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thatssokatsuki · 5 years

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How Does a Moment Last Forever || Katsuki Bakugo x Reader

Beauty and The Beast Chapter 2 Ver. 2

Pairing: Katsuki Bakugo x Reader (to come) Summary: A lot of time overworking leads to a soft, fun night with your parents, and maybe a hint of a crush covered in denial Warnings: Overworking, fluff Word Count: 1,010

A/N: this is shorter than all my other ones, but this was also one of the more difficult to write ;-;

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Ch.1 | Ch.2 | Ch.3 | Ch.4 | Ch.5 | Ch.6 | Ch.7 | Ch.8 | Ch.9 | Ch.10

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Months pass, and its now time for the UA Sports festival. You personally we’re conflicted on the matter, but as a student you had no say in whether it would happen or not. On one hand, you felt like it was a bad idea due to the League of Villains attacking the school not too long ago. Yeah sure, they were simple thugs for the most part, but even so. That attack showed that the school was a target. However, you also knew that if the school didn’t hold the festival, itd be telling all of Japan (if not the world) that the school isn’t confident in either the students’ or teachers’ ability to keep people safe. So it was a rocky road. However, as you and the rest of the student traveled down that road, the main thing of importance was training. You had learned a lot over the last few months at the school, but this was the most watched program to ever grace the screens. Heroes will be watching both on screen and in person, as will support companies. Everyone had to be on top of their game if they hoped to make anything out of their schooling. So when you weren’t studying, you were training, and although your parents were proud of you and knew how much passion and work you needed and wanted to put in, they were starting to get worried. You were pushing yourself to the absolute limit your body could handle, and that didn’t fall on deaf ears or blind eyes, no matter how much you wished it would have. One fateful afternoon, your parents decided to cut your training short, and bring you inside.

Your parents glanced at eachother before looking at you, taking your hands in theirs. They explained that they were so proud of you, but you need to also listen to the limits your body tells you. At first you protested, saying that your fate is in the hands of those who decided how well you did in the festival. You were met with I know and We went through the same thing at your age, Honey. A part of you just wished your parents would let you go back outside and train, but the longer you sat down the more you realized that they had a point. You were starving, and your eyelids felt heavier now that you were starting to finally relax. Your father nodded to your mother as if to say “I got this”, and she left to start fixing food, as the sound your stomach made dared to say “I am hungry, don’t listen to words upstairs.” Your father smiled softly, before sitting next to you and putting on your favorite movies, because if anything would make you rest, it would be this. The first movie came and passed, which ended with you taking a small nap, and by the time the second movie was mid-way through, your mother had called you both to the dining room for dinner. Your father nudged you softly to wake you up, before you both headed that way. Your father B lined for the kitchen to help your mother bring over the food as you wiped your eyes and yawned in an effort to wake up. Once the table was almost fully set, your father had gone back towards the kitchen to get everyone drinks.

The dinner was somewhat quiet, but it was also nice. Your parents wanted you to spill the tea, as theyve heard you and your friends say when wanting to hear drama or gossip, which made you giggle. You had told them all about your current adventures in UA, the wonderful friends you had made, and a little bit about the fiery boy in your class that you claimed to practically hate. The last bit made your parents share a glance between themselves, and chuckled a bit, knowing how easily that “hate” could turn into something else, as the same thing had happened between them. Back in there day at UA, unbeknownst to you, your father was the loud mouthed, brash transfer student that your mother used to describe in the same way that you had described Bakugo. But over the years, and as time would go by, they eventually realized how much of that hatred was denial, and that the denial was of the crush your mother had actually had on your father since day one. When your parents had told you this at the table, you were adamant to deny it. There was no way you liked him, he simply just wasn’t your type. You were more bookish, and back in the day your mom was more or less one of the popular kids, that must be why things are different. Your mom shrugged and let out a brief laugh, saying that with time you’ll come to see this brash boy’s true colors, and that who knows, you may come to like what you see.

