>imagine the ability to plug into some perfect VR world that looks and feels just like reality. Why would anyone want to "compete" in that scenario?

At the moment the most played video game seems to be League of Legends where player compete to accumulate gold through killing other players amongst other things. So the human instincts come out, just in the virtual world.

Maybe the future is humans merrilly killing in VR while peaceful robots look after them in the real world, a bit like a variation on The Matrix.