This video is both right and wrong.
I agree with it, but...
The reality is that
the majority of people are clueless. This applies to all walks of life. ~90% of people are incompetent. They are incompetent at their jobs. They are incompetent at video games. Overall, they are incompetent at life.
If you disagree with what I just said then you're probably one of them. What's worse is you're too incompetent to realise it.
What happened was the video game industry grew extremely fast. The difference is 15 years ago you had games which where either well enough designed to incorporate subtle teaching, or you had games which were too constrained to have any teaching.
A great example of this is in LoZ: Ocarina Of Time... think back to the beginning of that game. Deku Forest... Remember? You had to get a sword and a shield before you could progress out of the safe area and actually encounter enemies. This forced you to complete 2 objectives. A simple navigation challenge to get the sword which also taught you about chests and finding quest items, and then it taught you how to find Rupees in order to buy a shield, simultaneously teaching you how the in game shops worked. When you analyse it like that, it's very obviously a way of teaching new players fundemental gameplay mechanics at a time where they're forced to focus on them and understand them in order to continue.
An example of a game with virtually no teaching in it would be Wolfenstein 3D. People who suck hard at video games usually get obliterated by the first SS guard that has an SMG. Tough shit.
Why has it all changed to hand-holding? Because the majority of people are incompetent. They need to be told to use walls as cover. They need to be told that they should keep moving to avoid being shot. Mass appeal means making a game that can be digested by more casual players. Players that play for 10 minutes then decide to go outside for a jog. Those pansies.
They were just as incompetent back then as they are now. The difference is those people who were incompetent back in the day quit playing and they ain't bragging about it.
