Why do people like hard-as-ice-tits games?

Challenge.

for example in Dwarf Fortress, which motto is "loosing is fun", learning from your mistakes, progressing, your own evolution and how it reflects in the game.

It's not about the game being hard. It's about learning and overcoming.

Don't capitalize like that, use italics, you ruin the code and it doesn't work that way.; they are case sensitive.

I enjoy a bit of challenge in my game. So many are so easy you just fly through it without even being close to dying (cough cough FABLE 3!!!).

Games like Dark Souls let you challenge yourself how you want. The game is relatively difficult as it is, but once you've played it through and know the enemies & locations its actually quite easy. I decided I wanted to do a level 1 playthrough and am starting to get butthurt for my troubles. However, it does make me slow down, appreciate the level design, take more notice of things like enemy/item positioning, the soundtrack, and you get such an almighty sense of accomplishment when you actually beat certain enemies & areas.

its not so much "hard" as a "challenge"... hard refers to an artificial difficulty (not the new generalised term coined from Dark Souls but instead its original meaning of "artificially increasing or decreasing the difficulty of something through modification") where a game is made more difficult due to a setting being changed or playing by a set of rules determined by the user. the only time artificial difficulty is good is when it is NOT the former of the two.

challenges, however, are something designed with a specific level of difficulty involved with no way to change it. This is commonly seen as unfair, however it is the type of game that requires a user to learn from their mistakes. It is very difficult to find a good middle ground between too difficult and too easy however, as either could put a potential customer off buying it which is why "hard" games tend to sell better than "challenging" games.

I know very few people who like hard games as you moderate how difficult the game is yourself, therefore losing any sense of accomplishment. however, you feel rewarded when you finally complete a difficult game or make progress towards completion. That is why people enjoy difficult games... it gives that sense of accomplishment which people look for

hard tits better than no tits Shrugs

Nothing more memorable than screaming at the screen and throwing a controller or mouse at the wall. Then calming down and realizing you might have overreacted.

Your post resembles a false dichotomy. It might just be a lack of context. Can you provide some examples so that we can better understand what you're referring to?

Your skill level isn't the standard. Just because you die over and over and over doesn't mean everyone else does.

Some people are just better at games and want to have a little more stimulation and excitement then regular press X to win difficulties provide.
Others might be in it for the satisfaction of overcoming a tough obstacle.

Take Dark Souls for instance, it's an extremely hard game for some. I beat up to NG+3 while dying only 6 times, excluding invasions. Yes I kept track.
Compare that to Yoshi's Island where I'll die 10+ times a level during later parts of the game as I try to collect everything.
Should Yoshi's Island be easier because I have ODD? Should Dark Souls be easier because you need to git gud? Should my health regenerate because I jumped from cover into a wall of enemies? Nope, nope, and nope. Stop caring that other people are better than you and just play games at a difficulty you find fun, that's why you're playing them anyway, right? Right?

It's mostly the rush of adrenaline and the feeling of satisfaction that you beat whatever the game threw at you.
Well worth all the times you wanted to kick your computer in.

I think it depends on the player quite a bit. The people who tend to enjoy really difficult games also tend to be the kind of people who don't get frustrated easily, or just happen to have really sharp twitch-reflexes. There are different kinds of hard games, and the appeal varies across the spectrum.

Games like "I Wanna Be The Guy" have zero appeal to me and put me in a really bad mood, for instance. The controls are sloppy, the design is (deliberately) crap, and the game is barely held together by string and sticky-tape. Though the appeal here would be just bragging rights, and more of a thing for masochistic speedrunners.

Games like "Dark Souls" have a lot of appeal to me, mostly because it moves at a slower pace and you get chance to analyse what you're doing wrong (or right), and even if frustration does creep in there for some people, you have the opportunity to gradually unravel winning strategies and build your way towards pushing past each wall as you encounter it. However, I had no issues with the controls and the camera never really fought me, so I had a pretty pleasant experience. Those who had difficulty with the controls/camera? I can totally see how they'd hate the game. I also feel a lot of my enjoyment had to do with my character's build (STR/END tank), and can see how a more complex or haphazard character might make the game teeth-gratingly unplayable.

