I agree with you that gaming is valid as a hobby, but I think this subject deserves finer granularity. On the scale of redeeming value, I put the general category of gaming somewhere above more passive entertainment like watching sports, TV, and movies, but below "hobbies that involve creating things". Maybe it's near the lofty level of reading books. With most games, the hard limit of your participation is exactly what the programmers thought to put in the game. By thoroughly playing and mastering every aspect of a game, you've usually only accomplished the same thing as 1 million other people. I think that it's arguably more valuable to have created something new and unique that is a result of your own work.
I agree with you that gaming is valid as a hobby, but I think this subject deserves finer granularity. On the scale of redeeming value, I put the general category of gaming somewhere above more passive entertainment like watching sports, TV, and movies, but below "hobbies that involve creating things". Maybe it's near the lofty level of reading books. With most games, the hard limit of your participation is exactly what the programmers thought to put in the game. By thoroughly playing and mastering every aspect of a game, you've usually only accomplished the same thing as 1 million other people. I think that it's arguably more valuable to have created something new and unique that is a result of your own work.