You're completely right. Game playing is shit.
However - the truth is that they're based on observations of human behaviour. Men do prefer to pursue women, women generally prefer to be pursued by a man they're interested in. We go off people who we perceive as too needy. We're more interested in people with a little mystique. It's natural.
So given all these things, it makes sense to have a set of guidelines on how to navigate the world of dating, to optimise your chances of finding someone decent and keeping them. So people play games.
From my observations on here, women do it far more than men do. We're more reactive, instinctive, unplanned. We respond strongly to short term stimuli and don't really have a plan.
Men don't love bitches, we just go off women who are too needy, clingy, desperate or trying to please, because we seek a challenge worth conquering. As ridiculous as that sounds. We want to be the only one who can charm that particular woman, who can seduce that one. We want to know that we've won someone worth winning.
And people play games to make that appear to be the case. But playing games too obviously also puts people off.
A woman messaged me the other night and we got into a fairly short discussion. She asked me if I thought she'd had plastic surgery on her boobs. I demurred answering, and referenced something else we'd talked about. She said she was proud they were real and she hadn't had surgery. I thought 'Jesus, this is like talking to a teenager with no social skills whatsoever, just trying to verbally thrust her tits in my face and hope they work to make me interested'
Don't get me wrong, I'm a bloke. I have triggers, same as the next bloke. But if you treat me like a moron, I'll assume you are too.