Hi my name is Daniel, and I am an addict.
*insert claps and back pats and 'good for you's here*
Games cause me to waste a significant porion of my life. Give or take, ten maybe 15 years. I agree that you can learn some good skills from it. I can create and optomise a system like you wouldn't believe (strat game player rts/civ etc mainly) But Whether those skills are really proportional to the time wasted is debatable.
I had just as many good reasons as some above have laid out. 'its only a couple of hours a day', 'it's just to relax' , 'I am not really -that- into them'
If you only play 1hr a day that equals 365 hours a year. Thats more than 8 x 40 hour working weeks. If you stopped playing computer games you just gained yourself two months holiday...
The bottom line is, while I felt 'satisfied' by gaming, like eating maccas, I was hungry several minutes later, and back into it again. It made me irritable, all I could think about was the game and my productivity was reduced to almost 0.
From age 15 to my early twenties I was fiercly entrepreneurial, and set to do great things with my life, then I got into gaming, and all my aspirations and ambitions outside of my day job, which I needed to keep to pay for my pc and internet, faded almost completely.
Then maybe 8 months ago I deleted my games and put the CD's in the furthest reaches of my wardrobe. (couldn't bring myself to throw them out yet)
Since then, I have gotten my coaching license, started a company (raised 150k in funds for it), changed jobs, started several online businesses, and several offline ones, improved my Japanese significantly, improved all my relationships significantly, increased my income... I could go on all day.
I can't touch the things or I can't stop. I installed neverwinter nights two a month ago and the cycle restarted again. I had to delete it, and all my bookmarks to gaming forums etc. and just get away from it.
On the upside, the same addictive qualities are now directed back towards entrepreneurialism, and I am getting very successful there.