I feel like mobile gaming is Facebook at a smaller scale but 10x worse...not only are they trying to hook you but the hook is actively extracting money from you.
Both prey on our increased dependency on an instant dopamine release.
In the movie,The Insider (1999) a Big Tobacco CEO says "We are in the nicotine delivery business", substituting nicotine to dopamine and you have your Tencent and Facebook. They now are increasingly targeting women for social media gaming.
[0]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-31/fueled-by...
you are right. there was an interesting discussion on 'lootboxes' couple of days ago on HN..