Yet not all video games are like this. A new story-centered game, for instance, often requires some amount of time and mental effort to get into the story, so it's not trivially available. It also won't keep you hooked forever - you might not ever return to it after you've beaten it once.
I note that your original comment started off as reasonable, mentioning that you avoid certain classes of video games. Yet at the end, you seemed to be saying that all video games are "devourer's of life's potential", which is overstating the case quite a bit.
I think Facebook and their ilk are much greater time-sinks and motivation-system-hijackers, and try to make the effort to consciously disengage myself from them in order to subject myself to some quality entertainment instead, if that's what my brain seems to crave at the time. I maintain that the right games qualify as such a substitute, though I admit that I haven't played very many video games in several years. (Mostly I haven't had the energy to look for good ones.)
Many of us enjoy expressing ourselves through electronic games. As such, I feel that this aspect of our lives should be shared among our fellow gamers in the LessWrong community.
Video games are a great way to reduce compartmentalization and learn real-world rationality skills. Indeed, what brings us together at LessWrong can often be our love of games; someone in the LessWrong community without this advantage might find learning rationality difficult. In this light, outreach into the transhumanist/rationalist community to promote gaming is low-hanging fruit for serving the future of humanity.
Please consider this post a unique opportunity to begin discussion of this important issue and facilitate further debate in the near future.