[YurgenJurgensen]

MMOs and competitive online shooters aren't time-efficient games. They're live service games that are essentially built to be time-sinks. People who regret playing them do so because the regret is real. There's a lot of advanced psychology that's gone into ensuring that people play them for as long as possible. This leads to people playing the games long after they've stopped having fun, and only quitting when they realise they've not been having fun for months, possibly years.

But this isn't a problem specific to games; this is a problem with predatory marketing. If you'd instead spent that time playing a wide variety of shorter experiences without grindy filler, I wonder if you'd feel the same way. Maybe niche hobbies don't have the attention of same predatory actors because there's not the incentive for them to do so, but that's not an argument for productivity, that's just an argument for obscurity.

[noirbot]

That's as may be, and especially true if you're playing them solo, but playing coop games online with friends, even "inefficient" ones are enjoyable social experiences that can be done even without being co-located, which isn't something that's easy to substitute with other activities.

I play games with friends and coworkers online that I wouldn't otherwise interact with much, and it helps us stay in touch with each other and foster a relationship that would likely otherwise burn out.

If I was playing the games alone, I'd maybe regret it over playing a different and "better" game, but I'd rather do inefficient things with friends than efficient things alone a lot of the time.