I lean toward “efficient entertainment”, but I do sometimes wonder what that chunk of my free time would look like otherwise.
I can see some indie games as being easy to pick up and put down without a huge time commitment.* However, we shouldn’t discount the fact that a lot of games today, especially some of the “AAA” types, are purposedly designed to be addictive.
*Despite being a small indie game, Cracktorio Factorio will ruin your life. The factory must grow.
Bigger games can also be quick. A match of rocket league is like 10 minutes. There’s no story so you can pick it up and put it down whenever you want.
We also live in the golden age of indie games anyways, plenty of smaller quality games that don’t demand all of your life. I haven’t played a AAA game in ages. The biggest games I currently play are league of legends and that’s cause I started when it was an indie company before it became AAA and ff14 and I only do ff14 like 3 hours a week or so with my fiancee cause she loves it.