(re: Game Design Methodologies)
I totally agree with that theory. People won’t pay to get bored. One game that could be fun but got me disconnected after a while was Myst. Everywhere you turned there was a puzzle to solve. It’s challenging at the beginning but get too much after a while. Of course this is my opinion. An exemple of a good balance of puzzle and fun is probably Diablo 1 and 2. This game got me hooked up because of the music, the atmosphere, the puzzles, the general theme of the game. Easy as it can seems, I believe you got something that some games companies somehow lost in their way to the “publish-for-money” modern game business.