Why do people (mostly men) get so involved in gaming?

In a comment today, someone mentioned that she couldn’t tear her significant other away from his den in the garage in order to visit friends. Her SO was unable to leave his computer games. Last night, in my support group, our pet Schizophrenic (the group is for bipolar and depressed people) mentioned that he was vowing to stop spending hours and hours a day playing games and get out to start looking for a job.

It makes me wonder what is going on inside for these guys. I wonder if it’s a kind of pattern recognition thing. Or if it makes them stop thinking about anything else that bothers them. Some people call it an addiction, but that begs the question of what it does for them. What does it do for them? Why is it more important than people?

And this is not just about gaming, but any other activity that gets people to stay for hours and hours a day doing the same thing. Maybe like, oh, I don’t know…. fluthering???