Read the Wikipedia article on them. It's a large section.

I just noticed that all my interaction with HN always takes place at the bottom of the page :-)

In the near future I could easily imagine most games involving you interacting with an AI.

I've wondered why, and what societal shifts in the world led us here. Maybe the "violent video games cause harm" narrative didn't work out in practice because the types of console video games that tend to become popular don't have the harmful engagement elements being talked about now? Propaganda as a concept has existed far longer than video games. But mere depictions of violence don't incite behavioral change in the way that "social optimization" elements do?

(Example: treating lootbox items not as bits of fictional lore the player's hero character finds in mythical dungeons, but as a set of items the person playing has invested their real-world shillings into according to predefined economic rules set by the designers, such that their livelihood becomes enmeshed with the game world)

Yes.