[Raph_Koster]

I mention it because so many people reach blindly for dopamine as an explanation for everything and expect it to get mentioned. That's why I said "it’s tied to prediction; but it’s complicated and nuanced" and instead provided links. The article was already 4400 words. :D

The science on this evolves pretty regularly, but dopamine specifically currently seems to be tied most strongly to prediction processes matching what actually ends up happening, and therefore curiosity, etc.

The "richly interpretable" bit comes from Biederman & Vessel's research on it; for our purposes here we can basically summarize it as "easily predictable situations versus more complex ones result in different dopamine responses."

From the neuropsych side, this is very related to Predictive Processing; Deterding has a good article on that here. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9363017/ It also has a wealth of links that can lead you deeper into the subject.

As far as "OK and?" it comes down to this:

- make games that people can predict easily, and it'll be less fun in the "hard fun" sense

- and that is true of stories too!

- and that doesn't mean there aren't other sorts of enjoyment (which are covered in several images and links there) -- and as it happens, those are mappable to particular endorphins too!

- So it's not that game designers should try using endorphins as a tool, but rather that there's a wealth of science in a half-dozen different fields that backs up what this article is saying.

Bottom line: "dopamine" isn't a useful tool. Knowing those four types of fun and what elicits them absolutely is. Knowing they really do map to specific human sensations is. And following some links deeper into the topic will lead you very specific techniques you can use to elicit these different reactions predictably.