This is universally true. You must set up the game. You must find someone to play with if it isn't single player. This is true of every game, every time you play, to some extent. This metagame time is home to the clumsiest design. When was the last time you felt like the installation of a computer game added to the play experience in a way that felt good or at least intentional? When did character creation or group scheduling get game design devoted to it in a TTRPG text? Did putting together the board and setting out the pieces make the experience of a board game better?
Obviously some degree of these kinds of actions are needed to make play POSSIBLE, but they don't get attention from game designers very much. There are definitely counter examples; Inscryption, for example, retroactively includes the installation as part of play when you get to a certain part of the game telling its own story (vaguely stated to soften things for the reveal-sensitive who haven't played yet). Given the involvement of forum posts and a homebrew development community, installing myhouse.wad is arguably part of the intentional gameplay. These rare examples serve to illustrate how uncommon it is to strike out for new territory in this blank design space.
How else might we not simply settle for "functional enough" in meta-pregame necessities and structural elements of our games? What are good examples to study of different ideas about this outer structure that have been made in different kinds of games?