Children are typically better off than adults in the sense that they are given permission to play for its own sake & groups of natural peers to do that with. Adults often need pretexts like “I am sitting on this plane for a long trip to do some business, & the person next to me is bound there too, so we might as well have an engaging conversation while we are here.” It helps adults if they can be given some subtle structural pretext for engagement. I’m getting better at X, or I’m getting stories to share, or I’m making a valuable connection, or I’m staying hip to what’s new & popular… Nowadays most adults as pros seemed focused on how to get cred for helping defeat some NN target while most adults as individuals focus on how to confound the pro spies trying to manage & harm them. Does in-game chat reflect an interest in avoiding surveillance? If so, how?

Also, inside of games, these type of loot look different:
a) tokens/status that require a lot of game play
b) tokens/status that can be bought with coin
c) knowledge of in game lore
d) real-time game play skill
e) social community status

Something that focused on positive side of e) without aggressive negatives could be a kind of adult socializing.