Im playing Bloodborne right now and its 2-4 hours a day just because of how the game is made. I will die horribly and just put the game away for the day.
Other games, like Minecraft, is just a co-op sandbox. A social hangout. All it needs is a treadmill, and its good enough for me.
You are correct that games like Bloodborne and Minecraft won't be a problem for most people, but for some they certainly will be. Any game that can be described as fun for some segment of the population will also be addictive to a small subset, because the same qualities that make it fun make it addictive to some people.
For the sandbox part, I spent many sleepless nights during week days to Starbound, which is basically 2d Minecraft.
My point is, taste really matters and even non-exploitative games can be addictive. I'm never known as a hardcore gamer who spends half his life playing video games btw.
There are a lot of aspects to it but I think the biggest one is just that video games are ridiculously stimulating compared to other activities. I have similar issues with TV shows now that binge watching entire seasons or shows at a time is easy, and with browsing certain parts of the internet like Reddit and HN.
Going from having your brain being heavily stimulated to being less stimulated or not stimulated at all is hard. It doesn't feel good. That's why it's hard to not "just watch one more episode" or "just play one more game" even though I know it's not going to be just one more.
The desire to avoid understimulation bleeds over into many aspects of your life. It's hard to writing the next part of your CRUD app when you could be scrolling through Reddit comments. It's even hard to read a book or play guitar, which I know I will enjoy, when I could be doing something more stimulating instead.
The article is about WHO including videogame addiction in ICD as a mental health state, and the submission title should reflect that.
