I read a story set in that world, and it makes me crazy that they're using muscle power rather than burning the food.

It's possible to limit the level of time sink involved in playing video games; you just have to pick the right game and the right play schedule.

My best example: Civilization IV multiplayer. Since there's a limited number of things you can do on any given turn, and since the multiplayer can be done asynchronously, everyone can simply agree to a rule like "we play one turn each morning and one each night", and then (after a single synchronous night getting past all the ultra-short initial turns) there's no way to spend more than 30 minutes or so a day on the game. Granted, each game takes a few months...

And Civ IV is at least as interesting and instructive as the Prisoners' Dilemma simulations investigated here recently. It's been years since I played, and I still have fond memories of teaching a friend that "Let's all gang up on the guy in first place" is not a safe strategy to share with someone who's in second place but who's thinking more than one step ahead.

I'd also say that multiplayer games are a good way to socialize, which is important, but there is the caveat that you have to learn to separate your impressions of someone as a person from your impressions of them as a player. I'm far more trustworthy in real life than as a player in games where "betrayal" is a possible strategy, for example, and I've known people for whom the opposite was tragically true.