Many of those examples don't work very well.

I mean, how much extra money does it cost to add the ability to skip ahead in a book? How much extra development time does it take to add play-back options for a movie? How much coding, balancing, play-testing, and re-balancing? How many extra engineers have to be hired or how much overtime is needed to hit the release date?

Some of those things, sure, they should be provided, but others just aren't going to have priority.

Of course not! Options are a great thing to have!

Options that every game should have is being able to skip and pause cut scenes, play offline and save anywhere. Skip combat and boss battles is a good idea too, or temporarily adjusting difficulty.

I enjoyed GTA 5 quite a lot but hated the shootouts. It was revolutionary that it let me skip the shoot out parts of missions, bonus points. Dark souls would have been better with a no pvp option. An easy mode doesn't have to ruin the game. A nice option would be a checkpoint/respawn point you can put down yourself. That encourages you to try out things and removes the frustration, simply give the option of back to last respawn point or last bonfire when you die. Put a trophy on not using it, done.

For more advanced options it would be nice if you could set parameters for games that affect the length. Give the option for a more compact game vs one with all the extra content. I skip most rpgs nowadays as they're simply too big of a time hog. Yet if there was an option to speed up xp, greatly reduce random encounters, remove crafting, useless loot and all the quests that don't further the story, I would take it. If you love the game you can always replay the full mode later. I come to play a role playing game, not a min maxing inventory management sim that they often turn into.

Sometimes a game is so amazing you want to go at it the hardest way with no compromises (like RE7 on madhouse in PSVR) But should that the only way to play the game, definitely not.

I get terrified when I need to pause during a cutscene and don't know if pressing the pause button will actually pause the cutscene or just skip it.

Offset it to how many more sales you can make and keep for providing a way to play the game that more people can enjoy. I skipped FF15, costs too much time. If there was a 15 hour way to experience the game then I would bite. I traded in TW3 as I know I'll never have the time to replay it. With a compact mode, sans useless loot, crafting and random encounters and boosted xp on story missions, sure keep it for replay. All the busy work is hardly fun the first time, definitely not fun the second time. But true it's more work than adding a useless easy mode that simply makes the game less fun.

I want Skyrim boobie mods on the Switch.

Agree with your post OP. Never thought of games that way, more options are always better.

As long as they're options and not Electronic Arts "options" where $60 games are designed with free-to-play elements.

It depends on the game try playing a Naughty Dog game and skip chapters and cutscenes it will become one big mess. Some games need to be played in a certain order and the cutscenes can be important for character and story progression so I wouldn't advise to include options that skip those parts. Same with certain open world games if you are not very skilled it isn't necessarily a good thing to be able too go to parts where monsters far outlevel you. Nor is it the best idea too be able to start with the F1 class in race games, but sure you can include the option. I like the natural progression in games, but a Dev could include a hardcore mode and say goodluck and do whatever you want. As for resolution, framerate and others buy a pc if you want choice and be glad if consoles offer any choice at all.

You shouldn't compare games to any of those other mediums...... but here something to think of and hopefully while shed some light on the very structured nature games have.

after level one you get the double jump.

level 2 you learn how to use a special attack that only works when you double jump.

level 5 you meet you get a special item that increases your health that you can only get if you double jump.

level 7 you meet a boss you can only beat if you have enough helth, and use that special attack you can only do from a double jump.

now imagine if they game gamer "choice" and a lot of them go straight to level 7. Die, die, die, die... say the game is broken then stop playing it.

The bolded section is just my dream so I could get through so many RPGs I have wanted to play but probably never will. Yet I agree with the entire post. You describe so well exactly what I'm feeling, and pretty much the reason I actually wanted to create this thread. And the checkpoint idea is actually an incredibly elegant solution.