Woah there - I can jump on their heads to kill them?

Ben Schneider has recently had an article published on Gamasutra, on scripting player defeat into gameplay.

It's an interesting read, but I don't agree with his idea that "we need to invent a language of game drama ... we need to teach gamers to speak it fluently", since that sounds to me like anyone who doesn't play games often won't have a clue what's going on.

Surely as gaming strives to expand to new markets we should be moving away from these sorts of arbitrary conventions?

I once watched someone play their first FPS - Half-Life. They didn't realise that creates were smashable and would provide consumables, and they didn't realise they could use the health & armour stations to recharge (it seems the innate desire to run around and click 'use' on every piece of scenery is a very gamer thing to do). Consequently they died often, because the game assumed they would understand the conventions that would allow them to regain lost health.