You and your parents eventually decided to head back into the livingroom, after cleaning up together (although it was mostly your parents because they wanted you to just sit down and rest). Once everything was settled, all of you gathered to the livingroom, your parents dragging some chairs in with them. They had told you to wait on the side as your dad rushed to grab almost every pillow and blanket he could find, throwing them into the center of the floor. You could only watch in astonishment as the glorious pillowfort for 3 was built and covered in small lights so that you all could see. Your mom then gathered some games while your dad, the snacks. You three had then spent the rest of the night in that pillowfort joking, laughing, snacking, and watching movies. It was then you realized that, yes, training is important, but so is the time you spend with your family. And in the back of your mind, you had hoped that one day you would be in your parents position.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #bnha imagines #mha imagines #katsuki bakugo imagine #bnha fic #mha fic #katsuki bakugo #bakugo katsuki

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morganbelarus · 7 years

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These moms have some wise words about love and life

Image: pixabay

Mom knows best. Whether shes doling out advice on how to heal a broken heart, reminding you to take a jacket, or simply teaching you about life, one thing is for sure: Shes always looking out for you.

In honor of Mothers Day on May 14, we interviewed people to learn about the MOM-isms they often heard while growing up and arent soon to forget.

#1 You have to kiss a lot of frogs and maybe a few toads before you find your prince.

Rachel Starr, who lives in San Francisco, says, I havent had the best luck in relationships and my mom is always the one I turn to when things dont work out. Shes been married to my dad for 37 years so obviously theyve done something right. After she lets me vent for a while about my boy troubles, she always says You have to kiss a lot of frogs and maybe a few toads before you find your prince. Its pretty cheesy, but its something thats really stuck with me.

Image: Mashable

#2 Be independent.

Kate Klein, of Brooklyn, says that her mom always set a good example of being an independent woman.

#3 Save your hate for the devil.

Sarah Skidd from Scottsdale, Arizona praises her mom Alexandras parenting abilities, calling her a pro mother after raising 11 children.

Were all grown now but we joke about some of her favorite phrases - and definitely reuse them on our own kids! Our favorite MOM-ism is Save your hate for the devil.

Sarah explains that each time she or one of her siblings proclaimed to hate something from raisins to an item of clothing to everything in between her mother responded with the phrase.

Its a quick way to shut down silly drama that you dont have time to deal with!

#4 Make good choices.

Julia Sand, of Minnesota, says, On the many days my mom would drop my sister and I off at school, after turning up Vanilla Ice real loud to jam before we started our day, right after we slammed the door she would roll down the passenger side window at yell out, Make good choices! It started as a joke and an Im-doing-my-best-to-embarrass-you bit, but then it just became the anthem to our morning and it still echoes through today.

#5 Be a Melanie.

Julias mom also used to tell her to Be a Melanie.

She explains: If youve ever seen Gone with the Wind, youll get this one: Melanie is sweet-as-they-come and doesn't have a bad thing to say about anyone, even the woman trying to steal her husband. For all the times we wanted so bad to wrong those who hurt us and snap at everyone on our worst days, my mom always reminded us to be a Melanie, not a Scarlett.

Image: Mashable

#6 Be respectful.

Mike Valentino of New York says that his mom taught him to be respectful, telling him that if you want others to respect you, youve got to respect others.

#7 Loyalty goes a long way.

Hilary Thompson owes a lot to mom Mollys key advice.

Quite a while ago, I was dating two men. One sweet, sensitive artist with great character but no ambition, and a ridiculously wealthy businessman who had had infidelity issues with his former wife, but spoiled me rotten. The time had come to choose between them.

I went to my mom for advice. She said I'm not going to tell you who to pick, but I can tell you that loyalty goes a long way.

I chose the artist. I chose loyalty. And we've been together 20 years, married for 15. He is the love of my life and I'll always be grateful to my mother for that advice.

#8 You can be anything you want to be.

Christina Russell explains her mothers go-to phrase that inspired her own entrepreneurial quest:

My mom was a single mom, supporting two kids as a secretary for the Orlando Transit Authority, making around $7,000 a year. My sister and I were latchkey kids, back when that was a thing. We were so excited to see her when shed walk in the door at 5:30. I remember her looking polished in her suits and high heels. Im sure she was exhausted, but she never complained. Shed shift right into mom-mode, making us dinner, cleaning up the small disasters wed created, helping us with our homework. Then shed get up the next day and do it all again. My mom taught me that I could be anything I wanted to be if I was willing to take responsibility. It was a simple, empowering fact. She may not have had money or connections, but she told me could make it on my own strength and hard work. Her faith in my ability was really empowering.

#9 I have eyes in the back of my head.

Romy Taormina, from Pacific Grove, California, says that her mom Anitas go-to phrase is one that many moms know well.

And I now say it to my children, she says. We moms just know!

Image: Mashable

#10 Always smile.

Kristy Lyons, whos originally from Atlanta, says that her mom taught her to speak up for herself and dont let anyone tear you down or try to.

