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Really? Whose tenet is that? Even if that were a tenet of some school of game design theory, I can't possibly see it being the first. If you happen to like video games that are adequate simulators, that's fine, but games never had that goal until video games came along, and there's plenty of games that put simulation on the back burner or even in the garbage in order to pursue being a great game in its own right.
But okay, I'll walk with you on this simulation idea. If you really want perfect simulators, it seems like there's a far more pressing things you could complain about rather than issue a blanket statement about levels that happen to be themed in an underwater environment. Speaking from a simulation standpoint it seems that being able to control your avatar in a wider variety of situations might even enhance the simulation in some way. It's hard to imagine why you don't think so seeing as you didn't bother to say even the first thing about why these sections are bad other than naming them and stating that you didn't like them (Oh yeah, apparently they're also "hard," how dare a game do that?).
If you can't objectively identify weaknesses in a game's design, it's hard for me to identify with your point. I'm just lost, and it points to a lack of criteria for what makes a good game in the first place. Until you can properly do that, yeah it's just you."
One objectively negative effect of having positive feedback is that it tends to create scenarios where the game is functionally over before the rules declare the game over. An efficient game should not have a portion wherein one player's decisions are meaningless because he cannot overcome the system's favor towards the winner. That situation is a waste of both players' time and is usually resolved by the inclusion of an option to surrender. If the player detects that the match is over before the game system can, he must have the right to forfeit so the game can begin again in a state where both players' choices are once again meaningful.
Now to your examples. Games wherein units are gradually lost carry the positive feedback trait even if those units are identical and do not carry unique options; being disadvantaged by numbers is just as damaging to your ability to win as losing options. It is distinctly unlike hit points in that their loss carries greater ramification than simply a reduction in score. Street Fighter games have hit points, but your ability to win is (generally) not reduced as they deplete - you just have fewer chances to commit errors or to be outplayed.
Along with Chess, Starcraft is another example of a unit based game with positive feedback. While Starcraft differs from Chess in your ability to add units, it's important to realize that Starcraft is not so much a game about removing units from your opponent as it is about managing resources. The more efficiently you manage your resources and their resultant units, the more units (and thereby resources) that you can remove from your opponent. When your net income is able to vastly outpace that of your opponent, you have won the game; barring any mistakes in play on your part, your opponent's decisions no longer matter. Both Chess and Starcraft matches are very frequently surrendered. In fact if a player detects that a critical engagement will lead to an insurmountable income disparity, a Starcraft match would even be surrendered before the income disparity begins to emerge!
Back to Counter-Strike. Assuming that you are playing a structured set of some amount of matches, very rarely will one team surrender the set if behind by several matches. The fact of the matter is the game is very much winnable by both sides at any point. It may take a switch in strategy or a different engagement location. The fact that surrendering is typically not seen in a Counter-Strike set would indicate that it is not affected by positive feedback nearly as strongly as Starcraft or Chess where almost no matches are played to completion. This would appear to be more parallel to the fact that almost no one has ever forfeited a Street Fighter match midway through. If anything, Counter-Strike is affected more strongly by positive feedback through the depletion of teammates as they are killed during any given match. Being the sole living member of the team creates a stronger incentive to surrender than being behind some amount of money. This indicates that the money and resultant items available for purchase do not affect the balance of the game so strongly as you indicate.
I don't believe that Counter-Strike, Starcraft, or Chess will cause us to be embarrassed at our game design choices in the future. I could point out many examples of game design that I would hope are embarrassing to future designers, but that's completely off-topic. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss design with you."
Really this is more an argument of what you prefer in games. I can understand that it can be frustrating to new players when they are put at a disadvantage when they inevitably lose, and it feels like the stronger team is unnecessarily rewarded. But when the opposite is true, it can become frustrating to the experienced players who put a lot of effort into honing their skills only to be occasionally beaten down by the game system for winning too much. Worse, the beat-down is delivered by another player, typically a worse player who can perceive their victory to be of their own merit rather than attributed to a system handing out gradually increasing penalties. Why is that desirable? Should a game system make it a goal that everyone wins at least once in awhile to preserve their feelings? Even if that were the case, negative feedback still fails the goal of preserving feelings since for every time you complain about how it felt to get hit with a CoD killstreak ability, someone else complains about how it felt to get hit with a Mario Kart blue shell.
In both of these cases the only demonstrable imbalance in the game is PERCEIVED imbalance. If neither of these properties interfere with the better player winning, the game isn't imbalanced at all. Its property of being positive or negative feedback loops isn't a good or bad quality inherently. Counter-Strike isn't good because it has a money system, it's good because of the amount of strategic decisions and team-player skills required to achieve victory. Monopoly isn't bad because a player who owns half the board has won long before the game ends, it's bad because of the lack of meaningful decisions required to get there.
Your article is really one of personal preference in games, and ought to be framed as such. It's a subjective look at what kind of games that certain people happen to like, but doesn't much address the concept of objective balance in games, which is the discussion of how many viable decisions can be made in the context of the game space and how those decisions interact with each other. In fact you make a very glaring contradiction in the article wherein you refer to Chess as a balanced game when Chess has the very property that you despise: positive feedback. Every time you take an opponent's piece in Chess, you are depriving him of tools with which to take victory. When you lose an interaction in Chess, you are setting yourself up for additional loss in the future. This is exactly parallel to Counter-Strike's money system and CoD's killstreak abilities. If you think they're bad in those games, why is it good in Chess?
You are correct in stating that unlocks in video games are indeed a flaw in competitive gaming when the objects that you "earn" are permanent and get you advantages over players based on time spent rather than contextual decisions made. Even Team Fortress 2 doesn't pass muster because if a situational weapon is optimal in a given circumstance, but I'm not allowed to choose that option because I haven't played enough or shelled out bucks, this unfairly limits my competitive ability because of how the developer chose to make money. Making money is the domain of marketing, not game design. I would not even have discussed Farmville and the like as I will not merit them as games at all but callous wastes of players' time with no meaningful decisions to be made.
I feel where you are coming from as I used to say the same of Counter-Strike, but after learning more about game design I came to find that it wasn't a bad game, just not one that I preferred. If you frame the article that way, it's fine."
It should be noted that many free-to-play models have a lot in common with gambling (Team Fortress 2), but have thus far avoided being legislated as such. Just like a casino is designed to keep you playing (and keep you paying) by repeatedly making you feel good about your activities, the design of the most callous free-to-play games are designed to keep you on the dependency train as long as possible. They're not designing interesting and challenging interactions of rule systems, they're purposefully designing a drug that works on a scientific level that they're very aware of; in fact, they may be leading the charge on that branch of research as they've incorporated social dependancies into the formula to add a self-validating quality to the system.
However I would encourage you personally to start thinking of ways to do something about it. The gamer space is becoming saturated by players who have just accepted that free-to-play is not only fine but desirable because they aren't charged money up front. It creates pressure, or at least inspires apathy, on the part of other players who also come to accept it. If you're concerned with the integrity of games (and you'd be right to be), study free-to-play and understand why it works. Approach friends who are addicts (they are), and inform them of the insidious cycle to which they've become subject. I personally do a weekly podcast where I try to inform as many people as possible of exactly what they've welcomed into the gaming fold.
I understand cynicism, and I know things don't seem like they often get better, but participation and education are a better option than the "I'm moving to Canada!" approach."