If I buy a book, movie, painting, song, there is no specific way that I have to consume it. I can skip straight to the end if I want, I can listen on double the speed, I can choose which order I want to read the chapters. If I don't like a part I can skip it and move on. This is not the case with video games. Most video games are extremely restrictive, and severely limit you. Video games don't trust the consumer enough and hence restrict you in consuming the content to only a one specfic way they designed.

There should be more options in our games for example, but not limited to. Framerate or resulution preference. Motion blur toggle. Customizable controls. Cheat codes that can be used at any time. Many difficulties, and even customizable difficulties for different parts of the game. Full chapter select unlocked right from the start of the game. Skippable combat sections. Skippable puzzles. Skippable gameplay segments. Optional hints in the puzzles. Optional hits in general. Skippable cutscenes. Fast forwardable cutscenes. Fast forwardable dialogue. Skippable dialogue. Optional manual save slots. Developer mode.

I believe all the above things and many more to give freedom to consume the game as a person wants to should be available in all games, at least in the single player portion of it.

The thing I find the most perplexing is that some people are actually against giving more options, because "that was not the way it was meant to played". Yet if someone is willing to pay for it, how does it hurt your enjoyment, knowing that someone might play a game by just no-clipping through everything, skipping to the final boss, and beating it with cheats? I don't understand why some people are so set on keeping these limitations, especially other than the old "it's the way it's meant to played", "don't like it, play something else.".

So where do you stand? Are more options bad and ruin the developers intent? Or do you believe games should give consumers more options to how to consume their games? Or do you have some completely different view?

No, as long as the options I don't care about don't negatively affect the gameplay for me by taking time from development, then I don't care.

More choice is always good.

Depends on what the options are. More options are not always a good thing. Sometimes a certain option can be seductive, but you may end up enjoying the game less because of it.
I think developpers should try to find a balance in the number of options they give us - enough, but not too many.

More options are always better. period

This is precisely the view I hold.

I really don't get why do people argue against this. If you really want the intended expereience don't use the extra options. Should we disallow being able to skip to the end of a movie on Netflix, just because someone might end up doing that and ruin the movie for themselves?

Are gamers really that incompetent that they have to be restricted by developers all the way through the experience? Are gamers so incompetent we can't entrust them to have their own fun the way they want to on the offchance they might get sub optimal experience?

That's not the only issue people take, there's also a lot of arrogance. Take Dark Souls for example, people would argue against an easy mode because it's meant to be hard, they don't want it to be accessible, they don't want people that are bad at games to be able to play it. In their eyes it's meant to be hard and more casual players shouldn't go anywhere near it even if adding the difficulty doesn't affect there experience in any way.

(1) Sorry, what? The options you named on books or movies are terrible. Games have right out the box way more options. I can decide not to get into the next fight/puzzle whatever but stay a little. I can talk to NPC or not. I can lose. Each game, even a visual novella or interactive movie have much more freedom than a movie or a book.

(2) Hmm, difficult. Customizable controls are good mostly. Framerate vs. resolution is on console much less a thing, because fixed hardware. Many difficulties work for most games - and most games already have them. For adventures usually difficulty settings make no sense, but otherwise the games often already have these options.

I'm more averse against things like full chapter select. Entertainement works on different levels. And it is entertaining to unlock things based on your success. So having everything unlocked from the beginning takes away fun. To illustrate my point: how about a game which has all achievements unlocked from the start? Or gives you the option of unlocking them by just clicking them?

Unskippable cutscenes on the other hand are a sin. People play a game a second or third time, so it makes sense to skip it. More save slots are usually a good thing, but there are games like rogue likes that win on the entertainement route by restricting saves. As I said, games are for entertainment, so everything that reduces that is bad in my book.

(3) I personally give shit how others play through, but as I wrote in the last paragraph, some options are actually hurting the entertainment factor. So I want the most entertainment out of the games. Options that don't hurt that - customizable controls, skippable cutscenes and so on - are a good thing.

(4) I see the point of developers to have their vision. But actually that is crap. They might have a fixed story in mind. But in a game a player can destroy that instantly. In games I often smile, then the NPC says: 'so hurry to defend us against the danger...' or something. I make a point of it, to go then sideways and do shit that isn't directed in the stories path. And usually I get away with it (I was surprised by Deus Ex: Human Revolution in this regard and noted it as a good thing, not only was the point of making haste pressed by the NPCs, it actually did change the game world). So developers have no way to ensure their vision anyways. So why not relax and have players who follow the path enjoy the artistical vision - and others not. Whatever.

P.S. Your poll is missing the 'depends'-option. Which I would choose.

Hehe, Souls games are a good example, because how would an easy mode look like? Remove enemies or traps? Hey maybe we could build an empty level, that players can run through, just for the fun having the options? There are so few enemies in the souls games, everyone counts. So maybe having monsters less life points or attack power? But overcoming the challenge is in the souls games the entertainment, if they have less points they are dead before you figure out how to beat them (because all foes are beatable) or with less attack you could run around. As an example to this point - after I figured out the Tomb Raider gameplay, I was going around and looting fallen enemies, while one or two still were shooting at me. So I didn't triggered the next wave, but the damage they did was laughable and I could always get into a cover, to heal. Tomb raider was a very boring experience. So, you say: but nobody must take the easy mode! And I say: I would, as everyone else. Because the challenge is a t first so big, everyone would be tempted to go easy mode. But the big challenge offering you at the beginning is the whole point of getting excitement out of the fact that you overcame it in the end, found a way to beat the challenge. So an easy mode would take away the excitement out of this game. So no, I'm against it. There are enough games that take their entertainement out of other sources, so choose them if you don't feel excitement about overcoming a challenge.

(1) Wasn't talking about interactivity. Games are an interactive medium, that's not the point. The point was that upon buying the game, most things are restricted at the start (with no easy way around it) unlike any other medium I can think of.

(2) The extra options could be hidden in the menu, that would have to be checked to unlock things you want. For your first playthroughs, it would be recommended to avoid the extra options (could even have a warning, which imo is stull ridicilous like "careful hot" on coffee cups), unless you know exactly what you want. Simple, if you don't want it, ignore it and your game is completely normal.

Edit: same thing about Souls games. "Hide" the easy mode away in settings, along with other cheats like invincibility.

I'll also flip the skippable cutscnes situation for you, just to illustrate a point. Instead of replaying purely for gameplay, say I'm replaying a game that has a lot of dialogue choices and multiple outcomes, and endings. On my n-th playthrough I maybe don't care about solving the same puzzle for the 5th time, or getting through some arbitrary gameplay section, just to see how some scenes (or ending) might have been different based on my dialogue choices.

(3) The point I'm making is that no option will hurt if it is optional! and easily avoidable by those who don't want that.

(4) I agree here, and I believe that should be expanded, to not just disobeying what the game tells you to do, but also allowing to customize your experience yourself.

Less is almost always more.