Preface

Gaming has been part of every kid’s life, and is a concept that has existed pretty much forever. It is somehow unacceptable for someone to not like games — though I do know a few people who don’t, and I attribute it to them not finding the right one. They’ve convinced themselves they’ll get addicted the moment they start, and so they rob themselves of the joy that comes with stepping into fantasy worlds that are hard to imagine through the hard lens of ordinary life.

That fear is understandable. But it’s also a little backwards.

The Addiction Question

Let’s take the concern seriously: games are designed to be compelling. Good ones are. The same mechanics that make a game satisfying — progression, feedback, mastery, social stakes — are the same ones that, in the wrong context, can spiral into compulsion. That’s real.

But the same is true of books, sport, work, and relationships. We don’t warn people away from all of those. We distinguish between engagement and dysfunction, between a habit and a problem.

Gaming addiction exists. Clinically, it’s recognized. But it’s also wildly overdiagnosed by people who are simply uncomfortable with how much someone else enjoys something they don’t understand.

What Gaming Actually Does

Games are one of the few places where failure is consequence-free and feedback is immediate. You try something, it doesn’t work, you try again. The loop is tight. The feedback is honest. There’s no politics, no ambiguity — just the problem and your attempt to solve it.

For a lot of people, that’s where they first learned to persist through frustration. Where they built the tolerance for difficulty that later became useful in real life.

Strategy games taught me to think several moves ahead. Competitive multiplayer taught me how to function under pressure in coordination with people I’d never met. Narrative games gave me emotional vocabulary I didn’t have language for otherwise.

These aren’t small things.

The Social Dimension

The “gamer in a basement alone” image is at least a decade out of date. Modern gaming is deeply social. Guilds, clans, Discord servers, competitive leagues — these are real communities with real relationships and real stakes.

I’ve watched people build friendships through games that have lasted years beyond the game itself. I’ve seen gaming fill the social gap for people who, for whatever reason, couldn’t find their people anywhere else.

This doesn’t mean every online game community is healthy. Some aren’t. But the default assumption that gaming is antisocial is simply wrong.

When It Becomes a Problem

There’s an honest version of this conversation that isn’t dismissive. Gaming becomes a problem when it’s the only coping mechanism someone has. When it’s not an activity but an escape — from anxiety, from social difficulty, from a life that feels too hard to face.

In that case, the game isn’t the problem. It’s the symptom. Removing the game doesn’t fix the underlying thing; it just removes the one place the person felt competent and calm.

The answer isn’t abstinence. It’s building enough other things in your life that gaming is one good thing among many, not the only one.

The Point

I don’t think most people who play games excessively are addicted in any clinical sense. I think they’ve found something they’re good at, that rewards them, that connects them to people — and they’re doing it a lot. That’s normal.

The question to ask isn’t “how many hours is too many?” It’s “is this person building a life they’re happy with?” Gaming can be part of that life. It can also be a way of avoiding building it. Only the person playing knows which one it is.

For me, it’s always been the former. I play less now than I used to, not because I think it’s wrong, but because other things got more interesting. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

Go find your game.