Everything including reproduction is useless.

I don't know about you but I started programming because of Minecraft and learning about running a business by playing prosperous universe and this gave me some insights that make me suspect that money and it's non neutrality is the biggest unrecognised problem in economics. Remember economics 101 doesn't even have the concept of money or time. In fact econ 101 is an utopia that we want to reach, not how economics works in practice.

Positive reinforcement is worth more than people complaining that you are wasting your time by doing the wrong thing. People on HN say you should be curing cancer instead of building a factory in factorio. The former is a poorly defined multidimensional non linear search space with high chance of failure, the latter is a well studied problem with tutorials and guides. That is negative reinforcement.

Lots of hobbies are essentially "useless". The focus on being constantly "productive" seems toxic to me.

If you enjoy a hobby then it's not useless, enjoying it is the point of a hobby! So enjoy playing video games, growing houseplants, playing golf or whatever hobbies you have without feeling guilty about not producing as much as you could.

Eh, it depends. Every hobby has its benefits and its drawbacks.

I learned a ton of English, strategy, stress management, shortcut keys, programming and whatnot from games. Some games also took a lot of my sanity, sleep, relationships with living beings, etc. :)

Don't feel bad enjoying a hobby. The universe is your playground.

Maybe no shockingly obvious “improvements” but I’ve noticed friends and family who don’t game have a much harder time following the gps while the gamers usually have it on silent and glance every now and then with no issue. I bet there are a lot of mini things like that gaming improves.

I learned english and programming because of video games.

I don't know about useless, certainly keeps your mind and dexterity sharp.

I would’ve never learned to love computers if it were not for video games