When I have a chance to play a game, I'd like to play a game. Not have 2-4 hours of tutorials, 30 minutes of a cool story and then 5-30 hours of pointless side quests.
I think there is a problem with over-tutorializing in AAA games. I don't think they are going away, or the hobby will collapse. I just think of the opening experience of Elden Ring versus Jedi Survivor. One puts you in the action and has a 30 minute optional tutorial dungeon, the other has tutorials pop up four hours in the game.
I don't play for long stretches, maybe two hours at a time. It's not satisfying for me to play a game three or four times and still be in tutorials. For me AAA games are the absolute worst at this.
If I'm having fun escaping the stressors of living life as an adult with two young kids, it serves a purpose, and therefore it by definition isn't a waste of my time. Just because someone thinks something is a waste of time, doesn't mean it objectively is a waste of time.
Flip that around. Just because you like to waste time and even feel like you need to waste time, doesn't objectively mean you're not wasting time.
Even if people objectively need to waste time, it doesn't matter how they waste it. The average time-waster such as gaming barely serves any purpose in itself. Someone becoming disillusioned with games isn't a problem, it's an opportunity for them to do something better.
When I was responding to you yesterday, I was trying to come up with an example of something we do that would be objectively a waste of time, but it was hard to think of something that almost everyone would agree 1) consumed your time, 2) you would do voluntarily, and 3) provided absolutely no benefit to you or anyone else.
Thankfully you replied and I have a perfect example: this conversation.