#11 "Don't be so hard on yourself.

Kelsie Axelrod, of Redmond, Washington, says that shes inherited a lot of her drive from mom, Kim.

I often put an intense amount of pressure on myself and my mom does that to herself as well. My Mom would constantly say, You have to relax and stop putting so much pressure on yourself, it's okay to fail. She always laughs and says, It's no wonder you have this trait, you get it from me.

#12 Im cold put on a sweater.

My mother assumes that I feel exactly the same way she does, and often I do. When I was younger I fought against it, but when I became older I realized how often it was actually true, says Karen Rubin, of Princeton, New Jersey.

#13 Boyfriends come and go, but girlfriends last a lifetime.

My mother gave me this advice when I was in high school when a friend and I had a conflict over a guy we both liked, Karen says of mom Ilene, whom she speaks to every day. Sage advice, and sure enough the guy was forgotten quickly but my girlfriend and I stayed close for years.

#14 Do you think money grows on trees?

Jeff Howell of Toronto says that when he was growing up, his mom who worked as a bank teller in a small town would use this phrase.

Any time my sister and I would be acting entitled and wanting something, my mom would say, Do you think money grows on trees?

Image: Mashable

#15 Keep your good name.

Dor Fire, of Israel, says that his mom always said this to him, telling him to keep his good name and to do good in the world so people will think well of him.

#16 and #17

Dont clean after the sun goes down. You cant see the dirt.

If its dark enough to turn out the lights, pull down the shades.

Cheryl Reed, who grew up in Indiana, says that her in-laws from Maine often repeat the wise words from the women of older generations.

My mother-in-law and my husbands Grammies are gone now, but he and my sister-in-law quote the ladies all the time, she says.

The best thing about these sayings is they keep the women alive. The Grammies were gone before I came along but I feel like I know them.

Honor mom and everything shes taught you by sending her a bouquet from 1-800-Flowers for Mothers Day.

Watch next: Immortalize your loved one's voice with this soundwave tattoo

More From this publisher : HERE

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hencoplumbingservices · 6 years

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Vancouver theater company stages ‘I Hate Hamlet’

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Such a typical teenager, that poor Prince of Denmark. So confused and angsty. So emotive and explosive. Hamlet is such a drama queen!

Not that he doesn’t have good reason. His uncle murdered the King, Hamlet’s father, and married the Queen, Hamlet’s mother. Worst of all, Queen Mom was happy to oblige. All of which either drives Hamlet mad — or drives him to pretend that he’s mad. Or some ambiguous blend of the two. Literary critics have been debating that riddle ever since William Shakespeare penned “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” circa 1600.

“He’s so sad. Everybody knows he’s so sad. We’ve been listening to his lament for 400 years. It’s the best lamenting that’s ever been written down, ever,” said Heather Blackthorn, who recently revived a long-dormant theater company, Pacific Stageworks, in Vancouver.

“I love ‘Hamlet,’ but I know there are people who are like, ‘Do I have to sit through all that lamenting again, or can I just kill myself now?’” Blackthorn laughed. That’s why the title “I Hate Hamlet” jumped right out at her as she was hunting for a follow-up to Pacific Stageworks’ relaunch presentation last fall, Neil Simon’s “Rumours.”

She thought “I Hate Hamlet” was hilarious, she said, and based on an irresistible true tidbit as well. In 1917, actor John Barrymore moved into a New York City apartment and began a run as Hamlet that earned accolades like “greatest living American tragedian.” Barrymore (the grandfather of Drew Barrymore) was a famously troubled and alcoholic man whose star faded after he tried jumping from stage to screen. He died in 1942.

In the late 1980s, playwright Paul Rudnick moved into the very same New York flat and felt moved to write something about the site and its former occupant. He created a nervous TV star named Andrew Rally, who is preparing to play the world’s moodiest, most aggrieved teenager for a “Shakespeare in the Park” production.

One problem: Rally really hates Hamlet. Maybe that’s because he doubts he can manage the deep, demanding role. “He thinks it’s over his head, and it well might be,” said Tony Bump, the director of this show and one of the founders of Pacific Stageworks.

Bigger problem: The ghost of John Barrymore, who handled the role like a champ, appears in the apartment and won’t take no for an answer. Because of that, and because Rally really wants to impress his girlfriend, he accepts the challenge despite his insecurity. But what will he do about an offer to abandon all that and take on an easier, more familiar task — an overpaid, under-challenging TV show?

