I hadn’t really considered it from that perspective, but you might be on to something.
But I think it’s mostly that games have that necessary “frustration” component. There’s an inherent adversarial relationship between a game designer and a player; the game designer has to throw down obstacles to the player’s success. That’s a unique element in how games tell stories, with no counterpart in other forms of entertainment. And if there’s no incentive for me to overcome the obstacle using the tools the gameplay provides rather than some external difficulty setting, I’m going to be less inclined to engage the obstacle and therefore the game.
So my feeling is if one of the tools is a setting on an options menu, there needs to be some bias towards using the gameplay tools instead. A designer who doesn’t provide that bias isn’t doing his job*.
And I appreciate you guys giving me the opportunity to articulate this stuff. I know it gets rolled out a lot, but now we can have it all in one thread!
-Tom
* this is admittedly a provocative way to put it, since I’m sure people don’t like being told they aren’t doing their job by someone who’s never had to do their job