You make good points.
To explain my use of words (which were probably not the best, as always)… I have some background in stochastic simulations, which is essentially a way that researchers have of treating variables as being random, as a sort of excuse for not fully understanding every parameter that can affect every variable (which maybe explains why I see reality the way I see it). So, when I say that reviewers are random, I guess that I’m talking about the fact that our perception of them is as them being random. Each one perceives life, reality and games in a different way, but they are hidden to us (we don’t know who they are, not even their age, gender or social background, so we have no idea why they think what they think… we are just left with their “random” thoughts, as we often cannot fully understand them in isolation). But, in my own way of seeing things, the longer the playthroughs, the smaller the chance of hearing “its too short”. Lets say that for 10k playthroughs 50% of reviews will mention this, for 20k maybe 25%, for 30k maybe 12.5%, etc (I have no statistics for this, as it is difficult to quantify this, but a related thread is here on overall length Length of game influences buying?)
But, I actually agree with what you say (and we have talked about this in other threads, which is indeed something we are all having trouble to come to grips with). Basically, readers are changing. Somebody recently posted about their experience reading one of those old choose your own adventure books (about the pyramids), which were the top of interaction fiction for their age. Things like fighting fantasy and lone wolf made those look primitive… but, if you try to read those and compare them to the early stuff in CoG, they look primitive… and the early CoG also looks short by today’s standards (though, I still love Dragon! or even some of the good old fighting fantasy)
And, I do hope that you are right about old games finding new fans… though few old movies age well! (we all remember things like star wars or blade runner, but they were countless sci-fi at the time, which did not age well at all…)