Brasas: Interesting post.
I disagree with your example. Or rather, what is fair is so subjective that it strikes me as odd.
-- Is Dwarf fortress fair? In a way the whole rogue-lie permadeath thing is "unfair". Make one single mistake and back to the beggining you go.
-- Are casual F2P games fair? That's a whole other slew of games which often go back to arcade modes of "one more coin" in order to continue playing.
I think when you have so many "unfair" games - both rogue and F2P have exploded recently. And those multidudes are in a way quite traditionally representative of what videogames started like, ergo they represent a return to the roots and renaissance of mechanics driven play of sorts. Then seeing "unfairness" as contra normal game design, as somehow exceptional and subversive, seems to me quite an odd perspective.
That said, there are indeed unwritten rules defining what videogames are and implicitly how they should be. IMO the largest subversions of those unwritten rules are obvious. So called walking simulators and interactive fiction overall. I mean, they are "videogames" without even being "games". What more can you want in terms of exceptional game design subversion? :) Because unlike the genres I mentioned higher up, these are niche ones indeed, even if the narrative driven experience does appear as a supporting element to the experience in most modern videogames.
Dwarf Fortress tries to be fair in at least one way. The dev deliberately avoided any of the Skinner box mechanisms common even in single-player games because he feels that taking advantage of psychological tricks to get people interested is cheating.
Back to OP's topic, Dwarf Fortress breaks all kinds of game design rules for UI and gameplay. Sometimes it's a case study for why those rules really shouldn't be broken, but sometimes it points towards interesting things that I hope future games will pick up on.
