I'm not sure the author realizes just how formulaic books, TV shows and movies are.

For movies, a hugely influential book in Hollywood is Save the Cat [1]. Once you understand this structure, you'll see it everywhere and it's quite prescriptive. Certain milestones are hit at a very specific percentage way through the movie.

Books and TV shows tend to follow the Three Act Structure [2]. Those turning point events will match up pretty closely to 25%, 50% and 75% through a book.

So the author doesn't really define gameplay loops and, reading through it, I'm not sure they know exactly what they mean. I say this because the first paragraph mentions things like "2 out of 5 chapters complete" and other such familiar elements. That's not really a gameplay loop. That's a convention. And there are lots of them like in-game achievements, cosmetics, load outs, etc.

Think of any battle royale game and you'll find the same elements across the genre. A drop in, supply drops, abilities and/or weapons and so on. Fortnite, PUBG, Warzone, etc can have 95% of the same features mapped across each other.

Roguelikes have many of the same conventions: gear acquisition, power progression, dungeon delving, etc.

New genres don't come around that often and a lot of what we're talking about here is really genres.

A gameplay loop is really the cycle of action, reward and progression. The issue isn't how repetitive this is, it's how repetitive it feels. Take a game like GTA or RDR. It absolutely has gameplay loops with missions/quests. Or Breath of the Wild has shrines. But these games are beloved in spite of that.

I think the underlying problem is that big companies in particular want a repeatable, proven formula for all content. That's something that can be tracked and is predictable. Doing something novel or innovative is far riskier and really a lot harder.

I'm reminded of a scene from The Office where Gabe said "Maybe the filmmaker realized that even narrative is comforting" in response to this disturbing genre of horror movies he liked.

At the end of the day, games are fundamentally different to books, movies and TV shows because the time played is highly variable. You do have more linear story telling games (eg the Walking Dead, etc) but repetition isn't really the problem (IMHO). I think the author is really reacting to nothing in their chosen genre feeling fresh. It feels samey. I don't think gameplay loops are the reason for that.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_the_Cat!:_The_Last_Book_o...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure

The Case Against Gameplay Loops