"Super Meatboy" was actually pretty enjoyable to me too, and I think this is largely owed to the quick restart whenever you die. It doesn't force you to sit through a mandatory pause if you lose, you can just get straight back into the action without it needlessly rubbing it in your face. Early into the game, it shows you openly that you will be dying often and sometimes the odds are going to be unfair as hell, but it does a pretty good job of removing extraneous sources of frustration. Sure it gets pretty ridiculous later on, but it curbs a lot of the usual frustration elements.

So, really? I think it comes down to whether the game is intentionally difficult by design, how exactly the difficulty ramps up, whether or not the player has a means to understand WHY they lost/died and readily improve the next time around, and just how much of it comes down to bugs/bad design. Quite often, games touting "super hard classic action!" are only that way due to being too lazy to go through the full 'balancing' sweeps. "Super hard!" is one of the many cop-outs available, just like "Retro styled!" is, when they had no intention of trying to capture a classic/nostalgic feel.

i like the challenge. and i am not saying that i am really good at these games. i play mostly hard platformers. other games dont need to be hard in my opinion. e.g. i liked running through Remember Me without too much of a challenge, simply because this is a story-driven game, and i dont want to die every 30 seconds. but i love hard games like The Impossible Game or Super Hexagon, because it is so rewarding, when you finally finish a stage. love it! ^^

right now i am playing The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures. not the hardest game, but also not the easiest. and a lot of fun. take a look:

Thy Farts Consumed
Beat it & Eat it (only for grown-ups!) ;)

and the king of hard games is probably I Wanna Be The Boshy! i love this game. i play it with a friend, when i am at his place. we always drink a lot then, which certainly doesnt make it easier. i am pretty sure we will never finish that game, but we're having so much fun trying. ;)

It depends on the player and the game... if I feel the game is easily playable in any situation, I will play it on hardest diff... mainly shooter games that rely on direct action =)

Hard games require thought and developing strategies. When you die a lot you will try a different approach or pay a greater attention to your equipment or your gear. The fun comes when your own skills develop and become better in the game.

Also thx for the giveaway

Hard games force me to improve as a player. Seeing the improvement in my own performance is a reward in itself.

Challenge. Simple as that. Games that are too easy are just not fun. I was really upset with how easy the newest Donkey Kong Country game was on Wii, at least the old ones were a little challenging.

Who doesn't like tits?

Those games are fun because if you die, it's your own fault.

Your so-called arguments contradict itself so many times it's not even funny anymore.

Sorta like when I was playing Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition, and I kept failing on one of the levels in E2, I looked up a guide on the Hub. Many people were like, "MAN I CAN BEAT THE ENTIRE GAME IN LESS THAN AN HOUR ON DAMN I'M GOOD DIFFICULTY, I DID IT ON MY FIRST TRY, NEEDS TO BE HARDER" and I'm stuck on Episode 2 on Let's Rock difficulty. :/

Although I do okay at Super Hexagon and I did beat VVVVVV on 3DS.

i dont like hard games, i hate to do things twice, if i die two time in the same spot the game is on his way to uninstall...

I prefer easy games and often enough, will set it as easy, as I like to just play through the story and not die endless times and ruin it for me.

Your topic reminded me of this and this

Let me give you an example.
TES V - Skyrim. As much as they say it's mature and shit. It's made for babies. Like in other thread, in Skyrim, all you do is smash keys.
No need for tactics, what to do, where and when. No need to learn what enemy does at which times. Quests are so simple that it hurts, and no description for them, but hell yea, there is marker for every quest item in-game. For a statue that is 10 meters tall and for a item that is hardly visible.

It feels bad playing that simple game. It just is.

Games are being more and more simplified, with better graphics, less gameplay, less new stuff. Today games are hard if it takes 10 rockets to the head for person to die. Fuck yea.
By hard, it doesn't have to be like Super meat boy, where I start to punch myself on how hard it is, or Dark Souls. But it can at least give you some challenge to not make you feel like you're mentally ill.