If you judge it by playtime it's probably true. Story-driven games like TLOU sell well sometimes but the games that gamers spend the most time with are those with attractive gameplay loops; the story just becomes window dressing. Personally I put down TLOU after two or three hours; the story didn't excite me (generic zombie slop, sorry) and the sneak/combat gameplay was too bland to keep me interested. On the other hand, MGS5's story is a half-baked abortion but the gameplay kept me coming back for several hundred hours.