Generally, most of the big live service multiplayer games are social status games which is wise and rewards for them are cosmetics that other players can see and not things that only you can see.

We are not hardwired for this because a lot of people like myself never engage with these games at all. And even if we do, we stay as free players the entire time.

I play games for their interactive story content or their novel mechanics not to show all the other players that I have a solid gold machine gun or whatever the fuck.

As long as you’re confused about who you are as a person and what your role in this world is, I don’t think you can avoid playing these silly games… what else do you have, right? If you can’t feel like part of a larger whole with greater meaning, you might want to feel superior and special in all sorts of superficial ways (because if you were a deeper, wiser human being you wouldn’t entertain this, you’d just do what you think you have to do in this world regardless of optics).

Add some examples of what you are referring. I think that I know what are you saying but I wanna be sure.