Yeah, I tend to like his perspective on things. IMO playing a game and grind are not the same thing, or at least they shouldn't be. I tend to think of a grind as when devs artificially put time sinks or limitations into game mechanics simply for the purpose of slowing your progress or because they couldn't think of anything else for you to do; it isn't good game design it just makes the game take longer.
I think the inventory limitation in NMS is a good example. Originally they wanted something "realistic" perhaps, I'm guessing. This is just my thought. So limit what your character can carry. But then when they introduced building, they said they were very surprised by how much people liked it and the huge response. Now gathering the resources with the strict limitations and managing inventory becomes a grind because. So in this case they have adapted to that to capitalize on the fun game elements and let people play those more fully. Makes good sense to me.
There are other "elephants in the room" games that I am a big fan of, I won't mention any names, but I still find some of the grinds and time sinks hard to manage.