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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
consequences from playing video games. Adolescent brains, however,
have not yet fully developed, so adolescents may act like adults with
brain damage. The biggest difference in the adolescent brain is in the
frontal lobes, which don’t completely develop until their early twenties.
That’s a problem because it’s the frontal lobes that give adults good
judgment. They
act like a brake, warning us when we’re about to do
something that might not be such a good idea. Without fully function-
ing frontal lobes, adolescents act impulsively, and are at greater risk of
making unwise decisions, even when they know better.
There’s more to it than that, though. Video games are more com-
plex than
slot machines, so there are more opportunities for program-
mers to bake in features that trigger dopamine release in order to make
it hard to stop playing.
Video games are all about imagination. They immerse us in a world
where our fantasies can come true, where reality-shunning dopamine
can bask in endless possibilities. We can explore environments that con-
stantly change, ensuring that the surprises never end. We may start off
in the desert, progress to
a rain forest, then a dark alley in a gritty urban
hell, then suddenly we’re on a rocket, hurtling toward an alien world.
Players do more than just explore, though. Video games are about
progress. They’re about making the future better than the present.
Gamers progress through levels while increasing their strength and
abilities. It’s a dopamine dream come true. To keep progress front and
center in a gamer’s mind, the screen constantly
displays the accumulat-
ing points or growing progress bars so players never forget. They have
to keep pursuing
more.
Video games are full of rewards. Gamers collect coins, hunt for
treasure, or maybe capture magic unicorns to progress to the next level.
Players’ expectations are constantly kept off balance because they never
know where the next reward will be. Some games make you kill mon-
sters to earn points; others make you look inside treasure chests.
When a player opens a newly discovered chest, it may contain what
he’s looking for, but not always.
If you needed to collect, say, seven
gems, and every chest you opened contained a gem, it would be com-
pletely predictable. There would be no surprises, no reward prediction
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DRUGS
errors, no dopamine. If, on the other hand,
you had to open a thousand
chests to find a single gem, it would be so frustrating that everyone
would give up. How does a game developer decide what percentage of
chests should contain a gem? The answer is data. Lots of data.
Online games are constantly collecting information about players.
How long do they play? When do they quit? What kinds of experiences
make them play longer? What kinds make them give up? According to
gaming theorist Tom Chatfield, the biggest online games have accu-
mulated billions of data points about their players. They know exactly
what lights up dopamine, and what turns it off—though game design-
ers are not thinking of these events
as dopamine triggers, but simply as
“what works.”
So, what do the data tell us about the ideal portion of treasure
chests that should contain gems? It turns out that 25 percent is the
magic number. That’s what keeps people playing the longest. And
there’s no reason why the other 75 percent should be empty. Game
developers put low-value rewards in the non-gem chests so every single
one will contain a surprise. Maybe it’s a small coin. Maybe it’s a new
scope for your rifle. Maybe it’s a pair of sunglasses that will make your
online character look cool. Or maybe it’s something so powerful that it
opens up completely new ways to interact with the game. Chatfield tells
us that a reward like that should be found in only one out of a thousand
treasure chests. (By the way, the game probably won’t
let you progress
to the next level with only those seven gems. The billions of data points
tell us that fifteen is the optimal number for getting people to play as
long as possible.)
It’s worth mentioning that there are also H&N pleasures in video
games that contribute to their appeal. Many games let you play with
friends. The pleasure we get when we socialize for no other reason than
the enjoyment of the company of others is an H&N experience. On
the other hand, when we get together to accomplish a shared goal, it’s
dopaminergic because we’re working toward a better future (even if it’s
just capturing the enemy’s base). Video games provide both types of
social pleasure.
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THE MOLECULE OF MORE
Many video
games are also beautiful, another way of stimulating
H&N delight. Some of them are, in fact, astonishing because enormous
resources have been poured into amassing talented people to create
them. The
Los Angeles Times reported that developing the online game
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