I don't understand the hatred towards games geared towards casual gamers. From a business perspective, it's the obvious choice, since giving your games broader appeal guarantees a larger base for sales and generates more money. Granted, a business decision isn't a compelling reason for most of us, since it does lead to series like Call of Duty and Tony Hawk. But there's another reason that casual gaming is flourishing.
I'm a longtime gamer. But I'm finding that I have less and less time to play games as other responsibilities get in the way; I can't devote 40 hours a week to gaming like a could when I was young. If I can only play games a couple hours a week, I don't want to spend it dead and irritated because it takes 3 months to get enough gear or learn how to play effectively. That's a growing concern for gamers who grew up in the 70s, 80s and 90s who are now grown-ass men and can't be bothered to spend every waking hour dedicated to a videogame. I mean, yeah, I get why you want games to be more in-depth and not ridiculously stupid (like Call of Duty), but I appreciate a game I can hop in and play without feeling like I have to dedicate the next few hours to it to garner any enjoyment. I certainly don't understand the elitism towards "casual gamers," words that are typed as though you're saying them through gritted teeth while seething at the audacity that anyone would dare call themselves a gamer while not devoting the bulk of their life to the hobby.
The Modern Warfare games haven't been bad because they're geared towards "casual gamers," they're bad because the stories seem like they were written by a 13-year-old who beats off to 24, they try to go bigger than the last outing to the point where I'm fairly sure the next Modern Warfare game will take place on the Moon after Earth is destroyed by the simultaneous detonation of every nuclear bomb, power plant and volcano, and compelling gameplay is replaced by stationary gun sections where your goal is to rack up bodies in a first person rendition of Space Invaders. A game doesn't have to be trite and boring to appeal to casual gamers, it just needs to be easy to jump into, and sometimes that's all any of us really wants.