GRRM clearly has enough money so that he doesn’t have to work anymore. Not quite as clearly (but still pretty clearly) finishing ASOIAF is just work to him at this point. I’m sure on some level, he does want to get the series finished, but he’s lost his muse and the frustration has overtaken the joy in writing those…

I absolutely agree with your sentiment. I DO think that Bethesda was intentionally leaving the role-playing element in the franchise behind though.

I think the 'binary view' the author is talking about is in regards to the fact that success = fun and failure = not fun. I think the author has a good point in posing the question, 'How can we make losing more fun?', and then introduces several games where success = fun and failure = fun as well.