Oh yeah, definitely a lack of skill games way back. By the way, I don't consider KCD as such. Warhorse claimed they attracted totally non-gamers with the first game already. And those adapted far better to the unusual design decisions than the gamers: E.g. the saving system, eating, drinking, sleeping, fighting... It's all about conditioning. I mean, back in the day, we used to play games without markers, auto-maps and with actual puzzles when we were kids. And had no problem whatsoever with that. Every game was kinda like that.
But since a large part of it is simply conditioning: There's market opportunity for (almost) anything. With so many games in that space playing increasingly alike, perhaps moreso than ever. It needs to be packaged properly, naturally... Plus, if you're not fully committing to something, you risk making completely bland product that may try hard to please everyone, but doesn't really wow anybody. Eventually, you're going to alienate a few people anyhow no matter what you're doing. For all the talk about how much of a hardcore sim KCD would be, at the core it's actually quite a cinematic Hollywood type of affair full of drama and even genuine laughs -- the survival/sim elements are fairly light. Think Mafia, Vavra's first gig as a writer / director. There's quite a lot of that in there still. I was actually underwhelmed initially when I went into the first game kinda blind back then. I expected something way different. Only when I'd finished the long prologue and the game opened up, did I start to really warm up to it. 😄