Quote Originally Posted by Isala View Post
I've seen that study before, but there is a lot that it doesn't take into account. It doesn't go into the fact that games themselves have stopped asking gamers to think, to chase the "wider audience", nor does it go into the fact that anyone with a phone and Candy Crush can also consider themselves a gamer.
Speaking as a former game dev that had access to internal play statistics & player habits on the games I worked on, games have stopped asking players to think because players wanted to stop thinking. It wasn't just an immediate halt, even at our company we noticed every game we developed with more simplistic systems and cheap dopamine skinner-box techniques were becoming more popular and profitable instead of any project with complex systems and genuine in-game feedback reward systems, so our company's game development shifted over years accordingly to more simplified experiences and streamlined game systems.

Game development will go where the money is, and its not even the 'Anyone with a phone' people you want to highlight that's causing the major shift either. Every AAA game studio has come to the realization after countless data analyzation that an ever-growing majority of gamers are simply looking for relaxing experiences with quick, cheap adrenaline hits rather than intricate, complex game experiences that reward logical thinking. The study even rightfully points this out that even the film industry is noticing the same trend of a decreasing attention span and desire to cognitively think by reducing the average time any single shot remains on screen way down.