There are plenty of anecdotes of games having real world skill benefits that I think people overlook. One of my favorites is a friend who ended up majoring in b

There are plenty of anecdotes of games having real world skill benefits that I think people overlook. One of my favorites is a friend who ended up majoring in business because of the in-game trade economy of Team Fortress 2 of all things, and also ended up marrying a woman he met through the game. TF2 basically shaped his entire adult life, and lately with the pandemic we've been going back to the game together online which has been wonderfully social. A personal anecdote for me would be Smash Bros Melee which completely reshaped my teenage life by giving me a huge friend group that played the game, taking me out to local tournaments where I met plenty of new people and broke out of my asocial shell, giving me an appreciation for traveling when I went long distance to major tournaments, and helping me understand how rewarding it feels to tangibly improve at a skill that you've been working hard on which has helped me immensely when it came time to learn new skills in college. Discussions of games being "good" or "bad" miss so many of these. Video games are another facet of life that you can do plenty with. Sure, there are awful, predatory games that exist to suck money and time out of the lonely, but there are games that exist to just have fun, games that teach actual valuable life lessons, and plenty of chances to use games to further your own life. Football is a good comparison because it is similarly meaningless on paper and easy to look down on (and I'll admit I used to do this myself), but it has absolutely changed the lives of uncountable people for the better in all sorts of ways. It really is more about how you use the tools that are given to you than the tools themselves.