’t matter. We have both felt something. Neither of us left the painting feeling like we didn’t get it. Some people will, certainly but art is open to interpretation. No one puts a curtain over the painting and says SORRY. UNLESS YOU’VE STUDIED ART FOR AT LEAST SEVEN YEARS, YOU WON’T EXPERIENCE THIS PROPERLY, THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED SO YOU MOVE ALONG NOW.

Have you even been to an art gallery? Every painting has a description explaining the artist’s motivations or annotations. Sometimes it just has a title because no one knows the artist’s intentions as they were no one special and it’s just a best guess at the purpose of the painting. “Girl with glass”. You can experience the art on its own, absorb someone else’s notes (easy mode) and maybe your experience changes maybe it doesn’t.

To insist that everyone either play it THE WAY THE ARTIST/CREATOR INTENDED OR LEAVE IT ALONE is so utterly fallacious it’s laughable.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I’m saying it seems. You believe that I’m trying to say that a bare minimum amount of experience is required to appreciate art. But that’s not what I said at all.

The amount of time one has spent playing games has little bearing on their ability to create perfectly valid opinions on the quality of a game. But in order to form those opinions they must still appreciate the art as it is presented.

If they cannot and insist that the art be modified for their enjoyment then they are requesting it be turned into a commodity for their needs, not a standalone statement by the artist.

Artists intent specifically refers to what you get out of the art as it is presented to you. Your example of Van Gogh is spot on! You and your friend both experience the art and take totally different things from it, Van Gogh’s intent may have been received or it might not, but that doesn’t matter.

Insisting that art does not need difficulty modes is like insisting that books shouldn’t be printed in braille.

Don’t flatter yourself too much though. The only reason my response was so shortly posted after yours was a matter of timing as I was travelling on the bus and I’m drunk enough to respond to this mess.

I think I got off track here though. You seem not to understand your own argument.

If that is not the aspect of the piece a person is looking to experience then that is not a failing of the art.

And asking for the art to be changed so it can be more easily consumed waters it down, with the intent being it can be more easily consumed as entertainment.

No one is asking you to change “the art”. The game still exists in its original form for those who wish to see it. You can still get on that plane and simper at how wonderful it is for you to have that experience.

Yes, to a degree difficulty is “exclusionary”, in so much that it prevents some players from progressing when they hit a roadblock they do not wish to put the time into unraveling. But it’s important to point out that ultimately that exclusionary barrier is on the player, and rarely anything else. The example of flying to Paris is rooted in what is a financial impossibility for many folks, something that they cannot possibly do anything about. Difficulty in games is a matter of honing a skill (outside of physical disability of course), and as a result can be seen as a term of experiencing the art. It is only exclusionary in that people allow it to be (as is perfectly fine), but ultimately it is not a failing of the game.

Let me be clear, there is certainly “bad” difficulty. A hard difficulty is not an inherently good thing of course, and many of the replies to this post have touched on that. As one person pointed out adding health points or extra enemies to an encounter does not a good experience make, but that is a problem separate from the issue of difficult games. Spelunky immediately springs to mind as a game with one set, hard difficulty that does not succumb to this pitfall, and I would argue it is a better experience as a result of that targeted approach to difficulty and the experiences it brings with it.

Your point about prints is a good one, and admittedly where the analogy falls apart (as they all do eventually). But I would again point out that in many games the challenge IS the art, or at the least inseparable from it. A print at least captures the essence of the piece while missing the details, but if the essence of a game is difficulty, then there is no way to modify it without watering it down and losing that essence.

Do you want to accept the fact that games are (or at the least have the potential to be) art?

Then you also have to accept the fact that art requires the viewer to meet and experience it on its terms.

Sometimes part of those terms are a tightly designed, difficult experience.

You can’t profess to have experienced a book by skim reading.

You can’t profess to have experienced a sculpture or installation from having seen a photo of it.

You can’t profess to have experienced a game if the only way you could see yourself “experiencing” it is for the challenge to be removed. The experience you get from that is fundamentally different (and weaker) than what was intended.

If you actually ever study art, the first thing you’ll learn is that the artists intention is utterly irrelevant. The artists intention has absolutely no bearing on someone’s experience.

I look at a Van Gogh and see some nice flowers. My neighbours sees the same piece and feels remorse over the time when they pushed a child into some mud.

We have both looked at the art piece and had an experience. Who has had the most valid experience?

