I argue it has a hidden gambling aspect with raids. Most of the desirable pokemon comes from raids, and of course you want desirable stats. There are about 3 levels of gambling here that get people hooked in:
1. Catching the pokemon at all. There is only a probability with each throw that the ball catches the pokemon
2. Getting good stats. It's easy to get mediocre stats from the raid pokemon, which are randomly generated and not known unitl catch time.
3. Getting a shiny. It's something like a 5% chance from a raid that the pokemon will be shiny. And of course you don't know until after you spend your raid pass.
Niantic gives you only 1 free raid pass a day, so in order to get more chances at shinies and good stat pokemon you need to spend money.
These are really good points, I'd forgotten about the shinnies and the stats. I was always less concerned with stats because I would usually get one that was good enough. However, I knew people that had to get the latest shiny when it came out. Some of the shinnies would only appear in eggs too, so you would need to hatch a lot to have a good chance of getting one. Thinking about it more, the game definitely does seem to have some hidden gambling aspects in it.
1. Catching the pokemon at all. There is only a probability with each throw that the ball catches the pokemon 2. Getting good stats. It's easy to get mediocre stats from the raid pokemon, which are randomly generated and not known unitl catch time. 3. Getting a shiny. It's something like a 5% chance from a raid that the pokemon will be shiny. And of course you don't know until after you spend your raid pass.
Niantic gives you only 1 free raid pass a day, so in order to get more chances at shinies and good stat pokemon you need to spend money.