That's a good point about the hand-eye coordination, but on the other hand, it turns a lot of kids into mouth-breathing droolers, so I'm not quite sure about the trade off. :)

It's funny how the skill of operating a game pad has exactly zero use elsewhere in life; whereas doing crossword puzzles (writing and thinking) and reading obituraries (reading and thinking) are. It's all a matter of perspective, but muscle memory on a game pad seems a lot less important to me than reading, writing, and thinking. So I'll stick with crossword puzzles, obituaries, and games that don't require a gamepad, thank you very much.

Punitive time wasters are there to extend the amount of time you play the game to make you *think* that you've enjoyed the game for a long time. It's a way to make the game seem longer than it actual is, and to conserve resources that might be spent writing content for the next time-wasting game. I am very into games where there is an extended storyline rather than a grind, and it's one of the reasons that MMOs didn't work for me for very long.