In terms of multiplayer, this guy's completely right. Games need to cater to short attention spans, limited bandwidth, and one-thumb interaction (I would also add async gameplay to the list of things that should be embraced). I don't think this article is saying anything profound, but it certainly isn't wrong.

In terms of single player games, I don't think the same logic applies, and in my opinion we've gone way too far in the "short attention span" direction. As long as a game makes it easy to save and resume, immersive hours-long experiences with detailed graphics can be really fun to consume in bite-sized pieces. Nintendo's been doing it for decades with their portable devices (Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, Metroid), and it's clearly a successful approach.

It's a shame that smartphones are orders of magnitude more powerful than the Game Boy, yet mobile app stores are overflowing with single-level "infinite churn" games that amount to Tetris with micropayments.