Re: your thoughts: endless v.s. goal orientated
As the type of person who likes action-oriented arcade games, it's kind of a tough call for me.
I don't quite know what I think of putting endless games against goal-oriented games. I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive. A game can be endless and goal-oriented too. Often the goal of endless games is to better your own skills, reach a higher level, compete on scoreboards etc.
For me, the goal of many games is to at least get to see the toughest enemy, mechanic etc. and see how it works. That's my goal in any game, but doubly so for endless ones. But games with scripted endings often rely on this dynamic too, in addition to whatever scripted ending the game provides which may be so difficult to reach, especially at first, that getting used to the more mechanics takes full precedent for a while. And there are a few games, not audio games, but a few mainstream ones, where I'm not even sure if there's a scripted ending or not; back when my family was obsessed with Candy Crush, they didn't even know if there was an ending or not, but somehow the game kept on giving them more and more levels to play, so they obviously played it with the goal of completing levels. I don't know if they even cared about whether there was an ending or not. Some thought there must be, but others thought it would somehow go on forever, and I don't know which it is. So this can get blurry if you think about it long enough.
I'm personally not super picky about whether games have endings or not, or whether the game has inherent goals. I don't mind endless, because it gives me the freedom to set my own challenges. I greatly enjoy challenges. I stop enjoying a game when I either, 1, have begun to find the gameplay so challenging that I can't find it in me to hope for improvement anymore, or 2, if the gameplay becomes dull and I can't find the challenge anymore. But if the challenge is balanced right, then I'll happily play even a stupid arcade time-waster, at least for a little while. But I know people who think such games are pointless. They don't understand why someone would play a game which is destined to end in their death because there's no alternative. So, it really is a personal thing I guess.
I also really like games which give you goals too, like complete the story. I'm not opposed to those at all, provided that the challenge is balanced right. I want at least the last level to be challenging enough that I'm on the edge of my seat getting my nerves stretched nearly to breaking point. If the last boss isn't doing that, I can't find it in me to enjoy the game, no matter how exciting the story gets, because i'm not much for story. I'll read storylines, and try to understand them to a point, but I want to get into the action. Fortunately, most games, whether they're story-driven, goal-oriented, time-wasters etc. often have ways to make the game more difficult, and there are very few games which keep me comfortable at high difficulty settings. I've managed to beat a number of audio games at the highest difficulty level, but very few were still easy at that point. In fact, there are a fair number of audio games which I am afraid to play at anything higher than easy or normal, so if I get depressed about not having new games to play, I can at least find comfort in the fact that there is truly hard stuff out there for me to tackle if I'm feeling particularly sadistic and want to know where my limits are.
Challenge has its downfalls though; a fair number of recently released endless audio games just don't do it for me. They ramp up the difficulty in a jerky way. I remember a few games in particular where I was fine for 30 seconds, and then after that I got killed without knowing why. Even after I've gotten over the shift in pace, I still have a hard time working out if it's really a sudden shift or if something is wrong with me lol. But with some other games, the difficulty ramps up smoothly, at least for me. I have a hard time drawing lines between easy, medium, hard and unsurviveable because the ramp is so smooth, and that kind of smooth progression is what I seek in any game.
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