I'd say the following points need to be made about "gaming" because the perception does not reflect reality when you play a videogame: - the classical "neuroti

I'd say the following points need to be made about "gaming" because the perception does not reflect reality when you play a videogame: - the classical "neurotic player who doesn't like distractions and spends hours on VoIP getting angry at the game" is the reflection of a lot of the people who get into real-time multiplayer in MMORPGs or now games like Fortnite. This isn't quite how it stands for a lot of games, genuine one-and-done experiences like God of War or going back a bit to the Wii didn't have this continuous "one more" feedback or ridiculous length of content (3 hours a night raiding is tiresome and stressing for some people) - The fighting game community has the oddity of gathering in large tournaments, building community on them and treating their games with immense discipline in learning to the point where others complain the barrier of entry to being "good" is too high. More than any other genre, fighters offer real-life experiences. E-sports is picking up on this*. - Something to consider when determining the "why" of prolonged play is also the community or social aspect of the game. I play a lot of videogames, I admit, and one of the things that makes me commit a lot of hours into a game is when I can talk about it, talk to people in it, build a common interest and execute it. I live in a country where I speak my second language more than my first and hopping online to play in English is definitely some strong escapism. This is my experience, but so many people get online these days for the strong community tools (Discord, subreddits). It's primarily this aspect that makes me question any attempt to compare it to gambling/watching sports/binge watching movies or what have you. Gaming is built on a huge internet infrastructure because social features build long-time users. I totally appreciate the definition of gaming disorder being sacrificing other healthy parts of life to continue feeding your need to play videogames but maybe this made sense if everyone was still playing the Super Nintendo (and even then we mocked it) but the world, and maybe it's just because enough huge corporations threw enough money at marketing to make it happen, has managed to genuinely change real-life because of videogames. This is far too dismissive. Other posters mention this and I'd probably say that they refused to consult people in the game development industry/competitive gaming organizations/prominent players because they'd like to poison the well by assuming they'd never admit they have a problem (Although I suppose that might have to do with EA and the like refusing to have ethical debate instead of filtering us through an endless marketing machine, taking notes from Hollywood) Side note: First post on HN after long time browsing. Feel free to rip this apart.