Despite my other comment in this thread I strongly agree with this! I have "stupid" schemes and do "useless" side projects purely for their own sake and for my own enjoyment, and I am very happy with them. Those things are expressed freely, and never came from a cave.

But I think this article is for people who may not be introspective and self-aware enough to know the difference between private, self-satisfied enjoyment and private, self-inflicted suffering. Some people fool themselves into thinking they do something for the joy of it, and remain unsatisfied, because they harbor higher hopes they never admit to themselves.

For Rimworld: some people like making hyperoptimized minmax colonies for their own satisfaction (haven't played it myself, but I do play Factorio so I get it). But you can imagine that some people who _think_ they play for fun, but also really want the validation of posting their killbox on Reddit and having people acknowledge how good it is, and if they don't get that then they retreat to their cave and work on an even "better" colony, and maybe this one will be the one that people will praise [0, maybe? looked for an example]. And so they get wrapped up in a whole meta-argument about their playstyle and how they choose to enjoy the game and can't just simply... enjoy it?

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/1v0nwg4/alright_y...