Because it’s based on a real Shakespeare masterpiece, “I Hate Hamlet” contains a true Shakespearean element: a sword duel. In this case, it’s between a hapless living actor and the overexcited ghost of a dead one.

Here’s the best true tidbit of all. Showbiz insiders still talk about an early incident during the Broadway run of “I Hate Hamlet,” in 1991, when actor Nicol Williamson, as the ghost of Barrymore, struck co-star Evan Handler with his sword. Handler wasn’t wounded, but he could easily have been; he stalked offstage in the middle of the scene and never returned.

Playwright Rudnick later wrote in The New Yorker magazine that Handler was right to quit, and that Williamson’s unpredictable, uncontrollable behavior had been leading up to the this. (Williamson died in 2011; Handler went on to many TV roles, including “Sex in the City” and “Californication.”)

Don’t expect anything nearly so dangerous at Vancouver’s “I Hate Hamlet,” Blackthorn laughed. “Yes there is a little sword fight, yes there are sharpy, pointy things.” Actor Brett Farnsworth, who has fencing training, has carefully coached and choreographed the swordfight scene, Blackthorn said.

“Nobody’s going to get stabbed in our production,” she promised.

Runway style, Broadway style

Given the dearth of performance stages in Vancouver, Blackthorn said, she’s thrilled to have gotten a nice deal on a banquet room at the Hampton Inn and Suites hotel in East Vancouver. That is Pacific Stageworks’ stage for now, she said.

“They’ve never done anything like this before, but they were willing to take a chance,” Blackthorn said.

Because it’s a long, narrow room, the audience sits on both sides of a “runway-style” staging, she said. “The movement is more naturalistic and it’s fun to be so close to the audience,” Bump said.

Also, Blackthorn added, Pacific Stageworks is offering a “Broadway-style” workout session that’s aimed at stoking your fantasies of dancing on stage — without actually daring you to do it. There’s no public performance at the end of Pacific Stageworks’ “Body By Broadway” classes, she said; they’re just an opportunity to learn some choreography for fun and fitness.

“Body by Broadway” isn’t held at the Hampton Inn — it’s at a nearby yoga studio, every other Sunday night at 6 p.m. (upcoming dates are Sunday and Feb. 17). Check the Pacific Stageworks website for details. The price is $15 per class; February’s curriculum is “A Bushel and a Peck” from “Guys and Dolls.”

All abilities, including people like Blackthorn — “a terrible dancer” with a rich fantasy life, she joked — are completely welcome. “Body by Broadway” is aimed at people “who know they’ll never dance in a Broadway play but still cannot stop thinking, ‘I want to dance in a Broadway play’,” she said.

If You Go

What: “I Hate Hamlet,” by Paul Rudnick, directed by Tony Bump.

When: 7 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Feb. 8-9; 2 p.m. Sunday and Feb. 10.

Where: Hampton Inn and Suites, 315 S.E. Olympia Drive, Vancouver.

Cost: $17; $15 for seniors/military.

On the web: www.pacificstageworks.org/

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viralhottopics · 8 years

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How technology gets us hooked

The Long Read: From a young age, humans love to press buttons that light up and make a noise. The thrill of positive feedback lies at the heart of addiction to gambling, games, and social media

Not long ago, I stepped into a lift on the 18th floor of a tall building in New York City. A young woman inside the lift was looking down at the top of her toddlers head with embarrassment as he looked at me and grinned. When I turned to push the ground-floor button, I saw that every button had already been pushed. Kids love pushing buttons, but they only push every button when the buttons light up. From a young age, humans are driven to learn, and learning involves getting as much feedback as possible from the immediate environment. The toddler who shared my elevator was grinning because feedback in the form of lights or sounds or any change in the state of the world is pleasurable.

But this quest for feedback doesnt end with childhood. In 2012, an ad agency in Belgium produced an outdoor campaign for a TV channel that quickly went viral. The campaigns producers placed a big red button on a pedestal in a quaint square in a sleepy town in Flanders. A big arrow hung above the button with a simple instruction: Push to add drama. You can see the glint in each persons eye as he or she approaches the button the same glint that came just before the toddler in my elevator raked his tiny hand across the panel of buttons.

Psychologists have long tried to understand how animals respond to different forms of feedback. In 1971, a psychologist named Michael Zeiler sat in his lab across from three hungry white carneaux pigeons. At this stage, the research programme focused on rats and pigeons, but it had lofty aims. Could the behaviour of lower-order animals teach governments how to encourage charity and discourage crime? Could entrepreneurs inspire overworked shift workers to find new meaning in their jobs? Could parents learn how to shape perfect children?

