Has anyone ever been one of these players? Or do you perhaps have some insight into this mindset? I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Oh yes, very often. Yes I do.
A lot of people that show up to play a game are just there to be social. They just want to hang out, chat with others and have a good time. They see the 'game" as just a social get together. The next big group are just the casual gamers. They think the game is fun and want to play it. The same way they would play any group card or board game. So loads of social fun, and oh yea, remember to 'play' the game occasionally. For a lot of people the idea of playing a "game" for more then an hour is a crazy idea and they just won't do it.
A fair number of people are just tagging along. Someone else wants to play the game...and they tag along. they have nothing to do and/or refuses to let their someone do anything fun alone...so they are there.
The next big group of players do what to play the game, but only adventure and really only combat. They see the RPG as a only combat game. Endless combat. Nearly anything else is boring. They might want a little story, but not much beyond "the combat is over there".
And, for a lot of the players, just playing the game is hard. Learning and remembering the rules is hard. And to top that off, they don't get to play much. They only have a couple hours of actual game play...and it might not be the best of quality game play. So no matter how long they have been a player, they don't really know how to play the game.
I've been doing this for about 40 years. At literally no point in that entire time of playing regularly has a single referee utterly captured my attention and held it for the entirety of a game session. Snippets here and there, absolutely. This scene is engaging or that NPC is engaging or this little piece of an otherwise boring combat is engaging. The entire session? Literally never. It's not possible to begin with and people should not expect it to be the standard. It's not a job. You could not pay me enough to pretend to be constantly engaged and interested.
I will just note it is possible. Sure if you have a game made up of random players...even if they are your best friends...your unlikely to get a very immersed and focused game. After all, you do have 4-7 random people that each want something specific or something vague or don't care then you won't get a very focused game.
Of course, the key is to pick the players. If the DM wants a very immersed and focused, they can pick players that share that idea.
One of my houserules is you get three seconds to say your characters action for any adventure or combat action...if you don't, your character stands confused for the round. It is harsh, and it is made that way. But it makes my game move blazingling fast. And yes, out of every five players...four will walk away....but one will stay. And maybe one of the four will look back and see it is not "so bad". I can game with that number.