When Athletes can play video games use use what they learned to do something better in their lives, is that a waste of time? What if they didn't play any video games, would they have figured out that idea and executed it? No, obviously.
Game Changers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes: https://www.wired.com/2010/01/ff-gamechanger
Random: NASCAR Driver Stuns To Qualify For Championship With GameCube Move: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/10/random-nascar-driver-stuns-to-qualify-for-championship-with-gamecube-move
Two articles that point out uses of ideas that athletes have thought about. A common theme is that they execute the idea many times before actually trying it out.
How about the boy who became a professional racer after playing Gran Turismo a ton.
How Jann Mardenborough went from Gran Turismo on a PlayStation to being a racing driver: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2014/apr/07/video-gaming-jann-mardenborough-motor-racing
The transition from videogame to real-life driving wasn't that difficult
The controls and physics engines in games these days are crazy, they take real-life data from cars and then put them into code so that the way that the car pitches and brakes and the steering input works very well in racing games.
Of course you feel the G-force which you don't in the game, but you're so tightly strapped into the seat, that it's not really an issue.
Play flight simulator games with a flight stick seriously and tell us that you can't apply your now learned careful handling to real life aircraft or even robotics like construction.
There are closed minded idiots out there who don't play video games then make judgement, apply what they learn from video games or even bother to apply themselves to the game to get better. That, I say, is a waste of time. No one is excluded from the idiot designation.