These very points were raised by some TG members at the time of Mitchell's submissions, especially in 2010 when some members argued that direct feed captures were actually not permitted under updated rules, but the fall back was that the score was verified live by Todd. Basically a ref trumped all need to document the game with video including cabinet set up, whereas video submissions (as you point out) had to document the complete game plus cabinet verification, generally in one continuous recording. It was definitely unsatisfying for the gaming community in 2010 to have pretty big records claimed and extolled without sharing widely the complete performance and associated verification itself. To your broader point about gamer responsibility for the overall performance, I don't think you'll get any argument there. I found statements like "I just show up to play the game, the other stuff is someone else's responsibility" strange.
