Technology

I don't want to be all old man yells at cloud, but back in my day popular games were played a lot because they were primarily enjoyable for the story, the achievement of completing a particular level or boss, playing against friends, etc. And sure, you'd have the odd bad parent trying to claim their kid was addicted to Counterstrike 1.6, but it was broadly speaking nonsense. The vast majority of games were offline, or had very limited online modes built around direct competition with other players (FPS, sports games, etc), and publishers would get all their money from the initial sale, with only a few games having expansion packs, most notable The Sims.

But in the early 2010s a few things changed:

• broadband internet became ubiquitous in markets with high levels of existing gamers
• distribution of games swapped from physical media to downloads
• 'everyone' had a pretty powerful computer in their pocket making it much more accessible
• a bunch of people in the industry started reading about positive psychology - the idea that you can create habits through rewards - and apply them to video games to increase playtime
• those mechanics turned out to be very powerful in driving particular user behaviours, and started to be targeted at monetisation models - and so we got loot boxes, etc

So we went from a situation where video games were fun for the same reasons traditional games, or sports, are fun, to one where many video games include a lot of gambling mechanics in their core gameplay loops - loot boxes being the obvious one, but any lottery-based mechanic where you spend real money counts - in an industry with no relevant regulation, nor age limitation.

It is definitely possible for people to get addicted to these mechanics, the same way people can get addicted to casino games, or betting on horse racing, especially when for some games that is literally what the developer wants.