VG Addiction Considered Good

 Most video games have a serious fundamental problem. They can't reward you for success, they can only punish you for failure. It can only reward you, so to speak, by reducing your opportunities to fail.

 To use a reverse example, minecraft is tremendously popular because it can be rewarding.

 Games are shockingly unfun. I've said it before: you work most games, you don't play them. There's nothing intrinsically rewarding about the game world. Your overseer gives you a list of tasks, and you complete the tasks. Chores, but prettier than usual. E.g. mario 64 literally gives you a gold star.

 One key feature of play is precisely that it isn't paratelic. It has a goal, but the goal was picked by the player, not some outside agent. Like, you don't spontaneously do your chores, right? If your house would stay dust-free without sweeping, you wouldn't sweep. Something with intrinsic merit is done spontaneously. You don't go tobogganing to get to the bottom of the hill. If a game can only [reward] you with the ending, if a game with no ending is a bad game, then it's a bad game even with the ending. 

 If you're [good] enough at a game, it removes all opportunities to fail. Yet, if you can't fail, you can't succeed. You're not winning the game. You're not playing it at all. If you "win" a fight in an RPG you get XP, your levels go up. If you "win" too much then you can kill bosses by hitting the fight command over and over like a dipping bird. Chore.

 If you [fail] the game [punishes] you by making you play the game more. Imagine failing to eat a delicious cake and being "punished" by not getting fat and having to eat another. Hence, the game can't even truly punish you per se, the game itself is punishment. You're punishing yourself by choosing to play it at all. You [win] against the game by forcing it to punish you the least. Hence speedrunning. 

 "I'll show you, I'll show them all!"
 "Cool, what's the plan?"
 "I'm going to subject myself to 1000 or more hours of this game! Then it will barely be able to make me play it at all!"

 Perhaps true genius has never been tried.

 Perhaps I ought to heartily endorse VG addiction, because you will build resistance to skinner boxes. You will get bored not of this game or that game, but any and every artificial plastic-game, including non-video kinds. When you emotionally, reflexively recognize that vampire survivors is merely trying to manipulate you, that skill generalizes.