The Molecule of More


Part of the difference is that the video gamers Gentile studied



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Part of the difference is that the video gamers Gentile studied 
were adolescents. It’s unusual for adults to experience serious negative 


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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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