Back in the early days of World of Warcraft people would have seen 4 hours a night as light, casual gaming. :)

One might think, well books are educational. You learn something from them. There's so many bestselling books out there written by so called "experts" that turn out to be totally wrong or mislead by giving a layman's explanation of research post book release, and 10-20 years later the same nonsense is being passed on from one generation to the next.

And let's not pretend like WoW is normal or particularly well accepted.

His videos don't have nearly high enough view counts for this to be his main or even meaningful income source. Also, a big part of his shtick seemed to be that he was playing on Stadia.

A lot of tech people have a blind spot for excessive video game addiction that goes beyond having some fun with your friends on nights and weekends. The mainstream focus is all about social media apps, but at least among tech people I believe video game addiction is a serious problem for a significant number of people.

I've known several people who lost their social lives almost completely to WoW, EVE Online, competitive multi-player games, or just burying themselves in the 1000 on-sale or free games they've collected in their Steam accounts. Losing entire years to video games during the formative stages of young adulthood can be devastating for social development.

Personally I’m not attached to digital ephemera. I’ve already lost more save games and files of one type of content over another to be used to it. I’d call the clingy-ness the real issue. Others have to put in a bunch of work to manage this persons figurative video game identity?

This is certainly true. Though public health analysis only shows correlations, not causations, between video game playing and decreased alcohol and drug use. And in my life, whenever I knew men whose girlfriends would relentlessly harp on their video game playing, it gets substituted by alcohol.

In medicine it is called video game fixation. I’m concerned though that it is not open as a possibility that what they are calling a disease is closer to a medicine than certainly alcohol, tobacco or drug use are. Closer to how coffee is used for tiredness, maybe, for a depressed 15-25yo male, than to any of those things. That said this guy is spending 33% of his life, and video game fixation can also look like 90%, which is certainly pathological.

Something like 120K of income (probably closer to $200k), and a progression of skill development. Also could have intangibles like a feeling of contribution, socialization, purpose.

Yes, exceptions exist. But many could make their job have these kinds of outcomes if they choose to do so

Most streamers make very little, including likely this person.

Basically the difference between living to work, and working to live, and how we should be mindful of balancing it all

Hahahahaha. Hell no. Most today's overwork is for escaping financial insecurity, anxiety, due to obsessive-compulsive tendencies, making up for one's lack of self-worth or a mix of all of those...

I wouldn't be surprised if that were some of those hours. Hours where the game is active, but he's not actively playing.

Assuming he plays every day. And assuming he doesn't take any vacations in this time (mainly because I don't want to deal with the math). With the game being on for 4 hours on days when he has work and 12 hours on days he doesn't. That's 44 hours a week he could be playing. And it would take him about 2 and half years to log that many hours.

Then I got even more curious. There have been 1046 days since the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 on the Stadia. He played about 5 hours 40 minutes a day every single day.

I really would like to see the game logs.

I wouldn't pass judgement on someone like this without more information. I've met disabled people who don't have a whole lot to do and pour themselves into a universe like this, I can totally understand that situation... and there are all types of different examples like this. You can't always assume the person on the other end of the line is just like you.

This is his job- by definition, he is a professional at RDR2. He gets paid for it.

Just how many hours have you spent in VSCode or VStudio? Shall we criticize other professions and how long you're in there?

In a positivist view, those are hours not trying new games.

To reframe what other have already said, it is just as bad for the game industry as it is from a social perspective that people spend time this way.

Most are addicted to being constantly reachable, constantly distracted with the latest social media notifications and most shrug it off because seemingly everyone else has the same addiction.

When you stop using surveillance capitalism services, or a smartphone entirely, it becomes easy to see these addictions in others and it looks gross seeing families at restaurants all staring at their phones in a circle.

At least console video games do not follow you around in your pocket. You generally spend at least time fully walking away from game consoles, but almost no one leaves home without their social media notification machines.

Also if you look at steam reviews they say the number of hours played. Some people have 10k+ for some games.