The reward you get from a (well designed) game is both nearly immediate and directly related to the work you put into it. Additionally there is just enough randomness to create realism but critically not so much as to create the feeling of unfairness.
Compensation from work is much more distantly related to performance. A salaried or hourly person gets the same pay per time period regardless of being more productive than average or not.
Additionally that compensation is money which as at least one step removed from the actual reward.
And sometimes that reward is using the money to buy time off which is apparently a contradiction and requires complex understanding to justify the whole point of work. Games don't have profound contradictions in this category.
Also work compensation is sometime unfair paying inept or unproductive people who are good at office politics. Games obviously can't be unfair in this way.
Sometimes the rewards are immensely remote such as retirement. Game rewards often occur within seconds or at most hours.
Some rewards are just avoiding improbable miseries such as paying for an illness (if you have the misfortune to live in a society where this is a worry). Disasters in games are always no only unbelievable or impersonal but often humors eg minecraft's creeper or sim city's flood. No popular game has you grinding hard to save money just in case you become unemployable due to depression or cancer.
Compensation from work is much more distantly related to performance. A salaried or hourly person gets the same pay per time period regardless of being more productive than average or not.
Additionally that compensation is money which as at least one step removed from the actual reward.
And sometimes that reward is using the money to buy time off which is apparently a contradiction and requires complex understanding to justify the whole point of work. Games don't have profound contradictions in this category.
Also work compensation is sometime unfair paying inept or unproductive people who are good at office politics. Games obviously can't be unfair in this way.
Sometimes the rewards are immensely remote such as retirement. Game rewards often occur within seconds or at most hours.
Some rewards are just avoiding improbable miseries such as paying for an illness (if you have the misfortune to live in a society where this is a worry). Disasters in games are always no only unbelievable or impersonal but often humors eg minecraft's creeper or sim city's flood. No popular game has you grinding hard to save money just in case you become unemployable due to depression or cancer.