Before Zeiler could change the world, he had to work out the best way to deliver rewards. One option was to reward every desirable behaviour. Another was to reward those same desirable behaviours on an unpredictable schedule, creating some of the mystery that encourages people to buy lottery tickets. The pigeons had been raised in the lab, so they knew the drill. Each one waddled up to a small button and pecked persistently, hoping that the button would release a tray of Purina pigeon pellets. During some trials, Zeiler would programme the button so it delivered food every time the pigeons pecked; during others, he programmed the button so it delivered food only some of the time. Sometimes the pigeons would peck in vain, the button would turn red, and they would receive nothing.

When I first learned about Zeilers work, I expected the consistent schedule to work best. But thats not what happened at all. The results werent even close: the pigeons pecked almost twice as often when the reward wasnt guaranteed. Their brains, it turned out, were releasing far more dopamine when the reward was unexpected than when it was predictable. Zeiler had documented an important fact about positive feedback: that less is often more. His pigeons were drawn to the mystery of mixed feedback just as humans are attracted to the uncertainty of gambling.

Decades after Zeiler published his results, in 2012, a team of Facebook web developers prepared to unleash a similar feedback experiment on hundreds of millions of humans. The site already had 200 million users at the time a number that would triple over the next three years. The experiment took the form of a deceptively simple new feature called a like button.

Its hard to exaggerate how much the like button changed the psychology of Facebook use. What had begun as a passive way to track your friends lives was now deeply interactive, and with exactly the sort of unpredictable feedback that motivated Zeilers pigeons. Users were gambling every time they shared a photo, web link or status update. A post with zero likes wasnt just privately painful, but also a kind of public condemnation: either you didnt have enough online friends, or, worse still, your online friends werent impressed. Like pigeons, were more driven to seek feedback when it isnt guaranteed. Facebook was the first major social networking force to introduce the like button, but others now have similar functions. You can like and repost tweets on Twitter, pictures on Instagram, posts on Google+, columns on LinkedIn, and videos on YouTube.

The act of liking became the subject of etiquette debates. What did it mean to refrain from liking a friends post? If you liked every third post, was that an implicit condemnation of the other posts? Liking became a form of basic social support the online equivalent of laughing at a friends joke in public.

Web developer Rameet Chawla developed an app as a marketing exercise, but also a social experiment, to uncover the effect of the like button. When he launched it, Chawla posted this introduction on its homepage: People are addicted. We experience withdrawals. We are so driven by this drug, getting just one hit elicits truly peculiar reactions. Im talking about likes. Theyve inconspicuously emerged as the first digital drug to dominate our culture.

Chawlas app, called Lovematically, was designed to automatically like every picture that rolled through its users newsfeeds. It wasnt even necessary to impress them any more; any old post was good enough to inspire a like. Apart from enjoying the warm glow that comes from spreading good cheer, Chawla for the first three months, the apps only user also found that people reciprocated. They liked more of his photos, and he attracted an average of 30 new followers a day, a total of almost 3,000 followers during the trial period. On Valentines Day 2014, Chawla allowed 5,000 Instagram users to download a beta version of the app. After only two hours, Instagram shut down Lovematically for violating the social networks terms of use.

I knew way before launching it that it would get shut down by Instagram, Chawla said. Using drug terminology, you know, Instagram is the dealer and Im the new guy in the market giving away the drug for free.

Chawla was surprised, though, that it happened so quickly. Hed hoped for at least a week of use, but Instagram pounced immediately.

When I moved to the United States for postgraduate studies in 2004, online entertainment was limited. These were the days before Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube and Facebook was limited to students at Harvard. One evening, I stumbled on a game called Sign of the Zodiac (Zodiac for short) that demanded very little mental energy.

Zodiac was a simple online slot machine, much like the actual slot machines in casinos: you decided how much to wager, lazily clicked a button over and over again, and watched as the machine spat out wins and losses. At first, I played to relieve the stress of long days filled with too much thinking, but the brief ding that followed each small win, and the longer melody that followed each major win, hooked me fast. Eventually screenshots of the game would intrude on my day. Id picture five pink scorpions lining up for the games highest jackpot, followed by the jackpot melody that I can still conjure today. I had a minor behavioural addiction, and these were the sensory hangovers of the random, unpredictable feedback that followed each win.

