>I often wonder if these specific types of games are redirecting a nontrivial amount of human intellectual output into a deadend. They're explicitly geared to lure in the kind of obsessive tinkerer types who've historically driven scientific and engineering progress. Only now, there's little to no payoff for the rest of humanity if they spend thousands of hours consumed by one of these games. What's Newton's modern equivalent doing right now? Probably perfecting a build order in Stellaris.
As the first response there says "Play is a way to learn and hone skills."
And there's an assumption that people who aren't 'playing' would automatically be doing something 'worthy' instead.
I suspect the reality is that most of us here went through an obsessive period of learning something which paid off in unexpected ways later. Eve could be teaching all sorts of things, including business and organizational skills: https://youtu.be/6rEfQ3GT73A?t=878
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/ml00ac/how_...
>I often wonder if these specific types of games are redirecting a nontrivial amount of human intellectual output into a deadend. They're explicitly geared to lure in the kind of obsessive tinkerer types who've historically driven scientific and engineering progress. Only now, there's little to no payoff for the rest of humanity if they spend thousands of hours consumed by one of these games. What's Newton's modern equivalent doing right now? Probably perfecting a build order in Stellaris.