this analysis overlooks or marginalises why modern games trend towards no-death or cinematic gameplay, understandably since it's not really as simple as trial and error vs deathless. there is a clear dichotomy between real and casual gamers people don't like to acknowledge when they talk about this, as if there was a single market of players we should be developing for.

obviously not true, and in reality there are many subtle levels of challenge people are willing to put up with, no matter what side of the spectrum you perceive yourself to be on, and we could argue that it has grown to the level it's at today exactly because publishers started catering to these more casual gamers.

casual gamers don't want to be challenged, they want to be visually or emotionally stimulated. real or strategic gamers don't want constant/instant gratification, they want to be mentally stimulated. what's interesting is most people probably fall somewhere in the middle towards either end, even though we usually try to criticise games as the latter, why is this...

so "trial and error" is generally a negative connotation to gameplay either way - to filthy casuals it means impeding progress, to gamers it means impeding progress without adequate environmental cues. that is the difference between trial and strategy - some, any way of anticipating the outcome before taking action.

hence the idea that "trial and error is bad, but we still need strategy" makes sense, as games get more and more complex what [good] devs are actually trying to do here is just cushion the blow of failure, to make it accessible to more people, and possibly trick them into thinking about what they're doing.

deathless games are not necessarily casual, and vice-versa, what you should be thinking about is how it stimulates you, instead of trying to conform with some ideal