124. Ecstatic Monetisation and Dopamine Death [Update 30-05-25]

The Physiology of Gaming from 2018 revisited with dramatic new research findings. The predicted rewards for using this new knowledge are increased, as are the penalties for ignorance.

[Update 30-05-25: After consulting with my pool of neuroscience experts, they confirm that my analysis here is functionally correct. Dopamine has at least 5 different types of sub receptors, which do in fact change in number in response to extreme dopamine exposure. Like in modern computer games. Dopamine release can also interfere with insulin release, and thus could be a cofactor in diabetes.

Most of our research here (including my own research on stress related receptor adaptations performed at the UCLA Brain Research Institute) is conducted on animals because it would be too dangerous to test humans in this way. Thus it may be many decades before we can prove effects on a causal level with children, but they will be the most adaptive, and be more subject to permanent adaptations to abnormal dopamine level exposures.

We do know that unusual dopamine levels can affect drug-seeking and food-seeking behaviors, leading to addictive states.]

See also my paper on Digital Drugs.

Since 2018 when I published The Physiology of Gaming, I’ve been warning anyone that would listen that we as a society were going down a path where we were doing permanent damage to our people (and especially children) by flooding them with dopamine in order to “lock” them into addictive states where we could better exploit them. I wasn’t so concerned about the exploitation (every generation and government does that) as I was about the physical and mental health implications.

I recently wrote a 6 paper series on the Global Demographic Collapse [92A to 97F] where I asserted that this same process was threatening our very existence by diminishing our ability to feel pleasure, and to relate to each other.

While doing a periodic review of new research, I realized from a comprehensive research analysis published 6 months ago that the contents of The Physiology of Gaming were already obsolete. I realized with some horror that all of us misunderstood the role of dopamine and oxytocin in the body (again), and the way these two key neurotransmitters interacted with each other.

With respect to Dopamine and Oxytocin, this paper updates the content of The Physiology of Gaming which is now obsolete. Since these interactions are much more complex than we understood even 7 years ago, this paper will focus on just those two chemicals and how this affects game development (primarily) and society (secondarily).

A Clockwork Orange and the “Ludovico Technique”

In ~1972 I saw A Clockwork Orange, an early Stanley Kubrick movie, at the local Fox Theatre on Lincoln Blvd near Santa Monica. The movie is extremely violent, even by modern standards. I was 6 years old but my family treated me as an adult by that time due to my abnormal rate of cognitive development.

The movie has a lot of intense physical violence, murder, and rape. Despite this, it is often cited as one of the best 100 films ever made. When our protagonist Alex (played by Malcolm McDowell) is finally caught, it is decided that he would make a perfect candidate for the “Ludovico Technique”. If it could work on Alex, it would work on anyone.

This Technique involved extremely intense aversion therapy combined with drugs to force the subject to become physically ill every time they thought about whatever action the government was trying to stop. It was successful and Alex would just collapse when confronted with a violent situation or a scantily clad woman. I highly recommend you watch the original movie if you get a chance.

The reason I bring up this example is because today while reviewing the latest research, I realized that we had inadvertently managed to achieve and deploy the Ludovico Technique on the global population without even being aware of it. The consequences are especially severe for game development and the ability for humans to reproduce.

The Old (2018) Model of Dopamine and Oxytocin Physiology

The old model had Dopamine and Oxytocin in a binary and semi-antagonistic relationship. Dopamine was a stimulant that activated the Sympathetic Nervous System (Fight or Flight) and Oxytocin was an anabolic hormone that activated the Parasympathetic Nervous System. Those two sides of the Autonomic Nervous System are antagonistic and that is why I described these two hormones and neurotransmitters as antagonistic.

Over time Dopamine would do damage to you like all catecholamines (the Fight or Flight chemicals). In order to recover you would need to access anabolic hormones like insulin, growth hormone, and oxytocin to “come down”. Oxytocin is the most important of the three in this regard, and the least understood (even now).

Dopamine is a critical reward chemical that rewards you for doing something risky and surviving. But to prevent addiction we are wired to give less reward each time the same risk is overcome. This adaptive effect meant that the more we tried to control people with dopamine, the more resistant they would become over time. This process still predicts the downward trend in industries (like game development) that rely on this mechanism.

