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I agree; is the premise here that audiovisual spectacle of opening the box in the video game somehow compounds the problem? Or that there's some manipulation of scarcity or something? The "core mechanic" seems exactly the same.

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I think the issue is the lower barrier of access. Every small step added to the process discourages the use: get driven to the store, walking to the counter, talking to the employee, physically pulling money out of your pocket, physically seeing how much money you have left.

All of those contribute to making it more difficult to buy cards.

Loot boxes, on the other hand, is much easier. Once you store your credit card info, all you have to do is press a button or two.

This is the general idea Nudge Theory (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory#:~:text=Nudge%2....) when shaping behavior.

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