The analogy makes a lot of sense to me. Once you have an “easy button”, it’s hard to not use it. It’s sort of like when you’re at work and see the “quick workaround” effectively become the standard process.
I remember burning out on games because the cheats made them really fun in the short term, but afterward playing normally felt like agony.
For me it’s the opposite. I remember getting stuck in a game for days or weeks in the 90s. I would get to a point where I would just try to click everything on the screen, use every item with everything else, try all possible item combinations, etc.
These days, if I’m stuck for more than an hour or two I’ll just Google it. I’d rather move on faster and get to play more games in the limited time I have for such things.
Oh I had that same experience too. Especially with Mist. I never got far in it. I’m convinced the game was broken.