Great read. I was a bit taken aback by the title, general people pleaser that I am, but I've found myself agreeing to most of your points. There's a certain yuckiness about it, the way how games are commodified, how they must be "marketed" with a "hook". Can't my heart be enough?
On the other hand, I do get it. While every game has a right to live, as soon as a game gets published, I don't think that game belongs solely to the author anymore. Of course, ideally it shouldn't be made *for* an audience in mind, but at the end of the day it's still an experience communicated to a player. I do think of the audience when making games, how it's going to be perceived, how a plauer might react to this or that. The craft of the experience is what attracts me to this medium, to speak in lines of code and notes of music, and while singing alone in the shower is definitely fun, nothing beats singing along with an audience. I hope I haven't misinterpreted your point.