I argued the same way about 10 years ago! I feel you! Nowadays I have developed different goals. Because my job and daily life offer enough opportunity to grind my skills. Therefore games that don't require me to get better for enjoying them became more interesting to me.
It's a similar argument to: I have very little time so I can't afford to read a good book and can only afford the instant gratification of twitter (or insert your favourite poison here). Also, I'm a grumpy old software engineer, I'm not you 10 years ago, I'm you in 10 years' time.
Is it really a similar argument? To some degree I really go the path you are describing. When playing a game I really choose the fast gratification on purpose. Because that's what I decided gaming is for my life. But that's not really the point I'm trying to make.
I can get better at playing the game, or I can get better at speaking English/Chinese in the same time slot. A day only has 24 hours. So I decide to prefer one over the other. It's simply that improving my coding or language skills is more important to me.
On one hand you imply that playing games is a waste of time compared to learning Chinese on the other hand you say you prefer your games shallow.
You can spend the same amount of time playing a good game or a bad game. The difference is with a good one you have to stick with the same one for longer, with the shallow ones it's a different one every week which I guess is what the publisher would've liked too.
Anyway, you like what you like - I feel somewhat stupid for arguing about preferences - wasn't my intention at the outset. I was just saying this is something that got lost along the way in the same way as in the genres the article talks about.
As long as you interpret things into my comments that I didn't say we won't get any further in that discussion.
Maybe it's because the discussion not being about different preference but about the existence of different preferences. "A good game" is a game with higher quality than others. A game can be "shallow" and good (at least according to what I assume would be your definition of shallow)! I'd argue there is even depth without the requirement for anything but basic skills. There are even people (I'm not one of them) who consider games like Counterstrike, Starcraft or LOL shallow because they _only_ focus on skill and nothing else to offer.
Btw there isn't even a discussion if you just say "I like hard games" instead of "games are bad if they don't require skill". Quality is not preference. And we are basically done.
