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Where do you draw the line on what constitutes addict behavior? Is it in the behavior itself, or the object thereof?
There was a lot of misandrist Discourse about this with relations to the upcoming GTA drop, a game franchise I haven't played since the PS2 at a friend's house. Men were profiled, and criticized, who intended to take time off work or who informed their wives they would be a little bit unavailable. And it seemed kind of ridiculous, because every hobby involves similar tradeoffs, and the writers generally put in little effort to really justify their disdain, instead relying on vague anti-male prejudices.
Because any hobby or recreational activity means making those kinds of compromises. It's perfectly normal and natural to me to do all the laundry and cooking and spend time with my wife before going on a weekend camping trip, or making sure all my work ducks are in a row before going on vacation. Certainly when I go on a two hour long bike ride, I make sure my wife doesn't need anything and the cats are fed. Surely your position isn't that hobbies themselves are addict behavior? Or the untenable absurdity that no hobby can trade off against other activities? Or the repugnant conclusion, that one should not attempt to correct for one's absences by doing more for their wife before doing something else because the balancing is immoral?
One can take the puritan position, that any fun or recreation is at least a little bad and should never trade off against family and labor duties. But unless one is extreme and anti-human, that fails.
One can take the position that video games are bad and are an invalid tradeoff against work and wife, but that seems like kind of a silly value judgment and limiting on freedom. I'm not really interested in everyone have prescriptivist oversight of everyone else's hobbies.
One can gesture vaguely at "moderation," but that's not really an answer.
Camping trips and vacation inherently have to be scheduled for a particular time period. If you don't take time from other things, they become harder to do. GTA may be played at any time, so taking time from other things to play GTA means only "In more hours I can play more GTA".
Sure but the launch is an event, no? You can play GTA any time, but you can only play it at launch once at one particular time.
Which I don't find meaningful but clearly many people do.
There's nothing inherently disordered about saying within a marriage "hey I really want to do x, so in exchange I will do y for you." Inasmuch as that structure is rejected as illegitimate, I think that's bad for marriage.
In some sense every event is unique. This is my only chance to play it at 3:15 PM on a Friday the 13th in an even numbered month.
In another sense, events have various degrees of uniqueness. I think most normies, and probably even most gamers, will see a camping trip or vacation as significantly more dependent on scheduling than GTA is.
Your intuition seems to be incorrect with regards to normies. Generally I'd figure enlisted are the normiest of normies, and the DoW feels that playing GTA 6 at launch is such an incentive their offering it up to convince people to re-up.
But regardless, my concern isn't really "Do most people feel that the launch of a video game is as much of an event as things I want to do, like getting drunk at an iggles playoff game or setting a rock climbing tournament?" it's "Do people really think that they get to judge how I spend my free time because I have a wife and a kid, or insert themselves as the person I forgot to ask about a deal between my wife and I?"
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