Of course, it helped that Dark Souls had a lot more going for it than just a difficult-yet-fair gameplay loop. This is exactly when a game like Dark Souls became such an important release so that the gaming industry could finally realize that there was a market for tough games that challenged the player and didn’t waste time with excessive hand-holding. There was a time when games were more than content treating gamers like kids and not trusting them to figure anything out unless it was shoved in their face in the form of an intrusive tutorial, numerous pop-up messages, or anything else along the same lines.
