I'm sorry, but I think you might just be talking out of your ass here.
Please tell me how Chess offers valuable life lessons that can be applied elsewhere in daily life, but an in-depth strategy game cannot? I actually learned more from my days of playing
Fields of Glory on DOS and about the Napoleonic era than most high school and college age kids, which helped enormously on later tests and studies.
So, right there, your last point is disproved.
Again, I don't believe you've played many of those games to which we are referring, or else you'd see the fallacy here.
Playing something like Europa Universalis, Victoria 2, or Hearts of Iron, you learn something at least about the real-world history, about actual historical military and geopolitical strategy (in the case of something like Hearts of Iron), diplomacy, supply chains, and economics.
And it's not just the major geopolitical and warfare simulators, even something like Sim City can teach something about fundamental zoning, taxation, and expansion.
Heck, Flight Simulator taught plenty about real world aircraft, travel times, and flight physics.