I had argued that Oxytocin was the “counter chemical” to Dopamine and could reverse damage and adaptation caused by Dopamine flooding. Thus in my old model Dopamine = Bad and Oxytocin = Good. Like almost all binaries, the reality is usually much more nuanced.

As Oxytocin is critical for bolstering not only the immune system, but also mental health, a deficit of it could lead to both physical and mental illness. An overall reduction in lifespan and increase in “death from all causes” would also be expected. That’s a fancy way of saying your body’s ability to regenerate and recover from injury is impaired.

Over activation of the sympathetic (fight or flight) side of the autonomic nervous system means humans sleep (and regenerate) one less hour a day than almost all previous generations over the last 250,000 years. This is a very unhealthy scenario, the implications of which will take us at least decades to understand. Even in 2018 the research on the effects on children was robust and indicated that permanent and even intergenerational damage (via epigenetic activation) was being done to children since the introduction of devices like smart phones. These devices can be used by 3rd parties and algorithms to activate the user’s body in various ways (like dopamine release) without the knowledge or consent of the user.

The New (2025) Model of Synergistic Dopamine and Oxytocin Physiology

The largest changes in my/our understanding of how dopamine and oxytocin function comes from receptor research. My research in 1989 was on catecholamine receptors. It’s very slow work that requires a lot of precision, and (at least in 1989) the “culling” of subjects in order to centrifuge and measure (usually with the help of a radionucleotide marker) their cellular receptors. The use of radioactive materials limits this sort of research to the more advanced/trusted facilities.

The new research indicates that both dopamine and oxytocin receptors are widely distributed across the whole body, while most concentrated in the brain. This is because both hormones are also neurotransmitters. A neuron is a cell that can directly transmit impulses down their length, with the electricity generated by chemical processes. A neurotransmitter is a chemical released into the body that travels through the blood and/or cerebrospinal fluid (in the case of the brain) and can activate all receptive structures instead of just one very precise location.

This makes neurotransmitters ideal for signals that need to be sent across the body for an extended period of time and across large areas without cellular precision. It also means they can’t be removed quickly after release and you have to “ride out” the effects. That’s why if a stress related neurotransmitter (like dopamine or norepinephrine) is released, you are going to be “jumpy” for a while and there’s nothing you can do about it.

What really blew my mind here is that those receptive structures typically contained both oxytocin and dopamine receptors. Not in an antagonistic “on/off” system, but in a “2 lock box” arrangement.

The most secure things in the world we protect with systems that require multiple keys, like access to weapons, pharmaceuticals, or nuclear launch orders. On World of Warships we adopted a similar system where I had a key and also Serb (the nuclear physicist founder) had a key. No design/number changes were allowed without both keys.

No one uses this level of security unless it’s guarding something very important. The new research indicates that the “Box” won’t open unless both dopamine and oxytocin arrive at the receptors at the same time. It is now scientifically established that these two chemicals are synergistic. So what’s so important in this “box”?

Sex.

It isn’t new knowledge that both dopamine and oxytocin are released during sex. But now we have a much better understanding of why. This also paves the way for moving from A to B:

A. “Hey Sally, did you know that you get both oxytocin and dopamine from sex?” (casual understanding)

B. “Okay team our testers are putting out a DopOxy rating of 0.023 in the latest round of testing. Let’s try to boost this to 0.037 in Chapter 1 (of our game) and get baseline information. Then we can modify delivery in Chapter 2 and see what gives the best user response ratings.” (production level understanding)

If this sounds like science fiction, I’ve got news for you. You might want to sit down first. I’ve had consent from a crack team of applied neuroscientists to collect the data I just described, since 2014. Not only that, but this testing was greenlit at Wargaming to be deployed at their Florida QC testing center the same year. Back then the team required real time blood draws to get the data. The team has been busy over the last decade. They can now get that data with a watch worn on the wrist. We were using this at my company, Arrivant, in 2023. The world’s largest companies know of the existence of this technology, because that team has demo’d it to them, but they don’t know what to do with it yet. Due to high turnover at WG, it’s possible no one there now knew anything about this black ops.

