Core to this is, I believe, a sense of loss- a player who cannot lose anything (time, progress, efficiency, etc) is a player that has no challenge in facing threats. If there's no downside to taking a risk by facing the truth, but only an upside, why wouldn't every player take that choice? There must at least be the perception of a risk- such as a bad ending that can be restarted from the last point.

The first thing I think of when this comes to mind is the idea of the Lord of the Rings text adventure for MS-DOS that I played briefly as a kid, or most text adventures generally- they typically work off of a spacial, landmark-focused movement system, which really is more like the "paths" of a choose-your-own-adventure or digital narrative. It's the most "physical" version of this idea.

Is this maybe due to the context of the time- that computers are seen as solely productivity tools, or at best, entertainment boxes for mindless games?