Jumping back upthread a bit, because I think there’s some substance worth chewing on here:
Of course not. But I’ve witnessed so many CSG readers (reading aloud in our living room, and in Let’s Plays, and in written descriptions of their experience) enjoyably paralyzed by/agonizing over high-stakes choices that I’ll go to bat for that as a (if not the) core experience of a successful CSG. (As it certainly was for Telltale’s Walking Dead, for comparable example.)
So the question is, for what percentage of the player base would that experience be eroded by the ability to save-scum it – not having to agonize at all, because they can just jump back if they don’t like the consequence they get?
I’m not even sure of the answer for myself, let alone the world at large. Sure, I always read my paperback CYOAs with fingers marking past choices I might want to jump back to… and I never found them as compelling as a good CSG.
I think @PrinceJackal is onto something when he speculates that forumgoers are more likely than the average CSG reader to dive deep into a game – certainly more likely to play it through more than once. I wonder if that makes us more likely to play with the aim of a perfectly customized game, and thus more inclined to want the UI that lets us jump back choice-by-choice because for (many of) us, the core experience is more about customization than it is for a one-and-done reader.
Or maybe not – maybe the one-and-dones would be even hungrier for the chance to salvage their one playthrough by saving before every major choice.
Like you say, it’s all speculation without actual data, and I think for this you’d need more than a survey – you’d need something that gets at revealed preference, a chance for people to play games of comparable quality with and without a save scheme, and see how they talked about the choices afterward.
I think there’s an interesting possibility for experimentation here, if design philosophy rather than coding investment really is the primary factor preventing adoption of a save-at-will system. Seems to me that allowing a save-game option for HGs makes sense, since HGs don’t have to take “consequential choice” as their design linchpin; they don’t have to (even in theory) offer equally satisfying stories whether you make or fail your stat checks, end up with an RO or not, etc. If it were possible for HG authors to write with a save system, then we’d have a petri dish set up for comparison between games where it’s easy and hard to reverse your choices, and see how they tend to do over time.