I prefer to learn by playing, so I avoid articles and videos with 'guides' before I play a game. But, once I am playing, when I do have questions for which I don't get a clear answer through gameplay, I will google and then read to get the clarification.

Just an example, from this game (which I started playing around 5 to 6 days ago), after my first 'house' got filled up with smoke, I googled to get a better understanding of what was needed to prevent that from happening...because the game offers absolutely no guidance (or even warning) about that.
As it was I was going to have to rebuild once, I didn't want to have to rebuild again and again until it worked. I like to "learn" by playing, but there's a limit to how much time I'll waste trying to do it when a game offers absolutely 0 guidance.

And yes, I think developers these days do balance their game around the fact that most players use outside-of-game resources to learn everything. Which is fine by me, because I like challenging games, so that just means there is some challenge to be had, at least until I know what I'm doing.

One of my favorite genres is RPG games, and sadly the modern approach to playing these in a multiplayer environment is just gross to me. Every 'raid group" expects all of their members to have watched YT videos, and learned everything about fights before doing the fights. It takes all the joy out of those games, imo. I no longer play MMO's because of it.
Modern gamers, in general, just really don't seem to appreciate 'playing' games. They just want to "finish" them.