It's clear that more and more games are using short-term mechanics. When I refer to "short-term mechanics" I am simply referring to mechanics that condense the risk/reward structures of a game into a shorter period of time. Basically, a short-term mechanic is where the punishment for failing and the reward for succeeding is low (this is not in reference to the difficulty). More and more do we see these in games. More and more do we hear people praising games when they do this, and criticising them when they don't.
There are many different ways that games use short-term mechanics.
First of all, there are save-features. Everyone seems to want to be able to save their game at any time. Place save points too far apart and there'll be a ton of complaints. Understandable if people are unable to play the game for large periods of time, or if such people are forced to leave their game too far from a save point, but I hardly think allowing people to save anywhere is going to make for a really enjoyable experience... Those two problems can be easily solved with a "quicksave" feature. Quicksaving is where the game allows the current state to be saved (as with normal saving) to a different file, but that file instantly deletes once it is reloaded. This is used to avoid "save scumming" that could be used with a "save anywhere" feature. "Save scumming" is where the player keeps reloading a save file in order to accomplish a specific goal (often not required for progression with the game) and keeps reloading until they succeed.
The problem with being able to save anywhere is that it greatly reduces risks that the player has to take, and simply replaces them with trial and error. Imagine this, you're in the middle of a dungeon haven't saved for 20 minutes, you need to get out in order to save. There are two treasure chests in front of you, one of them contains gold and the other contains a monster that could easily kill you, but you don't know which one is in which. Do you choose a chest at random or do you ignore them? In cases like this, you have to make a conscious effort to choose to pick one randomly or to ignore them. You would have to take into consideration many things. Is the gold worth taking the risk? what would you lose if you failed? is there a small chance that you'd be able to defeat the monster if you got it wrong? would it take 20 minutes to back here or would it be faster next time because you know the dungeon a bit better?
Now imagine that same scenario, but this time you're able to save anywhere. Not as much of a big issue is it? You'd choose one, if it was the wrong one you reload and pick the other. This would make the decision simply a small cost to your time more than anything else. Generally, such a decision that is placed directly after a save-point is rather pointless, it falls into the "decision that can easily be undone" category (which has an effect on linearity of the game, but I won't go into that just yet).
Save-anywhere games aren't necessarily a bad thing. Tomb Raider II for example uses a save-anywhere feature, but it takes about 10-20 seconds to save. This is good as it discourages constant saving, if the saving took the simple press of a button, without a doubt people would be pressing it every few seconds (I don't consider pressing "save" every few seconds fun). On the otherside you have Tomb Raider III that allows the player to save anywhere but the number of saves is restricted, if you ask me, that goes a bit too far in the other extreme and the lack of saving makes it far too hard (I'd probably give it more of a chance if save crystals were more common).
Going back to the example of being in a dungeon and having to choose to pick a chest or ignore them. It is an example how saving abilities can alter the time in which the risk/reward is an issue.
Allowing players to save more frequently is becoming more and more popular within games. Old platform games didn't allow saving at all, and dying too many times caused the player to have to restart from scratch. This is clearly because the games would otherwise be too easy (in general) and would be very short. In those days (as a child) games were more about retrying a game over and over again until it eventually got completed rather than continuing a savefile and progressing a bit more each day. Of course, the ability to save (even if rarely) is a feature that is favourable in many current games due to the overall length of the game.
autosave after each gamble, the player could just save scum until they get it right, which in reality just costs time.
If save scumming usually creates "un-fun" gameplay, so why would people do it? Well the simple answer is "because it works"
So why do people like to save anywhere? Well (ignoring those two reasons I've already given an answer to), the general answer is that it is not fun to replay a part of the game if you lose. I don't know why that is exactly, I'd understand if the game arbitrarily made you replay one segment over and over again without any changes, but that's not the case. If you lose, it's your own fault. You're supposed to be punished if you lose. If you're not punished for losing (or if that punishment is small) then that in-turn lowers to quality of the reward for winning. In the end people like to be given great rewards. The "greatness" of a reward for success depends on the difficulty of the task and the punishment for losing, it's about striking the balance. Besides, if the punishment for failure is low, then the difficulty must come from the difficulty of the individual tasks (or else the game would be too easy) (short-term mechanics). If the difficulty of the individual tasks is difficult then there are still going to be segments of gameplay that are to be replayed. These segments would be shorter but more frequent (due to the difficulty of said tasks)
It is true that a reward's size is based off the size of the punishment for failing. For example, Prince Of Persia (the 2008 version) is a very easy game. For one, if you fall down you're only punishment is that you have to re-attempt the obstacle that you failed at. The obstacles are not that hard to begin with. But even though some are more challenging than others, the feeling of accomplishment for succeeding them is not that great because there is that "I would've done it eventually anyway" feeling.
"short-term mechanics" also appear in other ways, a very common example in modern games is "regenerating health". Where the player's health recovers over-time. Even Final Fantasy does this. In the early FF games, you needed to go to a town to save, or use a tent, if one of your characters died, you had to go all the way back to the church. Later games in the series made it a lot easier to recover KO'd party members. FF10 and 12 fully cured all party members at every save-point, FF13 did it after every battle (of course due to FF13's battle system, that worked). Lots of more modern games allow players to regenerate their health over short periods of time, Gears Of War, inFamous, Uncharted all do this. There is less concern about preservation of health... in the early Tomb Raider games you could accumulate medi-packs and ammo over a series of levels, and you would be rewarded for skilled gameplay earlier on. With regenerating health, you're not rewarded for you're skilled "health preservation skills" from earlier in the game. In Uncharted this also is effected by the limitations on ammo, reaching the max ammo for the guns is so easy that preserving it only has a short-term effect.
"short-term mechanics" can be found all over, games don't use "lives" as much as they used to, or at least to not as much of an effect.
Remember, I am not saying that these mechanics are bad, but I think it is wrong to say that all games "should" use them... and it's this mentality that makes me think that modern gamers (in general) have a shorter attention span
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