Well, I used to play a lot of competitive FPS games because I found it fun. I have also done competitive programming problems for fun/accolades. But after doing

Well, I used to play a lot of competitive FPS games because I found it fun. I have also done competitive programming problems for fun/accolades. But after doing more practical research, I realized it felt better to do impactful stuff (especially getting recognized). Also, research is nice because I perform terrible at short events (games, contests) under pressure. I think that if I tried something else before research that met the same criteria I probably wouldn't have done research.