Yes, there are people who play the game who decide to spend additional time/energy on positive things. But having a limited number of hours per day and a limited number of days per life I'd say it is either or. The time one invests in killing a CEO in Eve is time that can't be spent helping people in Nepal.
And that nobody has to become defensive here: All time spent on that kind of activity is time lost for humanity at all, in my books. It does not mean someone else need to have the same priorities. I can be sad about it without wanting to tell anyone that they need to change their ways. Keep your ways. But allow me to be sad about it.
If you expand this kind of math to the entire day of a typical person, you'd realize that we all should just donate everything we have, live as cheaply as possible and spend every minute not dedicated to sustaining our bodies on helping the poor, hungry and sick. And yes, if everyone did just that, we'd probably solve all problems within a year.
Unfortunately, humans not only just can't coordinate like this (coordination problems are a very sad thing in my book) - they can't mentally endure it. That's why I like the idea of Giving What We Can[0] - just dedicate 10% or more of your income to helping the poor and feel discharged of your basic moral obligation to them. 10% may sound like not much, but people can't handle 100% dedication, and it's better to have them all at 10% than not at all.
If everyone gave 10%, it would immediately be a solved problem. No need to spend every possible minute working. 10% would be so much more than is needed.
Can we be sad about the time you are wasting on HN lecturing us about our game playing?
Everyone needn't be helping the poor 24/7. There's plenty of room for giving of time and money to better causes and also still having some time to relax, play games, and have fun.
working 24/7 is a recipe for burnout. No reason to be sad about people resting a bit from their work.
I understand your point. There have been times when I played "too much" EVE or other games. There have also been times when I worked too much. (In fact, I'm taking a break from work to read a bit of HN, right now at 10:45 local, which is stupid, lol).
In general playing games isn't wasted time for humanity though. We could easily feed and shelter everyone with our current prosperity, without making everyone spend every second of their free time working on the problem. Just needs a bit of money.
Whilst ingame? They do things like this https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/plex-for-good... https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/plex-for-good...