Why is Settlers of Catan so popular with millennials?

Evidence shows millennials have short attention spans

Question: Why is Settlers of Catan so popular with millennials?
Position1 of 4›: Millennials are notoriously lazy
Argument‹2 of 2: Evidence shows millennials have short attention spans

Research shows that millennials have extremely short attention spans. The game is great for that mental laziness because it's over quickly and doesn't require huge effort.

The argument

The argument starts from a claim about the audience rather than about the game. The average attention span of millennials is put at twelve seconds — short enough that anything demanding sustained, uninterrupted focus will lose them partway through. If that is the constraint, then the games that succeed with this generation will be the ones that, by design or by accident, work within it. Board games that are relatively short and require quick interactions between turns are best suited to short attention spans, because they never ask for a long unbroken stretch of concentration in the first place. They break the session into intervals that end before focus runs out, so the interval rather than the session becomes the unit that has to be sustained. Settlers of Catan lasts about an hour, which is brief by the standards of the genre, and its straightforward rules mean the attention that is available goes into playing rather than into remembering what is permitted. The decisive feature is what happens between turns. In many games a player's turn is followed by a wait with nothing to do, and that gap is exactly where a short attention span is lost. Catan fills it: players communicate and negotiate with one another over trades, which keeps everyone's attention continually focused on the game even when the dice are not theirs. The quick-paced communication keeps players engaged throughout rather than in bursts. Put the two together and the fit is close. Due to millennials' short attention spans, fast-paced games that require constant engagement are necessary if a game is to hold them at all, and Catan supplies that engagement through its trading rather than demanding concentration through silence. Therefore Settlers of Catan is popular with millennials.

Premises

[P1]Millennials have notably short attention spans, averaging around twelve seconds. [P2] People with short attention spans gravitate toward games that are relatively brief and require constant engagement between turns. [P3] Settlers of Catan fits this profile, with its roughly hour-long playtime, straightforward rules, and continual negotiation that keeps players engaged. [C] Therefore, Settlers of Catan is popular with millennials because it suits their short attention spans.

Counter-arguments

If the millennials' average attention span is twelve seconds, then an hour is way too long for Settlers of Catan. Depending on the number of players and experience level of each one, Settlers of Catan can last over 4 hours. The amount of engagement required to negotiate effectively throughout the game is not designed for players with short attention spans.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] The game does not fit the profile the premise assigns it: the counter notes that Settlers of Catan can run over four hours depending on the number of players and their experience, which is not a brief format, and that negotiating effectively throughout demands sustained engagement rather than the short bursts the argument describes. [Rejecting C] Taken together with the twelve-second figure the argument itself supplies, the counter treats the explanation as self-defeating — a game of that length and demand is precisely what players with very short attention spans would be expected to avoid.