adults — almost all of them men — in their 20s, 30s, and even 40s playing games for hours every day. Gaming is not only a compulsion, but something far more sinister “a simulation of being an expert.” In a country without meaningful or well-paying opportunities for work young people disappear into their fantasies of competence in which they fly airplanes and score touchdowns and perform daring commando raids without having to go further than the refrigerator.
Video games are, in other words, another of those illusions we peddle to convince people that the world’s problems do not exist. Sports, by comparison, are very much of this world. Compared with what’s going on inside a PlayStation the most insignificant Saturday afternoon baseball game between two clubs with losing records is a thing of epochal significance, brimming with meaningful human drama.
There are literally less than 500 people in the US who are making over $50k a year playing video games alone.
Does that sound sustainable to you?