[eesmith]

I disagree about the addictiveness of earlier games.

I and many others played endless hours of PC games in the 1980s. I remember going through all 150 levels of Lode Runner, for example, and it distracting me from doing other things.

Some kids played so much Pokemon, or Tetris, or other games that their parents took away their Game Boy.

One difference, as this piece mentions, is the direct coupling of the gameplay in many modern games to a wheedling for money from the parents for in-game advancement. That didn't occur 20 years ago. (The Game Boy required batteries or the purchase of a wall adapter, so there was demand for additional money to play, but the coupling wasn't anywhere near as direct as now.)