This is how it felt to play King Halo's career for the first time.

The inability to clear a level does not change the content of the full game, it's in the back end already coded, waiting for you to be able to submit your skill set to progress. Books assume you're "getting" them, or have learned how to "get" them to continue, reading is an active, cognitive action.

So I can change the ending of a book by ripping pages off or throwing it into the fire?
It will only get worse for your hypothesis if we go meta here.

Every game is coded in a somewhat deterministic way in the back end in the same way a book, albeit unread, has a deterministic pathway as well.

Your example of not being able to pass a level of Mario is interchangeable with not being read enough to pick up a book for seasoned readers.

It surprises me that you haven't encountered the many people that are regularly stopped on their tracks when attempting to read a book and leave them unfinished. The reasons being many but it happens less often to seasoned readers. The term "filtered" by media is very much a thing.

Books and other forms of conventional art famously have a skillset floor for the audience to have in order to experience them. Is that different from your hypothesis of player functionality?
I am also morbidly curious about your take on VNs and narrative-driven games with minimal gameplay now.

Muchas gracias Yuru, saludos! 🫂