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My kids are really into a couple online games.

The games are geared towards mixed levels of instant gratification and longer gratification, creating and maintaining an online character/persona, getting approval from peers as you climb the hierarchy of loot (character skins, rare items, etc.)

We limit their time and they are in other activities like sports which take time to develop skills.

Just be careful because some video games hire psychologists to help engineer a game to hit those neural pathways at the right intervals to get players to keep wanting to come back.

Getting really into video games can involve helping build a PC or maybe letting them create their own games.

>> Everything's about instant gratification, creating and maintaining persona for the outside world to see

There are quite some of video games, where exactly this is the encouraged behaviour. Just think about the controversy over loot boxes or mmorpgs.

> The video game world is disconnected from reality, involves long story lines, planning, strategy, skills that you can learn.

Maybe your video game world. The vast majority of games sold out there, across the years, were games like PacMan, Super Mario, FPS shooters and flash games similar to Candy Crush.