Diablo IV is the kind of game that makes sense for someone like Elon Musk, because it rewards obsessive optimization and punishes carelessness in equal measure. You are building characters, chasing loot, and running the same dungeons over and over, but the loop is engineered to feel like progress every single time. Blizzard shipped it with a few rough edges around the economy and endgame balance, and the community made its frustration very clear, very fast. That Musk plays it anyway says something about how deep the hook goes once it gets you. | © Blizzard Entertainment
Super Mario Bros. is the game that completely rewired what people expected from a video game in 1985. Chris Pratt has talked about growing up with Mario, which makes his casting as the character feel less random than it did to most people online. Nintendo built something so clean and repeatable that players have been running the same levels for 40 years without it feeling old. That kind of staying power does not happen by accident. | © Nintendo
Wii Sports turned Elle Fanning into a gamer before most people even knew what motion controls were. The game shipped with the Wii console and basically handed an entire generation their first real sports experience without a single button combo to memorize. Bowling, tennis, and baseball became living room events because anyone could pick up a Wii Remote and immediately feel like they were actually swinging something. Few games have made a room full of non-gamers lose their minds that fast. | © Nintendo
Donkey Kong Country hooked Emma Stone the same way it hooked an entire generation. The game paired pre-rendered graphics that looked almost too good for a cartridge with banana-fueled chaos across jungles, mines, and snowcapped peaks. The barrel cannons, the buddy system with Diddy, and the David Wise soundtrack remains unforgettable. Stone picking this over anything modern says something real about how hard that game latched onto people who grew up with it. | © Nintendo
Halo: Combat Evolved and Megan Fox go way back, all the way to the original Xbox launch and a first-person shooter that rewrote what console action could feel like. The campaign dropped you into a ring-shaped alien world with almost no explanation, and that mystery made everything hit harder. Fox has talked about being a genuine fan, not a casual one, and Halo is exactly the kind of game that turns people into lifers. Once you hear that choir swell on the main theme, you understand why someone never lets it go. | © Microsoft
James McAvoy has been vocal about his love for Call of Duty, which makes sense when you realize he plays characters who thrive under pressure. The original game dropped players into World War II from three different perspectives, which was a fresh angle at the time and gave the series its obsessive replay value from the start. There is something funny about a guy who plays telepaths and villains for a living unwinding by running through European battlefields with a rifle. Call of Duty built the template that shooters are still borrowing from today. | © Activision
Grand Theft Auto V gives you three criminals, one sprawling city, and absolutely no obligation to behave yourself. Millie Bobby Brown apparently loves it, which fits a performer who spends her workdays playing the most controlled, serious character on television. Los Santos rewards chaos, and the game has stayed alive for over a decade because Rockstar built a world that keeps finding new ways to let you wreck it. Few games have that kind of staying power without ever really needing to change what they are. | © Rockstar Games
World of Warcraft did not just ask for your time. It asked for your whole schedule, your social life, and ideally several consecutive nights of sleep. David Harbour has been deep in Azeroth since the early days, raiding dungeons and grinding through content long before most people knew his name. There is something completely unsurprising about the guy who plays loveable, slightly exhausted characters turning out to be a veteran of the most famously all-consuming game ever made. | © Blizzard Entertainment
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order gives Taron Egerton exactly what you would expect to hook him. A scrappy underdog with a lightsaber, running from people far more powerful than him, slowly figuring out how to fight back. The game strips away the usual open-world bloat and tells a tight, character-driven story that actually respects the Star Wars lore. Egerton spent days on the couch with it, and that choice is easy to understand because the combat has a pull that makes one more fight very easy to justify. | © Electronic Arts
Kingdom Hearts is the game Jacob Elordi keeps coming back to, which makes a strange kind of sense. It asks you to run through Disney worlds fighting shadow creatures while a boy with enormous hair searches for his friends, and somehow that premise holds together completely. The combat is fast, the story gets genuinely weird by the end, and the music does things to people they are not prepared for. An actor known for intense teen drama stanning a PlayStation 2 Square Enix and Disney crossover is a wonderful contrast. | © Square Enix
Brendan Fraser's favorite game is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and it fits a performer who spent years quietly working before the world remembered his brilliance. Link wakes up with no memory, no gear, and a massive world that doesn't care how long he's been gone. The game never rushes you toward anything, which is either the most freeing thing Nintendo has ever built or the reason some players bounced off it immediately. Fraser picked a masterpiece. | © Nintendo
BioShock drops you into Rapture, an underwater city built on Ayn Rand philosophy and absolute human ambition, then lets you watch it eat itself alive. Guillermo del Toro has talked about the game like it cracked something open for him, which makes sense given his whole career is built on monsters with meaning. The art deco decay and the audio diaries from people who genuinely believed in something before it destroyed them ground the narrative. Few games build a world that has a real argument at its center. | © 2K Games
Jack Black has made no secret of his love for Red Dead Redemption 2, and it fits him perfectly. The game drops you into a massive, slow-burning Wild West world where you can rob trains, fish at dawn, or just let your horse trot through a snowstorm for no reason. Rockstar built something that rewards patience over speed, and that unhurried quality is exactly what makes it stick with people long after the credits roll. Black doesn't just stream it for content; he actually lives in it. | © Rockstar Games
Henry Cavill has been open about his love for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt long before anyone cast him as Geralt, which makes the whole thing feel less like a coincidence and more like destiny. The game introduces a world soaked in grey morality, where monster contracts and political betrayal sit right next to quiet moments of card games and horse riding. CD Projekt Red built something so dense and lived-in that most players lose weeks before touching the main story. Cavill did not just play a character who fit him; he played the game that proved he already was that character. | © CD Projekt Red
Keanu Reeves plays Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077, a dead rockstar whose ghost takes up permanent residence in your head. But besides starring in the game, Keanu has also said he loves playing it. Now, the launch was a disaster, but CD Projekt Red rebuilt it, and Night City eventually became exactly the sprawling, neon-soaked playground we had originally hoped for. | © CD Projekt Red
Celebrities are just like us; when the workday ends, plenty of them unwind with a controller in hand. From A-listers hooked on shooters to musicians lost in open worlds, some famous names are serious gamers. Here are 15 celebrities and their favorite video games.
