I like the concept, but I think the author made the term too broad. I don't think the quality of life improvements mentioned in the beginning of the article are really the same as the mechanic "assists" at the end.

In modern games, any quality of life enhancements are just basic good design. Having shortcuts, reducing button presses, streamlining menus, etc, these are all things that any good designer should be thinking about regardless of genre. Many of those improvements are patched into games after release because they just fix minor annoyances rather than change how the game plays.

The mechanic "assists" are more interesting because those are deliberate design decisions which can significantly affect the gameplay. In those cases, I think a lot of it depends on how much feedback the game gives you in the first place. How easy is it for the player to accurately reproduce what they visualize in their head? That question is vastly different for every game, and thus the amount of "assist" needed is different.

Right, but on the other hand I would argue that the Dwarf Fortress experience mentioned in the other comment applies it's own rabbit hole oil– albeit more attractive to certain players.

I don't disagree there.

But that's why I covered my ass said "modern games."

I feel like Dwarf Fortress is deliberately retro. In a similar way, old school adventure games often had ridiculous menus where you choose from a large list of verbs ("pick up," "push," "pull," "open," "close," etc.) even though only one or two could really apply to a given object. In both cases the obfuscation is part of the challenge of the game.

I still maintain its not really "good" design from a modern perspective, but you are right that sometimes people want that old-school flavor.

Young people today. In my day we were eaten by ghosts, whether we liked it or not. But we were happy.

Dwarf Fortress is presumably the ultimate example of a game without oil.

I think Epic Mickey was game ruined for lack of oil. I really wanted to like it, but between it asking you to adjust your tv’s brightness and contrast for just that one game, and the controls being finicky as all get out, I found it unplayable.