Yea, sometime after graduation and becoming gainfully employed and learning the real value of time and money, games with punitive (especially overtly punitive) mechanics no longer interested me. It detracted from my enjoyment, my feeling of "gaming for the sake of gaming and having fun".

It's why I no longer even bother with games that have tangible death penalties. It's a game, you're going to die, and often via circumstances beyond your control. EVE eventually turned me off because it was so punitive that you could readily assign real world value to your losses. I can see why some (hell, something like 300k apparently) people enjoy that. It's just not for me.