I feel like 'sap' is maybe a bit strong of a word here which might trigger many people. I think that we shouldn't judge others' hobbies on some intellectual ba

I feel like 'sap' is maybe a bit strong of a word here which might trigger many people. I think that we shouldn't judge others' hobbies on some intellectual basis and that people need some downtime and rest. It's fine to play chess, or improvise on a musical instrument or go clubbing without thinking whether it benefits the humanity. Also I don't think it has to be restricted to 'obsessive tinkerer' games. You can make something cool in the 'real world' or learn more without being an engineer. Arguably tinkerer games or even chess are not any better in this respect than, say, call of duty, or some casual platformer. If I was asking the same question, I'd ask "how can we make 'real word' activities as entertaining and rewarding as games". To elaborate: I program a lot in my free time, I love building stuff, it's very rewarding when you reach milestones and do progress. On the other hand very often it's kinda meh. You know what you need to do, but then you spend massive amounts of time actually achieving it. You can easily spend hours and days debugging some crap, which results in a one-liner fix. This is not fun at all, it completely sucks! Compare this to a dopamine train while playing Minecraft or SimCity or Civilisation where you're doing steady progress all the time. I can completely understand people who prefer video games to building things. But at least I know that I'm doing something that has never been done before, it will be useful for me later and other people so it wasn't all for nothing. In comparison, after playing video games all I feel is regret is that I'll never get this time back. I'd imagine it's similar with many other 'real world' things. It's hard to push the boundaries of what you know or capable of, so brains resist it.. in comparison playing a video game is usually fun and easy since you know the drill.