Well, long games save you money. Plus I like living in a game.

I really enjoy long games but I'm very picky about which ones I choose to play. I usually don't have a lot of time to play all at once, but I play after work a few days and sometimes a couple of extra hours on the weekends.
Games with a really good story always interest me. I've had good recent experiences with things like final fantasies, tlou/2, horizon games, etc. I don't mind that it could take me a month or two to finish a game as long as it's enjoyable.

As an older dude, I think it's more about how people choose to live. I'm one of the DINK couples so the wife and I love gaming together.

Both working full time, go on camping trips, play tennis, and still manage to be a part of a destiny clan who we have cleared all the raids with.

We just beat Diablo 4 together (then dropped it due to the patch and garbage 1st season lol).

I get how some people need more contained experiences, but I can not stand games that are too contained or basic.

There are exceptions like party games (gang beasts, Mario party, etc), but for the most part I need my games to be engaging.

I did a little bit of game development in college and have played games all my life, so sometimes I feel like I'm somewhat sensitive to certain designs. It's hard to put into words, but a bad animation/game mechanic that might bother a different person like 2/10 might bother me more like an 8/10.

Some mixture of the above information and my ADHD need for stimulation keeps me away from the smaller games.

I stopped playing AAA games because there is so much filler. I would prefer if games went for 3-6 hours for playtime with a clean and tight plot.

I don't read books that have a cool intro, 300 pages explaining how everything works, 1000 pages of characters just doing random stuff for random people, and then a return to actual plot in the last 100 pages.

I'd say getting older and having more responsibilities is a bigger part of it. When you're young and have lots of free time to devote to a game, a 100 hour game is no big deal. When you have a fraction of that time, you just don't want to deal with that. I'm equally wary as well.

There's definitely some change to the gaming scene, like all the cheap sales and freebies. Very easy to build a backlog of games while barely trying.