Why do people don't care about the history?

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Umm... is everyone here meaning the same thing when he/she's saying "history"? Because I'm a bit confused after reading through the posted posts...

Are we talking about a believable backstory for characters, places etc., about environmental storytelling, about drawing inspiration from existing lore, or about historical accuracy in terms of "was this kind of lamp already invented in 18th century Prussia?" (or about all of those? )

Anyway, there's at least this one thing I can reply to:

it looks like people see a memo and just feel too lazy to read it. I think i've taken more time thinking about a cool history than making it, but it seems that all who people care is about the script level.

Short "flavour" - notes or the occasional letter or diary are fine, but I admit , I often get tired of reading long notes, memos and especially introduction texts. Not because I don't care about backstory - I do very much! - but because it's such a stilted, old-fashioned and kinda lazy way of storytelling. Why make a game in the first place if you just have the player read long texts all the time?

Games have a few big strengths that no other medium has, and that are first and foremost interactivity and a strong sense of presence for the player. So, show, don't tell - or even better, make the player experience instead of telling him stuff. Now, I'm of course not saying that all texts should be forever banished from games! But when even the most engaged and interested players start to get annoyed by the walls of text thrown at them it's definitely time to explore more interactive, organic ways of storytelling.