As of 2025, I have had a second applied neuroscience team contact me and ask to work with me. They have an entirely different technology that likely would get different but complimentary data. I have not tested their methods yet.

So then, what could you use this tech for?

Ecstatic Monetisation

Presumably all my readers understand that it’s a lot easier to extract money from someone while you are having sex with them. If you don’t know this, I would advise caution while testing this out. The essential link between oxytocin and emotional/pair bonding has been well established for decades. Hacks abound on social media teaching you how to “get what you want using oxytocin”. And pretty much any hormone that sounds interesting.

The reason we have not just isolated oxytocin and sold it to people for home use is that it has a half-life of about 15 minutes. If you bought some, you got scammed. But we know that oxytocin output can be manipulated through an electronic device. That’s been proven. So there is no need for invasive therapy. With a properly engineered Digital Drug, you could distribute it digitally at infinite scale at almost zero cost to the developer post-production.

As you can see with the Digital Fairness Act, by the time the EU deploys that in 2026 it will have taken regulators 13 years from the time when they asked me for help with it in 2013 until its deployment. How long would it take them to regulate Digital Drugs (which I warned them also about in 2013)? 2040? 2050? That could be a pretty long run for whoever captures that market, and then with the right lobbying regulation could be designed to prevent anyone from competing with you.

The Digital Drug doesn’t actually have sex with you, but it could prime your whole body at a similar chemical reward level. This could then be channelled to improve suggestibility, social bonding, trust, and of course spending. If you combined this tech with emerging AI companion technologies which are advancing very rapidly for obvious reasons, you could actually achieve a virtual sex state in the consumer.

As you can see, this is potentially a very powerful and even dangerous technology. Thus I’ve been moving very slowly in describing it to the public. Even today I’m not entirely sure if there is any safe way to deploy my life’s work. I’m living like a monk trying to extend my lifespan another 30 years to make sure I could get across the finish line before I time out. But if Fate decides I shouldn’t, that’s okay too.

I’m under no illusions. Since the tech involves a number of separate modules, and ALL of those have been built separately at this point, the tech will be deployed in the future with or without me. 100% future probability. It could take another 20 years without me but again, that might be better. Are we ready for this tech?

Dopamine Death

The new research isn’t all great for us. There are some subtle things that are setting off my internal alarms. I know from my own 20th century lab research that the receptors that these neurotransmitters dock with are not static. That means that under some conditions the number of those receptors could increase or decrease over time.

I actually did Native American Indian studies at UCLA in the 1980s, around the same time I did my neuroscience research. I was heavily influenced by the Cherokee partner I had, that I describe in my Soulmates paper. I think the Cherokee story of The Two Wolves might be perfect here to explain what might be possible with these 2 lock box dopamine/oxytocin receptors:

In the fitness fields we also like to say “Use it or lose it”. Your body augments the areas of your body you use or train. Areas you don’t use (this could include parts of your brain) will atrophy. This is the fundamental concept behind all forms of physical training, especially critical at the Olympic level. That said, anabolic hormones can tilt the scales. I wrote an article explaining how a natural abundance of oxytocin (an anabolic hormone) at UCLA in 1988 helped the Women’s track team produce outrageous World record performances by two of my athletes. That was the first time Gamasutra censored one of my articles.

Consider what happens if you are hammered with dopamine producing apps all day but nothing that gives you oxytocin. In the old physiologic model from 2018 it would be assumed that people would sleep less and that mental illness/suicide would skyrocket. We actually do see all those trends.

But under the new 2 lock box model this flood of dopamine would have no positive effect on those cells. They would be expected to atrophy over time. Thus it might be possible to actually kill off or reduce some of the most important cells in your body using a dopamine flood. Reversing this would be so difficult that it would be effectively permanent. I’ve trained incomplete quadriplegics to walk again, but the effort and training required to reroute nerve impulses requires Olympic level training.

Taken one step further, people who have been dopamine flooded long enough might develop dopamine aversion.

Risk Aversion. Like in A Clockwork Orange.

