vi was written long before any video game ever, and the arrow keys on the ADM-3A terminal that Bill Joy used in 1976 were actually on the hjkl keys, so it made sense at the time.
Interesting! I can imagine it would be quite a bit more intuitive with the arrows written there. It almost makes it seem like the touted benefit of having these keys on the home row is essentially ad-hoc reasoning, and maybe this 35-year-old design decision should be re-visited since even keyboard manufacturers realized this was not the best system decades ago.
https://catonmat.net/why-vim-uses-hjkl-as-arrow-keys