I... wouldn't describe my AvP experience as particularly "zen".
Anyway I see these two videos as mostly unrelated to each other. The first one (which could be half shorter : I skipped after a while when his imagined future got a bit too long, too repetitive, too scifi) is about the explicit use of gratification, which is already one of the major tools to shape our habits (both actions and thoughts). We function on peer encouragement and discouragement, since our parents scolded us for putting in our mouth whatever we found on the floor. Even the super rebels amongst us worry about the opinion of their own rebel teams, it's only a matter of reference points. So, being perpetually congratulated by a machine ("well done", "awesome", "you're great", "achieved this") is just an extension of this. Heck, it even works on physical panels (making you feel good about washing your hands, using dustbins, picking up your dog's poo).
And of course, it's used a lot in propaganda (we're you're congratulated for your opinions) and advertisement (where you're praised or thanked for buying that). One of the mechanisms of advertisement consist in alleviating consumer guilt. Encouraging self-indulgence, sometimes by turning around the notion of "sin" and "temptation", or sometimes by providing excuses ("this is good for your heath, in a way", "this helps a cause, you hero", etc). And game achievements play that role precisely. They reverse the stigma and guilt of wasting ridiculous time on pixels, by perpetually congratulating you for that. "Great job, you clicked there for hours, what life achievement, be happy with yourself". And then, within this endorsed system, adding the social elements for some (competitively bragging, praising/shaming each others for having earned so many/not as many congratulations), although I imgine that, for most people, the machine's warm voice is way sufficient.
But it's a different matter than the skinner pacing of rewards (in slot machines, etc). It can be combined with it, but behavioural symbolic gratification is a thing in itself, independant from that. It doesn't need to be rea-time. And just having a subculture which values validate your habits (and disqualifies the other subculture's validations) is enough to shape behaviours, thought habits and sensitivities. The reminders that you are awesome-for-making-this don't need to occure in real time. Achievements can be checked after the gaming sessions, and make you feel good about it just as well.
So, nothing extremely revolutionary in these technologies. We simply have more and more objects congratulating us for going a certain path, but there is no real difference between a processor or a poster. We also, through networking, find more easily the gratifying subcultures that are most convenient to us, but the vicious circles stay random and not much different in nature than the ones we're born in.
It's still nice to stay critically aware of these processes where they seem so natural, so merged with the environment, or so innocuous. Our myths of heroic self-determinations tend to obfuscate these phenomenons too much. And the less aware we are of them, the more intensely we're subject to them.