My Zodiac addiction wasnt unusual. For 13 years, Natasha Dow Schll, a cultural anthropologist, studied gamblers and the machines that hook them. She collected descriptions of slot machines from gambling experts and current and former addicts, which included the following: Slots are the crack cocaine of gambling electronic morphine … the most virulent strain of gambling in the history of man Slots are the premier addiction delivery device.

These are sensationalised descriptions, but they capture how easily people become hooked on slot-machine gambling. I can relate, because I became addicted to a slots game that wasnt even doling out real money. The reinforcing sound of a win after the silence of several losses was enough for me.

In the US, banks are not allowed to handle online gambling winnings, which makes online gambling practically illegal. Very few companies are willing to fight the system, and the ones that do are quickly defeated. That sounds like a good thing, but free and legal games such as Sign of the Zodiac can also be dangerous. At casinos, the deck is stacked heavily against the player; on average the house has to win. But the house doesnt have to win in a game without money.

As David Goldhill, the chief executive officer of the Game Show Network, which also produces many online games, told me: Because were not restricted by having to pay real winnings, we can pay out $120 for every $100 played. No land-based casino could do that for more than a week without going out of business. As a result, the game can continue forever because the player never runs out of chips. I played Sign of the Zodiac for four years and rarely had to start a new game. I won roughly 95% of the time. The game only ended when I had to eat or sleep or attend class in the morning. And sometimes it didnt even end then.

Casinos win most of the time, but they have a clever way of convincing gamblers that the outcomes are reversed. Early slot machines were incredibly simple devices: the player pulled the machines arm to spin its three mechanical reels. If the centre of the reels displayed two or more of the same symbol when they stopped spinning, the player won a certain number of coins or credits. Today, slot machines allow gamblers to play multiple lines. Every time you play, youre more likely to win on at least one line, and the machine will celebrate with you by flashing bright lights and playing catchy tunes. If you play 15 lines, and you win on two of the lines, you make a net loss, and yet you enjoy the positive feedback that follows a win a type of win that Schll and other gambling experts call a loss disguised as a win.

Losses disguised as wins only matter because players dont classify them as losses they classify them as wins. This is what makes modern slot machines and modern casinos so dangerous. Like the little boy who hit every button in my lift, adults never really grow out of the thrill of attractive lights and sounds. If our brains convince us that were winning even when were actually losing, it becomes almost impossible to muster the self-control to stop playing.

Every time you play a slot machine it will celebrate with you by flashing bright lights and playing catchy tunes Photograph: imageBROKER/Rex/Shutterstock

The success of slot machines is measured by time on device. Since most players lose more money the longer they play, time on device is a useful proxy for profitability. Video-game designers use a similar measure, which captures how engaging and enjoyable their games are. The difference between casinos and video games is that many game designers are more concerned with making their games fun than with making buckets of money. Bennett Foddy, who teaches game design at New York Universitys Game Center, has created a number of successful free-to-play games, but each was a labour of love rather than a money-making vehicle.

Video games are governed by microscopic rules, Foddy says. When your mouse cursor moves over a particular box, text will pop up, or a sound will play. Designers use this sort of micro-feedback to keep players more engaged and more hooked in.

A game must obey these microscopic rules, because gamers are likely to stop playing a game that doesnt deliver a steady dose of small rewards that make sense given the games rules. Those rewards can be as subtle as a ding sound or a white flash whenever a character moves over a particular square. Those bits of micro-feedback need to follow the act almost immediately, because if theres a tight pairing in time between when I act and when something happens, then Ill think I was causing it.

The game Candy Crush Saga is a prime example. At its peak in 2013, the game generated more than $600,000 in revenue per day. To date, its developer, King, has earned around $2.5 billion from the game. Somewhere between half a billion and a billion people have downloaded Candy Crush Saga on their smartphones or through Facebook. Most of those players are women, which is unusual for a blockbuster.

Its hard to understand the games colossal success when you see how straightforward it is. Players aim to create lines of three or more of the same candy by swiping candies left, right, up, and down. Candies are crushed they disappear when you form these matching lines, and the candies above them drop down to take their place. The game ends when the screen fills with candies that cannot be matched. Foddy told me that it wasnt the rules that made the game a success it was juice. Juice refers to the games surface feedback. It isnt essential to the game, but its essential to the games success. Without juice, the game loses its charm.

