Speedrunning and it's addictive nature

 When speedrunning Neon White it was addictive; why? The answer is staring at me in the face the whole time ever since I started doing these notes!

I'll get to the point right away; dopamine withheld! At first your time is fast and the dopamine hits, most games will kill your dopamine center with constant rewards that fill you with rewards like a mobile game. A dopamine hit that's with held however and kept from getting stale let's you keep going, longer it takes to get a better time over and over again.

Now I can understand why fighting games get people; people that get dopamine rewards from training while here players getting dopamine and even community tools showing you red times as the "oof" similar to Dark Souls having the two, "You died" words pop up on the screen whenever you die. This is insanely smart by the community and how it's designed.

Now as of games that encourage you to speedrun being built around the going fast element, by having that be the thing you focus on head on that you're doing the objective fast. The speedrunning games however giving multiple paths; the straight on safe path is slow, decent time and can get through the story somewhat, possible gold.

While the flex of a good time being shown on a leaderboard of diamond and beyond that has a feeling brew inside of you as you see your time on the leaderboard. Not to brag because I may have been fast starting out getting diamond consistently, only to find out others got better scores in the end. I only have 200 hours in the game and had to get myself to stop playing the game due to how addictive the game is.

The rate of me winning went down over time, I realized that the time I topped hitting just as a hard but not knowing why. I now see why; even when I do choose to grind out runs here and there it still hits because I am not being given a win every run.

I do believe the game would be boring if you hit your goals too fast, that you got rewarded too fast and even with getting diamond and then beyond that I realized the medals aren't the biggest dopamine hit; it's seeing my time climb above my fellow speedrunners and my own times climb on the leaderboards.

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