You jump to regulation as the only thing to solve this? You could just not play those games. There's literally thousands upon thousands of alternatives that don't do this.
I would equate trying to regulate against "sustained gameplay" to trying to regulate/force timeouts in all basketball games, tennis games, etc. It's absurd.
I think vice laws aim to accomplish good but needlessly limit freedom. More importantly, I think comparing gaming to addictive substances seems very naive.
If people were all reasonable all the time we wouldn’t need laws that prohibit them from driving under influence, stealing or plain murdering people.
If excessive sports and exercise were a problem on any large scale, I would advocate for regulation, too. My feeling however is that people rather tend to need incentives for exercising at all, so I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Freedom is not absolute if you are living as part of a society.
I don't think anyone proposed imposing regulation on the consumer, only on the provider. There is a lot of regulation on that side already, and some of it is actually rather welcomed.
For example, if I compare the amount of advertisement that TV channels are allowed to show in Germany vs. in the US, I am certainly for regulation... (back when I still cared about television)
I agree on that comparison. Since I regularly consume an american TV show as part of a community, I get to see the ads too. For the 20 minute episode, there is 10 minutes of ads, just over 1 minute each 2 or 3 minutes, roughly.
The same episode on german TV has three ad interruptions. One 5 minute one in the middle, a overlay ad about 5 minutes before the end and a zoom out during the credits showing ads to the side (the later two circumvent the normal limit of ads per hour and spacing requirements.)