I'm voting for some combination of "honestly oblivious", "ha ha only serious", and "actually this isn't as bad as it sounds" over "satire". My 11-year-old daughter was recently introduced in a school mathematics lesson to a game in this family, which she enjoyed and eagerly asked me to play with her.
It wasn't described in those terms, though. Their class has been looking at factors and multiples, so the game was presented like this: you have the numbers from 1 to 100 written down; one player picks a number (constrained to be no bigger than 50 for reasons as an exercise for the reader) to start with; then each player picks a still-unused number that's either a factor or a multiple of the one before. So a game might go like this: 25, 5; 15, 3; 99, 33; 11, 22; 44, 4; 8, 16; 32, 96; 48, 24; 12, 6; 18, 9; 27, 81; 1, 97 and now the first player has no legal move and loses. (I do not claim that either player played well in that game; I just picked random legal moves.)
If this game sounds like fun to you or your child, you can find an implementation here: https://nrich.maths.org/5468 and you may also see how long a chain of factors-and/or-multiples you can construct (imagine both players are now cooperating to make the game last as long as possible).
It wasn't described in those terms, though. Their class has been looking at factors and multiples, so the game was presented like this: you have the numbers from 1 to 100 written down; one player picks a number (constrained to be no bigger than 50 for reasons as an exercise for the reader) to start with; then each player picks a still-unused number that's either a factor or a multiple of the one before. So a game might go like this: 25, 5; 15, 3; 99, 33; 11, 22; 44, 4; 8, 16; 32, 96; 48, 24; 12, 6; 18, 9; 27, 81; 1, 97 and now the first player has no legal move and loses. (I do not claim that either player played well in that game; I just picked random legal moves.)
If this game sounds like fun to you or your child, you can find an implementation here: https://nrich.maths.org/5468 and you may also see how long a chain of factors-and/or-multiples you can construct (imagine both players are now cooperating to make the game last as long as possible).