Virtual Reality & Dopamine Loops

When talking about consumer Virtual Reality adoption, many voice concerns around activity, over-immersion, and fatigue. Most consumers just want to “VR and Chill” however some of the appeal that has created insane usage statistics in things like mobile gaming or social networks is “passive activity.”

Today when consumers watch TV or other content, they are often multi-tasking with their mobile device, checking Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, email, or a slew of other apps. This is the definition of passive activity.

The elongated satisfaction curve of serial television no longer stimulates us enough as we search for what many believe are fast dopamine rushes which equal satisfaction.

First, let’s clarify what dopamine actually is:

Dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases your general level of arousal and your goal-directed behavior. From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps you motivated to move through your world, learn, and survive. It’s not just about physical needs such as food, or sex, but also about abstract concepts. Dopamine makes you curious about ideas and fuels your searching for information. Research shows that it is the opioid system (separate from dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure.

“wanting” (dopamine) and the “liking” (opioid) are complementary. The wanting system propels you to action and the liking system makes you feel satisfied and therefore pause your seeking.

So dopamine = seeking, opioid = resulting pleasure.

What the first wave of addictive mobile applications did was create what people call “dopamine loops”, where seeking and pleasure happens so quickly (think: tweet -> favorite, or text -> response) that we continually seek more and more. And perfectly enough, dopamine is most effective when only a small amount of information is presented, like 140 characters, or a short text message, because it keeps us seeking and doesn’t fully satisfy our information craving.

And that’s the opportunity for VR content.

In some ways, VR has the potential to end the constant seeking because we get more complete experiences. Stimulants will create dopamine rushes, and then VR will satisfy the opioid system. A 360 photo will fill in more gaps than a normal photo, a 360 video will tell you more of the story than a tweet. It’s the most fulfilling technological platform for passive activity we’ve ever had.

And sure, as long as we can have this content surfaced for us, we’ll create dopamine loops because people will always be searching for more, but in a world where everyone complains that nobody stays in VR, it’s not the worst thing for the industry if these more immersive experiences get more people in VR.

This post originally appeared in my Notes