It is, in a sense, just a nightmarishly terrible game: We know there are rules, of a sort - we know there are things we probably should be doing and things we shouldn’t, and better and worse ways to do those things. One of the worst things about the real world is the uncertainty, the constant, niggling, grating awareness that we don’t quite know what’s going on. Playing a video game is taking a vacation in a world that’s a little less terrible, and in a specific way. Why would any halfway sentient person still play video games as an adult, and even take them seriously? (And it should be person, not man, of course - the preponderance of dudes and dude-oriented nonsense around video games is just an accident of history and sexism and ingrown stupidity, and is on the wane.) The best answer I can come up with is that the world is a terrible place, and it certainly doesn’t get any less terrible when you stop being a kid.
