Your relationship example is more about dependency or addiction which you see in game reward techniques to keep players leveling up. Standard fare where there's

Your relationship example is more about dependency or addiction which you see in game reward techniques to keep players leveling up. Standard fare where there's a subscription model. This is the other side; more fraudulent than evil. He summed it up in the first paragraph; make it so the player has insufficient information to make an informed [investment] decision.