Not entire teams of people scheming addictive manipulation with slot-machine payout rates tuned to precise dopamine chemistries and social networking pressures using models that have been tuned and proven to be frighteningly effective over two decades of experimentation.
I played a machine zone game, thankfully only lost about 60 bucks on that crap between me and my GF, and by then I became wise to what they were doing, and shocked on all the levels of manipulation they were using for what is essentially a nag game that strongly rewards bullying for those people that pay to win.
The history of these games goes back at least to the mid2000s (anyone remember Civony/Evony and "Come Play My Lord" Ads? Those are basically the same game as Machine Zone). They've been honing the various mechanisms (false advertising about what the game entails, grooming whale players, addictive gameplay) using mechanics from civilization, tamagochi, and whatever else works.
Children's mobile games show a shocking amount of manipulative mechanics for the "free with ads" tier which for 90% of people (you know, the ones that aren't rich) will be what they use.
Then again, this is the world they will be living in, so exposure to the manipulation may be good for them in limited doses, but "adult supervision" is more needed than ever.
Modernity presents the superstimuli parent is referring to but removes all the interesting paths into the machine, the better to shear us. If the gameplay was reading O'Reilly books and the lootboxes were full of code snippets, it'd be one thing, but that's not what's happening.
I had the advantage of a few family members already involved with computers, but I remember learning about colour depth with some ridiculous dinosaur game, about bootdisks so I could play Commander Keen, and how not to install X-Wing (don't ask). The act of using the computer was inextricable from learning about how it worked, and that knowledge could be immediately reemployed in more interesting use. I know a west-coast-style guy who works in a brewery and lives for Ultimate Frisbee, but he also understands scripting better than any non-tech person I know because in his youth he was seriously into Diablo 2 and its bot scene.
Contrast this to the modern iPad. No edges to cut yourself on, no seams to pry up, no tacit understanding gained, and the big draw being the meta-TV of YouTube...