F2P games can absolutely be made to exploit the same mechanics as real gambling, and are often designed to do so. But no matter what they do, they're just not as potent as real money gambling. The pull isn't the same when it's not done with real cash, they tend to be less ruthless and it seems that a smaller proportion of people is potentially susceptible to F2P addiction compared to real gambling. For the right people, they can be very wallet-draining but it doesn't seem many go into homelessness like with gambling.

What's a "TV shopping network addiction"? I tried searching it, and I can only find isolated news articles from 5-15 years ago that report on it purely because of how unusual this is. Going to file this under 'people can get behaviorally addicted to anything', what a strange example. Do you even know anyone who has bought anything from a TV shopping network, let alone a 'significant number' that are left destitute?

The reason why people disagree with you is because the hair-splitting between different types of addictions seems very pedantic. Clearly people think that gambling addiction is not even on the same scale of addiction than the other examples. If F2P games are cocaine, then gambling is heroin. There is a reason why gambling is taking over Western economies so rapidly, but not any of those other things - it's just too good at exploiting people's brains. So when gambling addiction is so potent that it goes off the chart compared to any of the dozens of other things that can be psychologically addictive, people aren't particularly interested in finding the exact point where it's too much for society to bear - they just know that gambling is far beyond that point.

> I have heard that boating and aviation have similar financial financial outcomes to gambling.

But is that because you're betting at the repair shop to pull a mint condition replacement engine for your plane, or because people find a way in by paying a bearable upfront cost and then find themselves drowning in unexpected additional expenses associated with these hobbies far beyond the price of a boat or plane? To me it seems like the second one, so it's not a very useful comparison to gambling, it's just a lack of knowledge, foresight and financial literacy.

The gambling industry keeps refining their strategies all the time, new technologies have been a godsend to them. So I wouldn't rely on statistics all too much, because their goal is to use all psychological tricks that can be exploited in our brains to make us make the wrong decision and head down that path. Their effectiveness increases, and so are the depths to which they can get people to sink in their addictions. If you can engage with it safely right now, that is no predictor of how you'll react to the state of gambling in 3, 5 or 10 years. It's like as if the alcohol industry was allowed to invent brand new drugs and sell them without any oversight, targeting maximum potency and addiction and constantly refining their formulations.

Not at all in comparison to gambling, and the F2P model is a scourge which gamers themselves pointed out was poisonous. Regulation has increasingly been catching up to it.

We have an entire science built around gambling, and we know how to titrate the payoffs and reward schedules to get people increasingly addicted.

Our movies/stories aren’t actively (yet) changing themselves to maximize their ability to keep you pressing coins into a slot, or when to string you along.