E-GAG101: I think it all depend on the type of game you are playing, for instance I really enjoy the Fire Emblem games even though I end up pulling my hair out everytime I play them. (I don't let anyone die) When I play a Fire Emblem game, I know that I'm in for a challenge, and I want it like that. But if I play though a CoD game or something I don't want to be forced to play the same mission over and over memorizing the patterns, behaviors, and locations of the same enemies that just take more bullets, because thats not how the game was designed. A CoD game is designed as a cinematic FPS that you just kind of breeze though, with the real challenge being in the multiplayer. But a game like Fire Emblem is designed to be challenging, so it makes it all the more satisfying when you make it through that tough battle without any deaths. I think that if you ramp up the default diffculty in a game like CoD, it would come off as "Cheap" because the game wasn't designed to be that difficult, there would just be more enemies with guns that do more damage. I think that difficulty is a design choice just like every other part of a game. And most companies now are intentionally choosing to design their game to be easy in order to reach a larger audience, much like how survival horror has become almost synonamous with the action genre. And when you turn the difficulty up on a game designed to be easy, it make the harder difficulty feel superficial. That's why games like Super Meat Boy are highly praised, because the game was designed with difficulty, it's not superficial, so it makes the feeling of beating a level feel genuine.