It would be great if the -g/--ignore flag would have an effect on the init command as well, so that alsactl -g init does not print and exit with an error, if no sound cards have been found.
Since it can be checked for attached sound cards on Linux easily via /proc or sysfs, this is of minor importance, and probably there is a reason why it is as it is. In this case, probably the --help output could be extended by this info, which is currently only present in the man page. Reading the --help only, one (or at least me) would not guess that this flag is ignored by the init command.