[pixelbro]

I wouldn't say you're overthinking it at all! You make an excellent point, and as a game developer it's something I have to consider. Our mission is to craft joy for our players, but I certainly cannot afford to rule out any potential in terms of designing our games to be more engaging.

On the other hand, I've witnessed many instances of gamers who have fallen victim to habit-forming mechanics that continue sinking hours and dollars into a game daily but also say that they no longer truly enjoy the time they spend in that game. There's many aspects that play into that sort of behavior which games can be designed to exploit, not least of which being the sunk cost fallacy and fear of missing out: a player who has reached the endgame might have run out of interesting content to play through but feel obliged to continuously "defend their title". They're encouraged to keep coming back long after it stops being fun by being constantly presented with what appears to be an existential threat to the supremacy they have labored towards.

At that point I think we can safely say that such a game is no longer a positive impact on that person's life.

My way of attempting to ameliorate these sorts of conflicting interests is to structure our organization as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, in a way that gives players meaningful influence over business, design and development decisions.