Me too, specially now with the release of the Steam Deck which pushed some studios to provide anti cheat support with proton. Every game I have runs pretty well on my setup, no reason to boot windows whatsoever now. Finished Elden Ring a few days ago, next up Iāll give Death Stranding a try.
Also lichess 
If that counts
I think for me gaming is just a good way to de-stress / distract oneself from oneās ills.
The last game I āfinishedā was Red Dead Redemption 2, a very well put together game simulating the life of a cowboy! Even though I finished the main storyline, there is probably hours and hours of gaming still available with all the side missions.
Plus itās probably worth a reply as well, where you can be a naughty cowboy rather than a good one!
a good friend of mine is kind of addicted to rdd
however, to me, it does not sound very interesting
Each to their own. But red dead redemption has a pretty epic story line!
Similarly, I donāt get what is so interesting about watching 22 grown men kick a bag of air up and down a field for 90 minutes, or spoiling a nice walk in the countryside by hitting a tiny white ball with a stick to make it land in a hole. 
Life would be boring if everyone liked the same thing!
Hitting someone with a 3-foot-long piece of steel is quite fun.
I was a volunteer in 2012, which meant I got to see this fight for free - Aron Szilagyi Szilagyi Wins Fencing Sabre Gold - London 2012 Olympics - YouTube
At least itās not what the US calls football. Which I feel is best described as āletās find as many ways to run down the clock without doing anything that we can on a regular basisā.
ābag of airā
At primary school, I was always the weirdo for thinking like that. At high-school, it was still not general, but at least accepted. Still, I sometimes envy people who find enjoyment in it; if for nothing else, then for not looking dumb in many conversations (at work, etc.). Though I wonder, how many donāt really enjoy it all that much, but watch it anyway in order not to look dumb in the aforementioned discussionsā¦
I think a reason for my disliking games is also the fact that they are not real (life). I want those challenges in reality. Although I must also admit that I donāt like/want all kinds challenges, and that I did not master all challenges in my life so far.
I think there is a link. People who like games are more successful in real life, too. Although I also know gamers who are loosers.
I wish that were true, many of my students would be extremely happy 
Unfortunately gaming addiction is a struggle for a great many young people.
The thing you say about games vs. real life I can get into. Games can be an escape for some, but also am augmentation of real life. For instance, I might want to know what itās like to be a racing driver, but there is no reasonable way to follow that career path. However, I can imitate it to some extent by playing racing simulation games.
Change racing driver to āmagicianā or āfarmerā or āassassinā or whatever, and thereās bound to be a game for it.
Well, depends.
Yesterday I had a literal urge to nuke both Russia and the USA (God knows they both deserve it so much.). Thatās where Civilization VI came in handy. The nuclear mushrooms were really satisfying.
You have story-based games, like RPG. I have played Divinity 2 Original Sin with the wife. Itās like watching a movie except you write the story, and the graphics and musics are sooooo beautiful, so it is like a movie. Since itās an open world, you pick quests and adventures where you like.
You have lots of mind and strategy games that resemble chess or checkers, only with more possibilities. Iām a big fan of real-time strategy games, especially the old-timers (modern games need so much powerā¦) like Cossacks Napoleonic Wars, Age of Empire, Pharaoh/Cleopatra. Build cities, run them, honours the MOFO gods if any, build economy, fight wars, keep your people happy while they complain about taxes, that kind of thing.
When I was younger, I use to enjoy first-person shooters like Urban Terror (on Linux since at least 2008 !!!) or later Call of Duty (Black Ops & World at War), but now when I start them, I get fragged like gunmeat by kids half my age whose reflexes indicate they should probably go see the sun more often (and that was before COVID, not sure now).
That said, I maybe open a game once every 2-3 months, play it every day for about a week, and resume to not gaming for the next 2-3 months. The computer box having become my working box for way too many hours/week makes sitting in front of a computer for funā¦ much less fun than it use to be. Now, most of my fun happens doing stuff outside, in the woods or else. And most of the games are played with the wife now.
