ROCK HARD

The cost of making a game more difficult is that you will inevitably limit your audience. But there are potential upsides to that, too. “Having faith in your player may lead to development of a more difficult game, but difficult games have the more satisfied, more engaged player-base,” says Samuels, whose channel currently has 370,000 subscribers. “Games such as Dark Souls and Bloodborne targeted a niche, but I think this niche has proved larger than anyone anticipated. They’re the sort of games that aren’t for everybody – and that’s a good thing. By pandering to the lowest common denominator, [game creators are] forced to abandon so much.”