Challenging gaming

There has to be some challenge in everything we humans do otherwise we end up falling into the habit of not thinking about anything, never challenging ourselves and therefore never achieving anything. So what do you do when a game doesn't offer any challenge to you anymore? The most logical and often occurrence is that you simply quit the game and go find another one which stimulates the mind to a greater degree then the prior game did. O.o

The other option which some of you might have tried is to make up challenges for yourself, such as fighting battles naked (Thats a popular one) try and collect an insane about of junk, or just grind one a single mob for 24 hours nonstop. Often these impossible challenges signify that it is definitely time to drop the game, but if the developer offered rewards for these ridiculous achievements then I'm sure many people would do them and so continue playing. And yet I am sure that many developers are doing this; rewarding players for doing stupid insane tasks, but why don't they ever reward the player for doing something that requires greater skill/intelligence.

We've heard that the average age of a gamer in today's world is something like in the low 30s. If this is true then it seems incredible that the reward-for-insane-tasks kind of things still exist, I mean, maybe young kids with nothing to do will gladly destroy their brains performing monotonous tasks for long periods of time, but for low 30s?? I think Tobold had the idea of a dungeon that included trivia questions as a part of the boss encounter and its an intriguing idea. MMORPGs have real trouble in including skill as a major part of their game so instead they could go all out of intelligence. Strategic thinking and logical problems would not only add another dimension to the challenges in the game as well as benefiting gamers.

Is it such a horrible idea that gamers would reject; having to think on a reasonably deep level in a game? Perhaps so, considering the fact that we are perfectly happy to sit in front of our computer for 24 hours finishing 12 separate games. We do play games to escape from reality, but surely thinking can come as an exception to this rule.