As an outsider, who does not seriously game, this is not surprising.

Ten years ago, the people best at COD or halo or whatever cut a lot of class. Practiced a lot. And it was not fun to get whooped by your friend over and over again. I still to this day have friends I won’t play Mario cart with. Why would I?

Fast forward. Instagram and Facebook are designed to be as addictive as possible. We had Farmville. Candy crush. Mods to let you pull the trigger faster. All the the video game micro transaction scandals. Tiktok is now the premier addiction algorithm. Why wouldn’t these billion dollar enterprises use all these data points to juice their business?

If you need a game to justly stroke your ego, play chess.