Comment by Joeri

These games aim to be "rewarding" and therefore worthwhile. In many ways, these types of games offer an alternative world and life that's more rewarding than reality.

You could look at the existence of these games as a triumph of capitalism. We have raised productivity to such heights that the real world does not provide enough grind to sate the need for reward, so people literally invent fictional realities to create more opportunities for grinding your way to a reward.

What is missing here is purpose. The reward could be more than just meaningless progress in the game. For example, why couldn’t you have a game were the grind is designing tailored-for-one phone cases, which then get printed and shipped in the real world. People could be ordering an NFT-backed guaranteed unique phone case, and many people would be willing to pay real money for that.

That these games have a grind that amounts to meaningless work disconnected to physical reality seems like a failure of imagination and a waste of opportunity.