Nah, the multiplayer storytelling is attractive and fun, not potent. Games are so potent these days because they optimize every psychological tricks known and discovered through social media and web games (Farmville) in the early 2010s.
Publishers, developers have leveraged that knowledge and it is lucrative as hell with generations who don’t know anything else.
GaaS is just Pachinko business. Buy tokens, get into the slot machine vibe, boom. All the spectacular numbers we hear about gaming today are thanks to whales that we exploit nurture as much as possible.
Games haven’t changed much if at all in twenty years. But gaming has, dramatically.