Disagree strongly with the early argument in the article. If a gameplay element in your game is not fun, it should not be in the game. Games are about fun. If that gameplay element gate-keeps a fun element, then players will do it, but they won't like it, and will quit your game earlier than if your game was just the fun element. Cut the fat, keep the fun. Mobile 'pay-to-skip-the-boring' is the pinnacle of this, and is not a good practice. That said, there are reasons to have these sorts of tasks.<p>1. Your core gameplay is complex, for example in Factorio it starts with chopping trees, but it does so as a tutorial so that you manually learn what your later automations are doing. If you can create timing mini-games when you chop the tree at a certain rhythm to do extra damage, and those timings later work against bosses, players will understand what is really going on here. It's an un-punishing tutorial.<p>2. You want a good mix between extremely intense and more calming gameplay. If your core gameplay is intense then having these sorts of breaks in between the intensity will improve the experience. Without the intensity, your play-testers might not understand the point. Drinking to regain mana in WoW is not fun in itself, but if it gives an opportunity to regain composure and communicate during the run to meet new people, it actually is.<p>3. These elements tend to be in multiplayer titles, and you can get results that are better than the sum of their parts because of the community bonding aspect. If one player chopping 10 trees and another collects 10 rocks, and then they trade so that each have 5 of each - which because of specialization allows them to have more than they could get alone, then this boring gameplay just facilitated a trade. In fact, I suspect the author would agree with me here, as his earlier blog article on RotMG has this line: 'The rule of thumb for everything is “Does this mechanic make the game better to play together?”'. The entire point of economies in games is to get people to coordinate because coordination is fun.<p>Checking the Steam reviews for the game mentioned, all of the negative reviews mention gate-keeping and boring repetitive gameplay. It still has a 'Very Positive' rating, but there are a lot of low-hanging fruit that could improve the game. 'A Short Hike' is the perfect example that you should attempt to emulate, and is among the top mentioned games when 'under-rated games' are brought up.
Most games are actually not fun because of individual actions. Most games are fun because it allows the player to overcome and master challenges. Feeling personal growth is highly rewarding.