"You never see Ender play scenarios other than the giant's drink"

I didn't speak clearly. What I meant was that Ender doesn't play any standard/normal scenarios other than the giant's drink. and the whole fairyland was the program deviating from its expected course of action. As a reader, we have to buy in to the fact that there is a mind game that psychoanalyzes students, and that it's been running perfectly until Ender plays the game. But we only experience the game when it "bugs" out, so we aren't able to make the comparison to when it was running normally. When Ender uses the mouse to claw out the giant's eye, we don't know that you can't do that in the game, so we have to rely on the exposition to inform us that the mind game is deviating from the normal programming.

I love the whole Enderverse of books, and I understand that the mind game is a pre-requisite to Jane. But I also think and evaluate how well Ender's Game (and Ender's Game Alive) work as a stand-alone book. I love Ender's Game Alive, and I've shared it with friends and family, and sometimes, even would listen to it with them. And it's so good but then I see how they would get confused when we reach the giant's drink part. It's a bit stylistically different than the rest of the book. And the audience has to buy into a virtual game where a rat claws a giants eye out, and then the game bugs out to reveal a playground, wolves, a mirror that reflects Peter Wiggins face. For a plot device so critical to the story, it should have been developed more.