That's exactly how the game companies view the people who play their Skinner's box simulato-- their games. They deliberately design their games like this. They use the same psychological terminology. They design "reward schedules". They wire the reward button to the player's credit card and make players compete to see who can press it more.
> It amazes me that people keep going with the game like they can't see the little mouse maze they're in.
Yeah, addiction sucks. The games are designed to form habits in players via the almighty timers. I've been down that rabbit hole before, there were people in my gaming groups who literally set up alarms at 3 AM in order to do little bullshit daily game tasks. They exist precisely to get players addicted to the rewards. You can spend hundreds of dollars on a mobile game before you realize the truths I described above.
A sufficiently addicted player is indistinguishable from a bot. It's not that hard to write one and they can't detect it statistically because of their own progression rate limits. Bots are an excellent treatment for addiction to these exploitative games.
You could take money out of the equation, for an example like amateur chess. To get good you have to practice. Practice takes time. Time is finite. Why does some crazy good amateur haches player bother to I c’est so much time to get that good? For some arbitrary score on chess.com, but why? Because they enjoy it, even if it’s another hamster wheel.
I don't think the chess example really works because playing chess can be fun all by itself. Paying money for avoiding waiting in a game can't reasonably be considered to be an end in itself.