Here’s the answer; It doesn’t matter. We have both felt something. Neither of us left the painting feeling like we didn’t get it. Some people will, certainly but art is open to interpretation. No one puts a curtain over the painting and says SORRY. UNLESS YOU’VE STUDIED ART FOR AT LEAST SEVEN YEARS, YOU WON’T EXPERIENCE THIS PROPERLY, THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED SO YOU MOVE ALONG NOW.

Have you even been to an art gallery? Every painting has a description explaining the artist’s motivations or annotations. Sometimes it just has a title because no one knows the artist’s intentions as they were no one special and it’s just a best guess at the purpose of the painting. “Girl with glass”. You can experience the art on its own, absorb someone else’s notes (easy mode) and maybe your experience changes maybe it doesn’t.

To insist that everyone either play it THE WAY THE ARTIST/CREATOR INTENDED OR LEAVE IT ALONE is so utterly fallacious it’s laughable.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I’m saying it seems. You believe that I’m trying to say that a bare minimum amount of experience is required to appreciate art. But that’s not what I said at all.

The amount of time one has spent playing games has little bearing on their ability to create perfectly valid opinions on the quality of a game. But in order to form those opinions they must still appreciate the art as it is presented.

If they cannot and insist that the art be modified for their enjoyment then they are requesting it be turned into a commodity for their needs, not a standalone statement by the artist.

Artists intent specifically refers to what you get out of the art as it is presented to you. Your example of Van Gogh is spot on! You and your friend both experience the art and take totally different things from it, Van Gogh’s intent may have been received or it might not, but that doesn’t matter.

Insisting that art does not need difficulty modes is like insisting that books shouldn’t be printed in braille.

Don’t flatter yourself too much though. The only reason my response was so shortly posted after yours was a matter of timing as I was travelling on the bus and I’m drunk enough to respond to this mess.

I think I got off track here though. You seem not to understand your own argument.

If that is not the aspect of the piece a person is looking to experience then that is not a failing of the art.

And asking for the art to be changed so it can be more easily consumed waters it down, with the intent being it can be more easily consumed as entertainment.

Do you want to accept the fact that games are (or at the least have the potential to be) art?

Then you also have to accept the fact that art requires the viewer to meet and experience it on its terms.

Sometimes part of those terms are a tightly designed, difficult experience.

You can’t profess to have experienced a book by skim reading.

You can’t profess to have experienced a sculpture or installation from having seen a photo of it.

You can’t profess to have experienced a game if the only way you could see yourself “experiencing” it is for the challenge to be removed. The experience you get from that is fundamentally different (and weaker) than what was intended.

If you actually ever study art, the first thing you’ll learn is that the artists intention is utterly irrelevant. The artists intention has absolutely no bearing on someone’s experience.

I look at a Van Gogh and see some nice flowers. My neighbours sees the same piece and feels remorse over the time when they pushed a child into some mud.

We have both looked at the art piece and had an experience. Who has had the most valid experience?

Here’s the answer; It doesn’t matter. We have both felt something. Neither of us left the painting feeling like we didn’t get it. Some people will, certainly but art is open to interpretation. No one puts a curtain over the painting and says SORRY. UNLESS YOU’VE STUDIED ART FOR AT LEAST SEVEN YEARS, YOU WON’T EXPERIENCE THIS PROPERLY, THE WAY IT WAS INTENDED SO YOU MOVE ALONG NOW.

Have you even been to an art gallery? Every painting has a description explaining the artist’s motivations or annotations. Sometimes it just has a title because no one knows the artist’s intentions as they were no one special and it’s just a best guess at the purpose of the painting. “Girl with glass”. You can experience the art on its own, absorb someone else’s notes (easy mode) and maybe your experience changes maybe it doesn’t.

To insist that everyone either play it THE WAY THE ARTIST/CREATOR INTENDED OR LEAVE IT ALONE is so utterly fallacious it’s laughable.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what I'm saying it seems. You believe that I'm trying to say that a bare minimum amount of experience is required to appreciate art. But that's not what I said at all.

The amount of time one has spent playing games has little bearing on their ability to create perfectly valid opinions on the quality of a game. But in order to form those opinions they must still appreciate the art as it is presented.

If they cannot and insist that the art be modified for their enjoyment then they are requesting it be turned into a commodity for their needs, not a standalone statement by the artist.

Artists intent specifically refers to what you get out of the art as it is presented to you. Your example of Van Gogh is spot on! You and your friend both experience the art and take totally different things from it, Van Gogh's intent may have been received or it might not, but that doesn't matter.