"His theories are based around the work of BF Skinner, who discovered you could control behavior by training subjects with simple stimulus and reward. He invented the "Skinner Box," a cage containing a small animal that, for instance, presses a lever to get food pellets. Now, I'm not saying this guy at Microsoft sees gamers as a bunch of rats in a Skinner box. I'm just saying that he illustrates his theory of game design using pictures of rats in a Skinner box."
Well duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhh. Life itself is a skinner box. Do work to earn money. Kill an animal to get food. Do something to get a reward. SCIENCE!
"There's nothing crazy about it. After all, people pay thousands of dollars for diamonds, even though diamonds do nothing but look pretty. A video game suit of armor looks pretty and protects you from video game orcs. In both cases you're paying for an idea."
Fail analogy is fail. Blizzard doesn't allow the trading of cash for virtual goods in WoW. You can get banned for it. They do charge for some in-game items, but that money goes to..... *drumroll* a good cause. It may be different for other games, but heck, if the people playing it want to pay more money for virtual items, let them. It's their hobby.
"They call these "Variable Ratio Rewards" in Skinner land and this is the reason many enemies "drop" valuable items totally at random in WoW. This is addictive in exactly the same way a slot machine is addictive. You can't quit now because the very next one could be a winner. Or the next. Or the next."
So? By killing a load of mobs during a quest you're likely to pick up a few greens that aren't of any use to you. Just sell them in the Auction House and use the gold to buy the item you want. If you're farming items, you know which mobs drop them, so you just keep killing and killing until you get the amount you want. You might have a break half-way through, go to work, eat dinner, go to sleep, etc. You can just pick up where you left off. It's more of a test of patience than an "I can't stop now!!!!!!!" addiction. People with a different hobby will spend hours on one small thing (like putting together an intricately-designed model ship mast) and it's okay! But I guess if someone spends that time on a gaming hobby it's an addiction. Yeah. Obviously some people take it too far, but that happens with any hobby, whether it's gaming, football, golf, building a car kit, or even stamp collecting. Gaming is not some special case.
"Why is your mom obsessively harvesting her crops in Farmville? Because they wither and rot if she doesn't. In Ultima Online, your house or castle would start to decay if you didn't return to it regularly. In Animal Crossing, the town grows over with weeds and your virtual house becomes infested with cockroaches if you don't log in often enough. It's the crown jewel of game programming douchebaggery--keep the player clicking and clicking and clicking just to avoid losing the stuff they worked so hard to get."
That has some merit, but if you stop playing for a while then you've likely lost interest anyway. Getting things back to normal when you play again is surely part of the game. Using WoW as an example... nothing is lost if you're logged off for a long time, as long as you've got no items in your mailbox or at the auction house. Instead you GAIN double exp rewards by being logged off in a city or inn.
"The beauty of it is it lets games use the tedium to their advantage. As we discussed elsewhere, there's a "work to earn the right to play" aspect of World of Warcraft, where you grind or "farm" for gold for the right to do the cool stuff later. The tedious nature of the farming actually adds to the sense of accomplishment later. And it also helps squash any sense of guilt you might have had about neglecting school, work or household chores to play the game. After all, you did your chores--the 12 hours you spent farming for gold last Tuesday was less fun than mowing the fucking lawn. Now it's time for fun."
Except you don't need to farm for 12 hours to enjoy the game. You don't need to work to be able to play. You can jump in, do a few quests, a couple of dungeons, and join an entry-evel raiding guild so you can get geared up. Simply playing the game normally gives you rewards. I only ever farm items when I know there's a substantial amount of gold involved (e.g. Tangy Clam Meat at 130g per stack), and yes it's boring, but as I said before, it's a test of patience, not a matter of addiction. I can have a break, do something else, watch a movie, eat dinner, and go back to it later. Just like building a model ship.
TL;DR - Gaming is just like any other hobby. Some people take it too far, but that's not the fault of the hobby. That's the fault of the person.
