Nobody every thinks of the donkey in these situations.

I asked the ever faithful Bobo the Quote Monkey to surprise me with an unexpected quote. Here’s what he brought back:

German born neuroscientist Wolfram Schultz was conducting research at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland on the relationship between the chemical dopamine and Parkinson’s disease when he almost accidentally started a line of research that can be used to explain gamers’ love of loot. Dopamine is a collection of just twenty two atoms that plays a huge role in regulating human decision making, particularly goal oriented behavior and the pursuit of pleasure. When we encounter something we like –say a patch of berries or a goretusk liver– our brain releases dopamine. Brain cells that are sensitive to that chemical go bananas when it’s present, which makes us feel good –maybe even euphoric.

Dopamine neurons in the brain also help us predict good things in life. Schultz and his colleagues discovered that presenting a lab monkey with a bit of fruit caused the creature’s dopamine neurons to light up. They also discovered that when they repeatedly preceded the treat with a light or a sound, the neurons would start to fire when the monkey saw the light or heard the sound, but then remain relatively inactive when the fruit showed up. The system they had discovered was, at its core, about anticipation and trying to predict rewards based on what was happening in the environment.

I have to say that not only do I like how this article turned out, it’s actually my favorite thing that I’ve written on the topic of the psychology of games in a while, even though it’s essentially an expansion of one of the first articles I wrote for this site. There are a few reasons for this. First, the GamePro article features the phrase “saucy pictures of lady monkeys.” Really, that’s enough right there. But second, it features some quotes from one of my favorite science writers: Jonah Lehrer. I just e-mailed him out of the blue asking if he’d like to give some comments on the subject for the article, and he was kind enough to oblige. Since I started doing this stuff I’ve been repeatedly and pleasantly surprised by how willing authors, academics, and game developers can be to write me back and help out. In fact, just recently I had a nice phone conversation with another one of my favorite science writers, Dan Ariely, who helped me formulate some of my thoughts on my latest article in progress, which deals with the psychological trickery behind Xbox Live Arcade’s Microsoft Points system. It’s weird, but I’m much more glad to have had the chances to talk to Lehrer, Ariely, and the various game developers than I would have ever been talking to some movie star or musician.

At any rate, here’s the link to the article on the psychology of loot in case you missed it the first time. Enjoy and let me know in the comments what you think of it.

During my early days with World of Warcraft (WoW) I remember tromping through Westfall killing crowds of Defias bandits when I was shocked by a loot drop: a rare pair of “blue” gloves that perfectly fit my class’s needs at the time. For those of you who don’t know, killing enemies in WoW gives you a random chance at one or more pieces armor, weapons, or other items called “loot” in WoW parlance. These are stratified according their text’s color: gray, white, green, blue, purple, and orange in order of increasing quality. For a level 20-something character to find a blue item on a random enemy was actually very rare, and I experienced a huge rush from it. But more importantly, with that came an acute desire to keep playing the game and to murder more Defias bandits.

Other games do this, too. Borderlands gives you random guns from drops or chests, which compels us to check EVERY container, vending machine, and item dropped by felled enemies. Torchlight essentially uses the WoW system, and you can bet your thumbs that the upcoming Diablo III will push it even farther. But why are gamers so susceptible to the loot hunting addiction found in these games? Why is this gameplay mechanic so incredibly effective in getting us to keep playing?

Which of these do you think would create a bigger dopamine neuron freakout if it dropped in front of you?

To answer that question, let’s consider slot machines and a type of brain cell called “dopamine neurons.” The latter are the bits of your gray matter responsible for monitoring levels of the pleasure-inducing chemical dopamine in order to regulate behavior and figure out how to get more of a good thing. It’s these cells that light up when something nice happens in your life (say a delicious Hot Pocket or a fuzzy puppy belly) and triggers a gush of the neurotransmitter dopamine. But what’s more, dopamine neurons play the role of trying to predict the rush from nice things, and they may fire before you actually encounter them. Given a couple of chances, they’ll learn to light up when you hear the microwave timer beep that precedes your delicious Hot Pocket. This is a pretty useful thing as far as evolutionary advantages go, since it clues you in ahead of time that something good is in the vicinity.

But this is only part of what makes loot-based games work so well. The real key is that while dopamine neurons fire once your brain has figured out how to predict an event, they really go nuts when an unexpected, unpredicted gush of dopamine shows up, giving you an even bigger rush. It’s like DUDE! UNEXPECTED HOT POCKET! Again, I’m guessing that this is an evolutionary advantage that causes us to obsess over unexpected pleasures and try to predict them so that we can get more of them.

This is either dopamine or a map for the optimal arrangement for dps and off-tanks in some raid encounter.

But we can’t predict the inherently unpredictable. This is how slot machines get you. Your dopamine neurons are trying really hard to learn what precedes a jackpot in terms of what bells, you hear, pictures you see, or even which cocktail waitress last walked by. But in reality, it’s utterly random and by definition can’t be predicted. More rational parts of your brain may understand this, but not the dopamine neurons. They’re stymied, but that doesn’t stop them from flaring up and saying “HEY! THERE’S SOMETHING HERE! KEEP DOING WHAT YOU’RE DOING UNTIL WE FIGURE OUT HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN AGAIN!” So you keep playing.¹

So, getting back to World of Warcraft, just replace “slot machine jackpot” with “phat loot drop” and you should have a pretty good idea why the loot game mechanic is so successful. Like all the best motivators, it uses a core concept of psychology as a lever to keep you playing and paying. But like with the slot machines, you DO have the ability to understand what’s happening and put a stop to it.

On the other hand, those blue gloves were pretty sweet on my Hunter. Maybe if I had killed a few more Defias bandits I could have gotten the matching leggings…

1. Lehrer, J. (2009). How We Decide. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.