Quick angry post inspired by an argument Daryl Talks Games gave.
As a player, I'm extremely tired of this overbearing mother approach to game design. Where devs are not only providing an interesting game for you to engage with but also have to try & micro-manage everything down to your mental state while playing because god forbid you put down the controller for a minute instead of compulsively and obsessively playing until you start drooling all over yourself. They have to make the game, and the break rooms you escape from the game to.
It's some experience machine shit where the goal's to keep you hooked up and the pleasure chemicals flooding in. Of course in reality if you can practice basic self control by, say, recognizing when you're getting frustrated and taking a short break, these systems only act as extra punishment. What's more, managing your own mentality is an incredibly important skill outside of games, so it's one way in which games can genuinely enrich your life outside of themselves, yet it's abandoned in favor of treating players like dumb children.
This applies to everything from "dynamic pacing" with quiet time to boss runbacks to even lengthy restart times (even if they're a few seconds). Everything devs use because they're utterly terrified of players putting down the controller for 5 minutes and never coming back. I'd say this speaks to the lack of confidence in the game they're making, but realistically games have horrid retention rates no matter what they do - it's just how players are. Why punish the more responsible players to appease people who will still drop the game quickly anyway?
That's not even getting into the fact that experientially, none of this shit works for me - instant restarts don't raise my frustration levels as much as wait times. And even though my performance does decrease during a long session, breaks are perfect for managing this without making games insufferable, whereas forced breaks immediately make me want to throw the game into the trash. This doesn't apply to others I talk to either, that's why people use practice modes that allow immediate restarts and why so many people I know love Angel Slayer over Bayo's bloated shitty campaign with forced "quiet time".
