My roommate wanted to be a professional League of Legends player.
At first he would miss or come late to work because his game hadn't ended. Then he got fired.
Instead of getting upset, he saw this as relief. He'd heard that the best gamers practice 10 hours a day and was worried that he wouldn't make it if he wasn't practicing as hard.
When he still didn't have a new job by the end of the month, I covered his rent so that we didn't get evicted. Then I told him that he needed to get a job ASAP.
He didn't, though. He was too damn addicted to that video game.
Every now and then he would realize it and uninstall the game. Then, by about noon, he'd announce, "Well, I've proven that I can stop playing any time I like. There's no sense in proving it any further, so I'm going to go reinstall it."
His bedroom got so filled with trash and clothes that it spilled into the hallway. He lived off ordered pizzas because he didn't want to leave the computer. At one point, he gave his guitar - which is his most prized possession - to our landlord because he didn't have money for rent and knew I was getting fed up with covering him.
It took four months of him being unemployed before I moved out. By that time, he owed me about $3000. He actually tried to stay in that house with a new roommate, but of course got kicked out within a week because nobody else would put up with him.
I get that the new generation wants to call playing video games a "sport". But here's the thing with sports: you move around. You become healthier and more physically fit. You develop social skills. You learn to work on a team.
When you play video games competitively, you might go professional. About 10 people make their living on it, I think. Although all of those people are going to obsolete and out-of-work as soon as the popular game changes.
And if you're not getting paid, you're just destroying your health and wasting the opportunity to learn actually useful skills.
We shouldn't be raising acceptance of gaming as a sport. We should be reinforcing the stigma against it.