It really is admirable how Hidetaka Miyazaki, the director of Bloodborne and the first two games in the Souls series, has reincarnated controller splitting, TV breaking, middle finger flippin’ games. Actually, Miyazaki’s games were at the genesis of this renaissance of impossibly difficult yet supremely rewarding games that have become the darlings of the industry. Most of these games are also for non-traditional developers.
Games have been trying to be more like movies for a long time. (Maybe it’s better to say the publishers wish games were more like movies.) But it was the PS3/X-Box 360 era where games became more streamlined – shorter length, longer cut scenes, more difficulty settings, etc. The industry knew that with potentially larger audiences purchasing the games; games needed to be more accessible. The machismo associated with hard difficulties and impossible bosses became more muted. The Wii definitely helped broaden the audience, but move to make games more accessible had been happening for years and it wasn’t necessarily bad for the industry.
We got games like The Elder Scrolls IV:Oblivion, Heavy Rain, and Gears of War. All of 
these games were extremely cinematic and each game was accessible to a broadening group of gamers who have just as divergent familiarity with games. It wasn’t until later in the generation when we started seeing games like Demon Souls, Rouge Legacy, and Spelunky. While Rouge-likes have been gaining in popularity over the last generation, Demon Souls really blew the door open and showed the gaming industry that people like challenging difficulty.
A lot of the challenging difficulty associated with games had a lot to do with arcade culture and the need to have people insert more and more cash into the machine. I touched upon the machismo of difficulty as well. The difficulty of yesteryear was traditionally just bad game design. This caused a lot of violent outbursts at arcades which led to fights and broken machines and, in the home, it led to a lot of broken controllers and stern parental reprimanding after especially violent outbursts.
This new crop of challenging games that have sprouted through the beds of mediocre, AAA games have taught us how to appreciate good game design again. I’m not saying these games are perfect. I’m not even saying they don’t have cheap parts to them. I’m saying game design has advanced a lot in the recent years and these games are a testament to good game design. They have caused a resurgence in games that make us take a step back and think about our next move. The difference is this time when we fail again and again and scream “God Dammit,” we smile and get back to it cause in the end it’s fun.