Novice game designers often forget to add juice, Foddy said. If a character in your game runs through the grass, the grass should bend as he runs through it. It tells you that the grass is real and that the character and grass are in the same world. When you form a line in Candy Crush Saga, a reinforcing sound plays, the score associated with that line flashes brightly, and sometimes you hear words of praise intoned by a hidden, deep-voiced narrator.

Juice amplifies feedback, but its also designed to unite the real world and the gaming world. The most powerful vehicle for juice must surely be virtual reality (VR) technology, which is still in its infancy. VR places the user in an immersive environment, which the user navigates as she might the real world. Advanced VR also introduces multisensory feedback, including touch, hearing and smell.

In a podcast last year, the author and sports columnist Bill Simmons spoke to billionaire investor Chris Sacca, an early Google employee and Twitter investor, about his experience with VR. Im afraid for my kids, a little bit, Simmons said. I do wonder if this VR world you dive into is almost superior to the actual world youre in. Instead of having human interactions, I can just go into this VR world and do VR things and thats gonna be my life.

Sacca shared Simmons concerns. One of the things thats interesting about technology is that the improvement in resolution and sound modelling and responsiveness is outpacing our own physiological development, Sacca said. You can watch some early videos where you are on top of a skyscraper, and your body will not let you step forward. Your body is convinced that that is the side of the skyscraper. Thats not even a super immersive VR platform. So we have some crazy days ahead of us.

Until recently, most people thought of VR as a tool for gaming, but that changed when Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2bn in 2014. Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg had big ideas for the Oculus Rift gaming headset that went far beyond games. This is just the start, Zuckerberg said. After games, were going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court-side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face just by putting goggles in your home. VR no longer dwelled on the fringes. One day, we believe this kind of immersive, augmented reality will become a part of daily life for billions of people, said Zuckerberg.

In October 2015, the New York Times shipped a small cardboard VR viewer with its Sunday paper. Paired with a smartphone, the Google Cardboard viewer streamed VR content, including documentaries on North Korea, Syrian refugees, and a vigil following the Paris terror attacks. Instead of sitting through 45 seconds on the news of someone walking around and explaining how terrible it is, you are actively becoming a participant in the story that you are viewing, said Christian Stephen, a producer of one of the VR documentaries.

Despite the promise of VR, it also poses great risks. Jeremy Bailenson, a professor of communication at Stanfords Virtual Reality Interaction Lab, worries that the Oculus Rift will damage how people interact with the world. Am I terrified of the world where anyone can create really horrible experiences? Yes, it does worry me. I worry what happens when a violent video game feels like murder. And when pornography feels like sex. How does that change the way humans interact, function as a society?

When it matures, VR will allow us to spend time with anyone in any location doing whatever we like for as long as we like. That sort of boundless pleasure sounds wonderful, but it has the capacity to devalue face-to-face interactions. Why live in the real world with real, flawed people when you can live in a perfect world that feels just as real? Wielded by game designers, it might prove to be a vehicle for the latest in a series of escalating behavioural addictions.

Some experiences are designed to be addictive for the sake of ensnaring hapless consumers, but others happen to be addictive though they are primarily designed to be fun or engaging. The line that separates these is very thin; to a large extent the difference rests on the intention of the designer.

When Nintendos superstar game designer Shigeru Miyamoto created Super Mario Bros, his primary aim was to make a game that he himself enjoyed playing. Thats the point, he said, not to make something sell, something very popular, but to love something, and make something that we creators can love. Its the very core feeling we should have in making games.

When you compare Super Mario Bros regularly voted by game designers as one of the greatest games ever to others on the market, it is easy to recognise the difference in intention.

Adam Saltsman, who produced an acclaimed indie game called Canabalt in 2009, has written extensively about the ethics of game design. Many of the predatory games of the past five years use whats known as an energy system, Saltsman said. Youre allowed to play the game for five minutes, and then you artificially run out of stuff to do. The game will send you an email in, say, four hours when you can start playing again. I told Saltsman that the system sounded pretty good to me it forces gamers to take breaks and encourages kids to do their homework between gaming sessions. But thats where the predatory part comes in.

Super Mario Run was primarily designed by its creator, Shigeru Miyamoto, to be a game he enjoyed playing Photograph: PR

According to Saltsman: Game designers began to realise that players would pay $1 to shorten the wait time, or to increase the amount of energy their avatar would have once the four-hour rest period had passed. I came across this predatory device when playing a game called Trivia Crack. If you give the wrong answer several times, you run out of lives, and a dialogue screen gives you a choice: wait for an hour for more lives, or pay 99 cents to continue immediately. Many games hide these down-the-line charges. Theyre free, at first, but later you are forced to pay in-game fees to continue.

