I don't think I play to distract myself from life, at least not often.
I also don't think I play games to maintain mental health... actually probably it moves me in the opposite direction, when I play sometimes I get too focused and forget about e.g. taking out the trash for weeks. (doesn't happen often either)
Also I don't think I am addicted at all... I usually rarely play to be honest, I don't have the time and usually I don't have the drive to do it nowadays; but now and then I get really interested in one given game (and usually it is not a new game or anything, but one of the several games I bought in the last years and kept collecting dust until just that day) and then I get absorbed into it for weeks. In this way it feels similar to a book for me.
I really don't play online games, so it is not "staying on touch" with friends in that regards. I admit two or three decades ago "staying in touch" may have been part of it, but from the point of view of sharing thoughts about the stuff we were playing.
The most likely reason is that it is just a hobby... but there's also nostalgia in it, and by the day the nostalgia side of it grows larger and eats more and more into the hobby side. But even today it is more like it's just a hobby.
PS:
I also don't think I play games to maintain mental health... actually probably it moves me in the opposite direction, when I play sometimes I get too focused and forget about e.g. taking out the trash for weeks. (doesn't happen often either)
I think perhaps the meaning of "opposite direction of maintaining mental health" is not clear from the example of not taking out the trash for weeks... I guess something like "become slightly socially dysfunctional" would be a better explanation of what I mean, "not taking the trash for weeks" is a good example for me, but you could probably also say "not going out of home for days" (the home office era also helps to this) or really experiencing a downgrade in verbal communication capabilities... this is actually embarrassing but I may sound like a caveman trying to speak for the first hour of human interaction after a very focused gaming day.... anyway, that's what I meant by "opposite direction".