Jacob Curr
Making progress toward goals is something that we as humans experience daily, whether that be via our day-to-day tasks, in our careers and at work, or through our desire to build relationships with others. Most of us know how good it feels to accomplish our goals, or at least make progress toward doing so. However, what I failed to realize for a long time was just how often the feeling of progression in gaming has giving me that same stimulus. The dopamine rush that one gets when making progress in video games has almost certainly greatly contributed to me returning to them over and over again, as it likely has with many others.
Progress in Gameplay
In late 2017 I found myself playing Far Cry Primal, which had released the year prior. Far Cry Primal has a gameplay mechanic that requires you to collect resources in order to build up your tribal village. By building more huts and filling out your cave, new characters will move into your village and you’ll gain access to additional quests while advancing the storyline. I loved it. Coming back to my village to upgrade it and then exploring to see all the improved development I was making was my favorite part of the game. In fact, it’s one of the few things I remember from the game at all (not saying that the game was bad by any means, it’s just been long time since I played!).
Image Credit: Far Cry Primal Steam Store Page
Ever since my time with Far Cry Primal, I’ve come to realize that I tend to respond really well to any similar mechanic in gaming that allows me to visualize my progress – gameplay mechanics that require me to invest time, effort, and resources and that reward me with both visual gratification and access to additional content that I’d otherwise miss out on.
For reference, some similar gameplay mechanics that come to mind are building up the Davenport Homestead in Assassin’s Creed III , upgrading the House of Hades in Hades, and building up your town in Littlewood. In each of these games, the player is introduced to new characters and gameplay as they make progress, as well as visual stimulus in the form of new rooms, buildings, development which help the player with visualizing the progress that they are making. All of it combines to feel incredibly satisfying.
What Makes the Feeling of Progression so Satisfying?
To ask why progression makes us feel so great in gaming, we must first ask why it makes us feel so great on a general level. Motivation, goal setting, and the feeling of making progress toward those goals are a core pillar of what makes our human brains happy. When we make progress towards completing goals or tasks, our brains release dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter produced by our bodies. Neurotransmitters are chemicals that your body’s nervous system produce to carry messages between nerve cells. These messages are often intended to illicit specific responses, and can also influence emotion and behavior. The neurotransmitter that is released when we make progress toward our goals, dopamine, helps us to feel happy and satisfied.
Image Credit: Cleveland Clinic
Dopamine also plays an important role in motivation. When we complete goals and are rewarded with a dopamine release, our brains experience a kind of positive reinforcement that trains us to stay motivated to progressing toward those goals, as we know that by doing so we will be able to experience the satisfaction that comes with that dopamine release again. We complete tasks, feel good about it, and then are motivated to complete more tasks – it is a positive feedback loop. This is why when you finally complete that lengthy main story mission, or make progress on your backlog of side quests, or log back into your Minecraft server to view all the progress your friends have made, that it feels so good. Progression is inherently satisfying for our brains.
Making Progress in Video Games Comes in Many Flavors
While progression is, at an atomic level, satisfying for us all, the type of progress we enjoy definitely doesn’t look the same for everyone. You may have read me discussing my satisfying experiences with progression in gaming and have not felt similarly. But just as how one might not find yard work as satisfying to complete as a gardener, you might not have found building the homestead in Assassin’s Creed III as enjoyable as I did. It’s all a matter of personal preference, and our own experiences and biases drive that personal preference.
Progression in Gaming that you may Find Satisfying Might Include:
- Completing Quests or Missions
- Progressing the Main Story/Advancing the Plot
- Making Progress Toward Completion Percentage
- Satisfying Tasks or Requirements to Obtain Unlockable Items
- Collectathons
- City/Town Building and Development
- Empire Building
- Working Toward Obtaining Higher Stats
- Feeling of Improvement
- Going Through Your Gaming Backlog
- Completing the Game
Regardless of what kind of progress you enjoy when it comes to video games, the common denominator among us all is that we absolutely love the feeling that progress brings. And it’s that feeling that keeps bringing us back to the controller, time and time again.
Progression in Gaming Versus Progression in the Real World
Even though we know why making progress is so enjoyable for us, that still doesn’t explain why many levitate specifically toward video games to get their fix. Admittingly, making progress in a video game has very little benefit to our lives in the real world. Unless you are one of the few who are getting paid to play video games, progressing in them will likely not contribute to many gains outside of the game itself. And yet, making progress in a videogame often provides a similar feeling to making progress at school or at work – your dopamine is firing in the exact same way. If these forms of progress aren’t equivocal, then why do they feel equivocal?
Life is hard. Making progress toward our goals and aspirations in life can be some of the most difficult things we experience as humans. It often feels like we aren’t making any progress toward our goals, and that can make us feel sad or depressed, as if we are stuck in the same place with no way out.
Video games provide a relief. When things aren’t going so well in the real world you can load up a game and be taken into a different universe, away from everything that’s going wrong. When progress may seem like it’s moving incredibly slow when it comes to your worldly goals, in a few short hours of gaming you can feel as if you have made tremendous progress and be hit with a rush of dopamine unlike anything you’ve been able to experience outside of the game. It is those who are receiving the majority of their dopamine in this way that are most vulnerable to becoming addicted to video games if left unchecked. We must be careful that we are spending time feeling satisfied in the pursuance of our goals in the real world, and not relying solely on videogames to feel like we are making progress.
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