I was debating whether or not to share this, since I am normally pretty reserved, but the SoT community and RARE both seem like groups of people who would be interested to hear how the game is helping to do good things in people's real lives, not just their gaming lives, so I decided to share this little "tale" from my own life.
I have been smoking around 10-20 cigarettes a day for nearly 20 years now. Recently, it's been harder and harder for me to keep it that "low" even as the effects on my health become more and more obvious. At the same time, there's a growing level of self-disgust over not being able to quit. After my enjoyment of the second Scale Test, I found myself more eager to continue playing than I have been for much of anything in years. So I decided to take a crazy gamble. I have been deliberately over-hyping my own excitement for Sea of Thieves, and channeling all of that enthusiasm into motivation to quit smoking. I've gotten my roommate (lovely chap) to agree to pre-order the game for me if I am able to go one full week without any tobacco before release day. There have been a few stumbling blocks along the way, but more or less overnight I've gone from 100-ish cigarettes a week to just five, and if all goes well Thursday the 8th will be day five of no tobacco.
So yeah, to be clear, RARE has made such a great game that I am legit using it as a motivation to defeat a two decade long nicotine addiction. I think that pretty much speaks for itself. Thanks for reading!