It's absolutely a game.

I spent most of my college years doinking around with hacker wargames and trying to hack kernel code, albeit not well. I didn't get graded on that but rather on how well I could put together a resume or whatever.

I realized at that time that my "grades" would suffer if I didn't "work" harder at it but I made a conscience decision to hack more. I did as much as was required to graduate and did what I wanted the rest of the time.