WHY people play video games

why /frog/? Why pay for virtual experience that drains your nerves and health? Its like paying to be jailed at your computer and mining gold, except you do it for "fun".
What makes the games so attractive?

>>11
I don't really see how video games help you benchmark 'general performance', because last time I checked 'general performance' was google, news and facebook.

>>18
And you can do google, http news and facebook, within the Scheme interpreter of a self built MHz machine with a TCP/IP stack.

>>19
I know, right?
The fun part is that people are buying GHz machines to do this. And it's not only computers - it's mobile phones too. Why the fuck would you need a mobile phone with more than a single fucking core? Phones are for calling not for calculating <insert math heavy calculation here>.