Make Them Want. Delay. Fulfill. Repeat.

Players can get a deep feeling of satisfaction from games that literally play themselves. How cool is that?

Last week, I began my discourse on how video games can warp your brain chemistry to bring you pleasure in order to make lots of money and how difficult, delicate, and awesome that process is.

I have eight observations about how video games cause your brain to secrete delicious dopamine. Here are the last four. If you can master this dark art, endless success awaits.

5. Different Genres of Games Provide Different Dopamine Delivery Systems

Role-playing games let your characters earn small improvements, providing a constant flow of drug. Tough puzzle games and Dark Souls-type games hold back your dose for a while as you master a challenge and then reward you in one big flood when you finally succeed.

Open-ended games like Destiny are for the serious addict, who wants a lot of hits over a period of time. Short, self-contained games are for someone who wants a limited supply or likes getting the hits in a variety of ways.

This is why there will always be a market for finite-length single-player story games. They are safe to play. However intensely they consume your time for a while, they end. I'm fine with dumping all this time into Subnautica because I know I will eventually kill the Final Fish and be free.

By the way, part of the genius of Achievements systems is that they create a whole new layer of fulfillment and addiction on top of what the games already provide, and they do it with very little effort. Whatever mad genius in Microsoft came up with the idea of the Gamer Score deserves the Nobel Prize For Awesomeness.

My next game, Queen's Wish. Beating dungeons gets resources. Use resources to buy shops. The shops give you better equipment. Each step provides dopamine.

6. Like All Drugs, You Will Eventually Develop Tolerance

You will always develop tolerance for a drug. You will eventually get tired of walking on the hedonic treadmill.

Most people, as they age, stop playing video games. They sometimes ask me, confused, why they don't want to play anymore. Games used to seem so important.

Part of this is the increasing obligations of adulthood, taking away your ability to spend hundreds of hours in an MMO. I think it's more than that. After all, if you care about something, REALLY care, you'll make time for it. If you were that desperate to play video games, you'd play video games.

No, I think it is that video game-induced dopamine hits are a fleeting and hollow pleasure. Every hit you get makes you less fulfilled than the one before. The sense of accomplishment is an illusion, after all. Eventually, the fun you get just doesn't justify the time expended, and you put down the controller and leave your house.

When the rewards are provides by machines you make yourself, that magnifies the fulfillment. Have this game running on three computers simultaneously to triple your pleasure!

7. Don't Be So Judgmental About This.

Seriously. Dopamine addiction is a problem, but it isn't that huge a problem. Why get so mad about it? You're not trying to cure cancer. You're not freeing an oppressed people. You're writing about video games.

Look. I love video games. I have my whole life. I've dedicated my career to them. I let me kids play them. I think they're terrific, in moderation.

Yet, if you spend a hundred hours playing a video game, I think you should ask yourself if it's the best use of your time. If you spend a thousand hours playing a game, I think that you are making a mistake. If my kids try to get into speedrunning, I will, in a friendly and gentle way, strongly encourage them to not do that.

Look, I don't want to make any big fancy declarations about morality or what other developers should do. Video game writing already has wayyy too much of that. I just try to run my business in a way I can feel good about.

These days, I write games that you can be pretty much done with after 50 hours. That's a lot of distraction and dopamine for your 20 bucks, and then I free you so you at least have the chance to go to the park or take swing dancing lessons. This is how I make my peace morally with what I sell.

All I know is this: Writing video games that provide pleasure without dopamine hits can be done. It's just hard. Storytelling is hard. Generating emotions is hard. Dopamine is the cheat code for compelling game design.

Which brings us back to Anthem.

Now you can carry your addictions on your walks with you! You never need to have a moment of tranquility again!

8. If You Want To Sell a Drug, You Have To Provide the Drug!

This is the final point, and the one that will protect you from ruin.

Almost every game, even the most artsy one, uses dopamine hits to keep the player going. For example, Papers, Please! is unquestionably artsy, but it provides happy-making rewards for each challenge you complete correctly, and there is even a nice score sheet at the end of every day. (Return of the Obra Dinn does exactly the same thing, but it is subtler.)

I think a major skill of a successful game designer is a feel for how to give a player dopamine. How to generate those hits. How to pace them. How to introduce enough variety in other parts of the game to create the illusion of a fulfilling activity.

If people are saying about your looter shooter, "We aren't getting good enough loot," that's not a whine. It shows you are fundamentally failing at your main task. It's like someone at your restaurant complaining that their meal doesn't contain food.

You have to respond by giving them more food. Not too much. Not enough to gorge them. Just enough to make them feel rewarded enough to stay on your hamster wheel.

Make the player want. Hold back what they want. Give them what they want. Repeat forever. This is the art.

This is a touch cynical, I know, but it's how I built a career and a life in this business. Game colleges should have classes called "Addiction For Fun and Profit, Mainly Profit." If you want to sell video games, you ignore this topic at your peril.

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I am writing these blog posts to get attention to our newest game, Queen's Wish: The Conqueror. You can also follow me on Twitter.