I wouldn’t call my view author-centric; I’d call it game-centric.
It’s not that the game must be experienced in a rigid way because of the sanctity of an artistic vision. It’s that a game is a challenge, and the meaning in a game comes from the process of facing and overcoming that challenge. The player is offered entrance to the arena, not certain victory. I reject the notion that, if a game’s not worth playing, the solution is to cheat at it. The solution is to go play a better game.
Rules of Play defines a game as “a system in which players engage in artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.”
In puzzle-oriented IF games, the kind to which a conversation about cheating applies, the conflict is solving puzzles set by the author. The rules of a game typically prohibit outside assistance, and I’d argue that this is true of puzzle solving challenges. Unfortunately, unlike the referee of a traditional game, a computer program can’t enforce this.
If the core of a game is conflict defined by rules, and a person is bypassing the conflict by breaking the rules, how can we even say that he’s playing the game?
If we care about the art of a game, we can go on to ask: if he’s not playing the game, how can he participate in the artistic communication embodied in the process of playing it?
The art that is threatened is not the overt communication of pretty prose, but the subtle communication inherent in the dynamic process of interacting with a game world to solve its puzzles. Imagine a clichéd puzzle that involves searching a long hallway hung with family portraits for a secret door. Beyond the room descriptions and the family history in the portrait descriptions, there is the underlying vibe of inhabiting the hallway and carrying out the search: the length of the hallway; the tedium of examining, turning, pushing, pulling, looking behind each portrait; the grandfather clock that breaks the monotony; the scouring of familiar room descriptions as the player retreads the hallway looking for a clue.
Contrast that with “N. N. N. PUSH BARON’S NOSE. E” from a walkthrough. The experience is gone, because the deep interaction and attention to detail that arise from the frustrated pursuit of a goal are gone.