Type 2 diabetes happens when a person releases abnormally high levels of insulin over and over, often from binge eating or high sugar consumption along with obesity. At some point the person develops insulin insensitivity because the insulin “got too loud”. Doctors typically treat this with MORE insulin, which has always bothered me as it just accelerates the disease.

It’s interesting that Parkinson’s disease is skyrocketing also. Why is that? Many of the people who have developed it (typically considered a dopamine deficiency) are people who obviously didn’t have any deficiency. If anything they had an over abundance. Examples would be Muhammad Ali, Ozzy Ozbourne, Michael J. Fox, and Linda Ronstadt.

What if their 2 lock box receptors got killed off by a life that was too exciting? Under the 2018 model, this would be counter intuitive. But in 2025, this seems very possible. Parkinsons, or at least some of the cases, could be caused by Dopamine Intolerance.

I have some concern that just as most doctors get Type 2 Diabetes all wrong, we may be completely misunderstanding the mechanism of some forms of Parkinson’s. And our new dopamine-flooded lifestyles could mean that Parkinson’s will just keep skyrocketing in cases even though that shouldn’t be the case.

There also could be other sub clinical effects that don’t rise to the level of Parkinson’s. For every person with an official diagnosis, there could be dozens of people on their way there. This is what made me think back 50+ years to A Clockwork Orange. By flooding our people with dopamine, we may be mimicking the aversion therapy that was core to that movie.

Early sub clinical effects could be consumers developing an aversion to high dopamine sources. Like modern FPS games. We’ve seen a string of unbelievable game development failures just in the last few years and they seem clustered around this genre. As developers try to chase the golden fleece of dopamine, they gravitate to making these sorts of games.

And it isn’t working anymore.

I did predict this effect in the 2018 model, but it’s possible that this goes WAY beyond just dopamine fatigue, and general fatigue. We could be killing off some of our most important cells.

Implications and Solutions

In the new model it’s important to avoid pure dopamine delivery and combine it with oxytocin. This is the natural environment that humans have been in for the first 249,980 out of 250,000 years on Earth. Totally untrained people are playing God with the species without even realizing it. If we can restore the proper delivery balance, we could save a lot of lives, make people much happier, and of course make crazy amounts of money.

This requires a few step:

1. Deploy a design that reliably stimulates oxytocin delivery.

2. Rigorous scientific testing to see how people respond to these new designs vs legacy products.

3. Perhaps long term studies to see what happens over time under the two different paradigms (dopamine vs dopamine/oxytocin).

4. Clinical trials of various sorts.

The research part is hard because it requires long studies. You can’t do this on animals because they don’t live that long and being caged is itself a big stressor. So any data you get from animals is going to be at least part wrong. Then of course animals might not be as good at games as we are so very difficult to replicate that with animals. Human research is slow and expensive, that’s why these technologies have been released into the wild with very little research. What little research we have, like from Facebook, was kept secret for good reason because the results were dire.

Looking back on my own work through this new lens, I assumed my Category 6 models would perform higher than my Category 5 models. I may have gotten this backwards since I was trying to build a high oxytocin and low dopamine game with Star Garden. This contrasts with REVENGE (Category 5) which is high in oxytocin at the alpha design state, and high in both by retail launch once the Echo system is implemented. The game is very close to launch but still faces financial hurdles. If it makes it to launch we can finally start to collect scientific data.

These advanced models are much more complex than normal Games as a Service (GaaS) because of the required robust social systems and interdependencies. Normal GaaS has proven too complicated for AAA studios.

I’ve been trying to poor-man this whole process in order to maintain some control over the tech. But now it’s clear that deploying, testing, and optimizing the first generation of Digital Drugs is going to approach the level of a mega project. I would only want to attach myself to one team as the complexity is pretty high and errors would…affect people. As I’ve said before, I’d rather just let the tech die for a while rather than have it be weaponized right out of the gate.

It occurs to me that the gaming industry only has 2 paths out of this mess they have created against my advice:

1. “Revert” to indi and AA games that are not so dopamine dependent (the current path that is working)

2. Development of oxytocin producing games.

Of course since most gaming company CEOs aren’t even gamers and don’t understand even legacy game development, Choice 2 is going to be a tough sell. Choice 1 isn’t going to support large teams and is going to lead to continued mass layoffs.