My parents tried to make me do treatment for video game addiction. I was appalled by the simplistic portrayal that the entire older generation had of my habits, because although they were unhealthy, they were a far cry from addiction. There are several very different categories of long-playtime games popular today and they are associated with very different motivation structures. To the layman league of legends is in the same category as skyrim, but one is a single player campaign that you'll eventually grow tired of, even if it takes a thousand hours, and the other is an eternal online competition in which you will be just as likely to hit 'play again' after your 500th hour as your 20,000th. There are 3 categories of game that can rack up truly problematic playtimes in the tens of thousands of hours and extract great opportunity costs on the players:

1) Grindfests - e.g. Old school runescape, black desert online, korean mmos, classic wow, destiny 2, warframe. Motivation is collection of perfect sets of equipment and special items that prove account status.

2) Social Simulators - World of Warcraft (shadowlands), most mmos,Eve Online, roblox, vrchat. Motivation is that "people are doing something and I want to be a part of it."

3) Competitive Loops - Pubg, Apex legends, fortnite, overwatch, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Starcraft 2 ladder, most shooters and arena games. Motivation is competitive instinct, satisfaction if you win/get kills, frustration if you don't and resolve to play another and turn it around.

(Disclaimer: there's a lot of overlap between groups, most mmos are both social simulators and grindfests, many arena competitive loops are social games sometimes. I tried to categorize by primary motivator.)

Grindfests and competitive loops are fundamentally wastes of time, but they will always give you what you're looking for. Bored on a Wednesday night? Might as queue up mid or farm zulrah. There is obvious gender disparity between each category and the general population, and disparity between categories as well- women play social simulators, but competitive loops are usually over 90% men. Often closer to 99%. Social Simulators are only usually wastes of time, because the expectation of anonymity on the internet means you'll usually never leverage those social networks you're building for real value. In the case of people still building social skills, or isolated and looking for camraderie, these games do add value.

This is all to say that problematic video games are successful because they scratch behavioral itches many people want scratched. In that way, I'm almost uncomfortable calling them problematic. Sure, a 22y/o would ideally be spending his evenings on side projects. What fraction of his spare time is that a realistic expectation if he could be doing virtual competitions with friends or strangers? I wouldn't begrudge a retiree to play a competitive loops 6 hours a day, I look forward to doing that myself in the old folks home, but I'm much more comfortable condemning someone in the prime of their life because of higher opp. cost. Bear in mind that HN is not a representative sample, and the majority of humans waste all their free time anyway, if 'waste' means 'suboptimal use carrying nonzero opportunity cost'. Is this different from any other generation's opiate of the masses? My friends don't watch football but they do talk about doublelift retiring.