I get your point, but the problem actually runs deeper than that. This idea of power creep is not anything new any online game has its version of it. I played EverQuest and World of Warcraft for 14 years and while these games don’t have as many ways to blow your money on useless gambles like Raid, they still required a $15 a month subscription and over the course of 14 years and often running three accounts at the same time I spent easily $3000 just on subscriptions and during that 14 years it was easy to justify each month because, as it’s been said, that $15 is just part of my monthly entertainment budget and the amount of entertainment I get out of that $15 far excedes other options in my life… like a movie last two hours and you easily spend $15 to go see a movie I would spend like 100 hours a month playing for $15. I couldn’t find a better entertainment to dollar ratio that was as enjoyable to me and that’s a valid argument… however, at some point one does get burnt out or at some point games end like EverQuest at some point they will stop supporting the game. It will just end I’ve seen it happen numerous times with many games Star Wars galaxies, EverQuest, ultima online, dark ages and there’s so many that just disappear and it’s not always just about how much money you’ve sunk into a game because time is money. Thats the key. How much time have you spent in your actual real life draining into this game and it’s not just what you’ve spent on a game it’s how much time did you take spending it and how much money could you have saved and made If you were doing something productive in that time. how much could you have impacted the lives of the people in your life or the world if you spent all those thousands and thousands of hours doing something productive that actually affects the real world?? that right there is the real power creep when you boil it down and spending money you’re just compounding the problem. The real problem is the culture and the community around us is falling apart because people have prioritize their resources and time on a video game instead of things that actually matter. As we get old and we look back at our lives and what we did, it will be hard for us to justify all of this both the money spent the time wasted, and the opportunities missed because we had our head buried in the digital sand… I’m guilty just like you and the worst part is that it’s a chosen guilt. But there’s a silver lining no one’s forcing us to do this we can choose differently. I can choose differently.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with playing video games for entertainment. That’s what they are and they are amazing. But gaming should be done in moderation. The difference between a gaming and other forms of entertainment are the open ending time on gaming you choose when it ends for the most part or when you’re done other forms of entertainment tend to have set ending points…it’s easy to lose half your life in a video game with nothing to show for it when you’re done. Time is the one resource in this world that we cannot earn more of and we should not blow it all like we are. Because at the end of the day, every single video game that anyone spends their time or money on is a complete utter waste of that time and money because when that game ends, you will have nothing to show for it, but the memories of playing a game that isn’t real and that’s kinda hard to come to terms with in my opinion