Iām not sure games are responsible for game addiction. In the 2 times of my life where I deliberately over-gamed, it was definitely to escape shitty real life, not because a shiny game trapped me. If virtual worlds start being more appealing than reality, thatās most likely not to blame on the gameā¦ Same as a lot of people drink alcohol too, not that many end up alcoholics. Or can you get addicted to therapy ?
Anyway, all of my games live in Steam since 2014 or so, and it says 626 h played in 8.6 years. Meanwhile, Garmin says 150 h spent on a bike since last summer.
Speaking of addictions and sport, lots of middle-aged men solve their mid-life crisis by becoming born-again athletes who push themselves too hard and canāt get through a day without their daily cardio trainingā¦ These guys are walking heart-disease-hazard, but since exercising is socially valued, thatās an acceptable addiction. And a future socially valued heart attack.
I did a similar thing, but not a club. I discovered a way to get access to the computer lab room in the engineering dept from a side door. We used the lab to run battlefield 1942 lan games after 9pm. I think one time security discovered us and we just said we had access to the room for project work and they let us be.
do you think social media such as Instagram are like a game?
No, the difference is: gaming is fun, social media is depressing
Well I guess for people who get hundreds and thousands of likes and comments, social media is fun too, isnāt it? They often think theyāre great artistsā¦
And probably for someone who is a looser (keeps loosing) gaming isnāt really so much either?
Most games are balanced in a certain way that almost everyone can have fun, or at least not lose every time they attempt it, and those that arenāt probably are not what the person is looking for in the first place.
For most people social media is not a game in my opinion. I think people who find it fun to receive attention on social media probably view it in a game like fashion, as they compete with other people for attention and their place in the spotlight. This must only be a small subset of highly narcissistic people though, would be an even sadder world if it wasnāt the case. Of course Iām not taking into consideration the people who do it as a job, itās a different case.
Talking about the āloosingā aspect of computer gamesā¦
Unless you are playing competitive online games, there is no loosing - usually if you screw up, then you just reload and try again. And if I get board at one point, I just lower the difficulty, get skip the boring part and continue.
Donāt get me wrong, there are frustrating games and some people like the grind, but one can just play something that isnāt frustratingā¦
Whatever you do, stay away from Destiny 2 PvPā¦
Destiny used to have a skill-based matchmaking algorithm which would lead to you being matched with people who were close to you in skill level.
The streamers and tryhards whined and complained because the streamers couldnāt reliably show themselves curbstomping randos, and the tryhards complained because at the top end of the spectrum you got transcontinental matches and long queues.
Rather than fix the corner cases of SBMM, Bungie went to full blown connection based matchmaking. So you will randomly either get people who curbstomp you, or the system somehow finds 11 players who are so bad that I am the top scorer on the winning team.
I have a love/hate relationship with D2 - Bungie has done an incredible job with the storyline recently, but itās getting to be quite time consuming and grindy.
Back at around 25 years ago at this point, my friends and I in high school had an āindependent studyā period for a variety of reasons. (In my case, I was taking classes at the local university for most of my day, but some days I did not have classes there immediately following my scheduled high school classes so would hang around. They were ahead of schedule on their stuff, so occasionally we would have ānetwork load testingā sessions (Quake).
We were also the sysadmins of the high schoolās web server. No one viewed school web pages at night, so the machine was also a private QuakeWorld server. 
Yeah, games stop being fun when you need to actually train for them in order to reach the minimum level of mastership that provides entertainment.
I donāt mind if a game has a progression mechanism, if itās well designed. But that is a delicate balance between āIāve got everything that can be obtained and Iām bored nowā and āugh, Iām running three gambit matches per week only for the pinnacle reward after the third matchā.
Warframe has pretty decent ongoing progression, but it can be REALLY brutal and grindy for new players because there is so much to catch up on.