Are Games a Waste of Time? Or Are We Asking the Wrong Question?

We’ve all heard the question:

“Are games worth playing?”

It usually comes from non-gamers, coworkers, or someone worried about “wasted time.” But the question doesn’t sound as odd when you realize it’s not really about games - it’s about how we feel about our own lives, work, and sense of control.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most adults agree income is necessary - you need money to afford food, housing, healthcare, and opportunity. But somewhere along the way we began to treat income as a moral scoreboard: paid work is virtuous, and anything unpaid - like playing League in your free time - becomes “unproductive.” That’s a misunderstanding of both income and meaning.

In the next few minutes I'll try to unpack why that shift happened, why games trigger that defensive response, and how gaming connects to some very human needs that many modern jobs fail to satisfy.

Money Is Necessary - But Not a Moral Scoreboard

There’s no denying that having money generally correlates with a higher life satisfaction. Research shows that, overall, people with higher incomes tend to report greater well-being and life satisfaction even at relatively high income levels.

But it’s also true that money alone doesn’t guarantee satisfaction or happiness. Other research argues that income has less influence on moment-to-moment emotional well-being than we think.

And when you dig into job satisfaction specifically, salary isn’t the strongest factor. People with very different incomes sometimes report similar satisfaction - especially when other aspects like autonomy, work-life balance, or meaningful tasks are missing (Source: Moneyzine, 2023).

In other words:

• Money matters for survival and comfort.
• But it doesn’t automatically make life engaging.
• It shouldn’t be the only lens we use to judge what’s “worth it.”

Yet when gaming is the activity in question, society tends to treat it like a moral failure instead of just another use of time.

The Real Difference: Agency, Feedback, and Ownership

What makes League of Legends - and games in general - so engaging is not just escapism or fantasy (although those are part of it). It’s that games give you agency, feedback, and results in a way most modern jobs do not.

In League:

• Your decisions matter.
• You see the consequences instantly.
• You can improve through practice.
• You feel in control of outcomes beyond reaction time - you’re directing strategy, adapting, learning, leading.

Contrast that with a typical work environment where:

• Tasks are routine or ambiguous.
• Feedback is slow or minimal.
• Agency feels limited.

Research on workplace psychology suggests that autonomy - the ability to make decisions and influence outcomes - has a huge impact on job satisfaction, sometimes even more than income itself.

Games satisfy psychological needs that many people don’t get fulfilled elsewhere:

• Competence: You can get better through effort.
• Autonomy: You make decisions that affect outcomes.
• Relatedness: You coordinate with teammates.

These are core drivers of motivation and engagement - essential parts of what makes humans flourish.

Why Games Get Blamed

So why do we get defensive when people criticize gaming?

Because games make people feel something they often don’t feel in the rest of life.

When someone declares:

“It’s a waste of time!”

What they’re often really projecting is:

“I don’t understand why this feels more engaging than my own day-to-day life.”

And that discomfort feels threatening.

Games are unusually honest systems: (callback to my other article)

• You know the rules.
• You know what success looks like.
• You see progress with your own eyes.

In real life, especially in work contexts, the rules are often vague, the feedback is slow, and the cause-and-effect feels murky. That lack of agency makes games look too alive, and reality feel lifeless in comparison.

The Research Says…

There’s no simple answer - but research suggests that playing video games in itself isn’t inherently harmful and may be positively associated with well-being when certain conditions are met.

For example:

• Several studies suggest gamers’ satisfaction and engagement are positively related to well-being, particularly when play provides meaningful cognitive and emotional engagement.
• Some causal research found that owning and using a game console was associated with reduced psychological distress and higher life satisfaction.
• Other work shows that the context of play matters: social gaming with friends or family tends to correlate with higher well-being than solo play alone.

At the same time, frequent gaming alone (especially without social support) is sometimes associated with lower overall “thriving” scores in self-reported surveys. But that doesn’t mean gaming causes poor well-being - only that complex personal and social factors are in play.

Now that I've bored you with statistics, you're saying - "Alright Matt, what's the takeaway?"

Games Expose a Bigger Problem

The backlash against gaming isn’t really about games.

It’s about agency - and how little of it many people feel they have in their everyday lives.

Games demand attention. They require decision-making. They ask you to participate rather than watch from the sidelines. When you lose in a game, it’s usually clear why. When you win, you know exactly what you did to earn it. Effort connects to outcome in a visible, brutally honest way.

That clarity is rare outside of games.

In many modern jobs, effort doesn’t reliably map to results. You can work harder and still feel invisible. You can follow the rules and still be passed over. Feedback is delayed, vague, or nonexistent. Progress feels abstract. And because so many people spend the majority of their waking hours in these systems, they internalize something dangerous: their actions don’t really matter.

Then they come home and see someone boot up a game.

A game where:

• Decisions have consequences
• Skill improves outcomes
• Progress is visible
• Failure is instructive, not mysterious

And suddenly the game feels suspicious.

When someone calls gaming a “waste of time,” they’re often reacting to its contrast to everyday life. Games highlight how disengaged, powerless, or replaceable many people feel elsewhere. And instead of interrogating that discomfort, it’s easier to dismiss the thing that exposed it.

This is why gaming draws a different kind of criticism than other leisure activities.

No one interrogates hours spent watching television with the same intensity. No one moralizes scrolling social media, even though it’s almost entirely passive. But gaming is active. It demands presence. And that makes it harder to ignore.

There’s also an uncomfortable implication embedded in games:

That idea threatens a worldview built on productivity, optimization, and moralized labor.

So the criticism intensifies.

It’s not uncommon to hear people say things like:

• “You’re grinding fake points instead of real life.”
• “All that effort could go toward something useful.”
• “Imagine if you put that energy into your career.”

But this framing assumes that the problem is misplaced effort - not a lack of engaging systems in the first place.

Games don’t drain people of motivation. For many, they reveal how hungry they are for environments where effort is respected, skill matters, and outcomes feel earned.

In that sense, games function like a mirror.

They reflect a simple, uncomfortable question: Why does this feel more engaging than the thing I’m supposed to care about most?

And that question is easier to deflect than to answer.

So, Are Games “Worth Playing”?

The honest answer is:

Games are worth playing for the same reason meaningful work is worth pursuing - they engage us as humans, not as cogs in the proverbial productivity machine.

League of Legends - like many games - scratches an itch that isn’t inherently about earning money or advancing a career. It satisfies psychological needs we all have:

• Mastery
• Control
• Progress
• Social connection
• Shared experiences

These are not trivial pursuits. They are the kinds of experiences that form memories, shape identities, and make life feel alive.

So the next time someone asks if games are a “waste of time,” ask them:

“Compared to what?”

Because if meaningful work is defined only by paycheck - then so is meaning itself.