If you go in an online casino and try to find the most video game like gambling game, probably you'll end up playing slots.
Slots have nice animations, sometimes even feature very well drawn and animated characters etc.
The issue is that they're very repetitive. So I wouldn't call them a video game.
Now with crypto, there have been many attempts to create actual video games that tie with spending money.
You could call it gambling also. Some notable examples like Axie Infinity and Mir2 have integrated the NFT element with some success.
Other games have had success with in-game cash based purchases for years. See for example:
10 Most Expensive In-Game Items Ever SoldYou'll notice that most of these is Entropia Universe... Maybe you'll enjoy this short documentary-like video about Entropia Universe then:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTPLp5u3iSUEntropia has largely been compared to gambling, although the publisher denies it. Yet they're quite successful at getting money from their player base. And it's a real game. You're free to interact within the game, although to do anything enjoyable you'd have to fork over a lot of cash.
So my questions is, if casinos see this, why don't they try to invest some money into developing actually playable video games? Stake is investing a ton of money on a game streaming platform for instance, seemingly trying to draw that crowd. Maybe a different casino could draw even more people with a decent game. Don't you think?
Personally, I had the experience of switching from playing roulette to computer games.
I used computer games to overcome gambling addiction. I succeeded. Personally, I came to the conclusion that gambling and video games are different types of human activity. It is possible that when playing roulette and video games, a person even uses different parts of the brain. In the first case, the main thing is excitement, in the second, orientation on the terrain and the visual component.
Therefore, most likely, the managers of online casinos consciously made this decision. They do not want the visual component to distract players from betting.