If you are minutes or even hours deep into the game, the last thing you want to do is admit defeat. You have so much to lose, and your aversion to that sense of loss compels you to feed the machine just one more time, over and over again. You start playing because you want to have fun, but you continue playing because you want to avoid feeling unhappy.

A game in which you always win is boring. It sounds appealing but it gets old fast. To some extent we all need losses and difficulties and challenges, because without them the thrill of success weakens gradually with each new victory. The hardship of the challenge is far more compelling than knowing you are going to succeed. This sense of hardship is an ingredient in many addictive experiences, including one of the most addictive games of all time: Tetris.

In 1984, Alexey Pajitnov was working at a computer lab at the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow. Many of the labs scientists worked on side projects, and Pajitnov began working on a video game. Pajitnov worked on Tetris for much longer than he planned because he couldnt stop playing the game. Eventually Pajitnov allowed his friends at the Academy of Science to play the game. Everyone who touched the game couldnt stop playing either.

His best friend, Vladimir Pokhilko, a former psychologist, remembered taking the game to his lab at the Moscow Medical Institute. Everybody stopped working. So I deleted it from every computer. Everyone went back to work, until a new version appeared in the lab.

Alexey Pajitnov, the inventor of Tetris Photograph: Sipa Press / Rex Features

Tetris spread from the Academy of Science to the rest of Moscow, and then on to the rest of Russia and eastern Europe. Two years later, in 1986, the game reached the west, but its big break came in 1991, when Nintendo signed a deal with Pajitnov. Every Game Boy would come with a free game cartridge that contained a redesigned version of Tetris.

That year I saved up and ultimately bought a Game Boy, which is how I came to play Tetris for the first time. It wasnt as glitzy as some of my other favourites, but I played for hours at a time. Nintendo was smart to include the game with their new portable console, because it was easy to learn and very difficult to abandon. I assumed that I would grow tired of Tetris, but sometimes I still play the game today, more than 25 years later. It has longevity because it grows with you. Its easy at first, but as your skills improve, the game gets more difficult. The pieces fall from the top of the screen more quickly, and you have less time to react than you did when you were a novice.

This escalation of difficulty is a critical hook that keeps the game engaging long after you have mastered its basic moves. Twenty-five years ago, a psychiatrist named Richard Haier showed that this progression is pleasurable because your brain becomes more efficient as you improve. Haier decided to watch as people mastered a video game, though he knew little about the cutting-edge world of gaming. In 1991 no one had heard of Tetris, he said in an interview a few years later. I went to the computer store to see what they had and the guy said, Here try this. Its just come in. Tetris was the perfect game, it was simple to learn, you had to practise to get good, and there was a good learning curve.

Haier bought some copies of Tetris for his lab and watched as his experimental subjects played the game. He did find neurological changes with experience parts of the brain thickened and brain activity declined, suggesting experts brains worked more efficiently but more relevant here, he found that his subjects relished playing the game. They signed up to play for 45 minutes a day, five days a week, for up to eight weeks. They came for the experiment (and the cash payment that came with participating), but stayed for the game.

One satisfying feature of the game is the sense that you are building something your efforts produce a pleasing tower of coloured bricks. You have the chaos coming as random pieces, and your job is to put them in order. The game allows you the brief thrill of seeing your completed lines flash before they disappear, leaving only your mistakes. So you begin again, and try to complete another line as the game speeds up and your fingers are forced to dance across the controls more quickly.

Mikhail Kulagin, Pajitnovs friend and a fellow programmer, remembers feeling a drive to fix his mistakes. Tetris is a game with a very strong negative motivation. You never see what you have done very well, and your mistakes are seen on the screen. You always want to correct them.

The sense of creating something that requires labour and effort and expertise is a major force behind addictive acts that might otherwise lose their sheen over time. It also highlights an insidious difference between substance addiction and behavioural addiction: where substance addictions are nakedly destructive, many behavioural addictions are quietly destructive acts wrapped in cloaks of creation. The illusion of progress will sustain you as you achieve high scores or acquire more followers or improve your skills, and so, if you want to stop, youll struggle ever harder against the drive to grow.

Some designers are very much against infinite format games, like Tetris, said Foddy, because theyre an abuse of a weakness in peoples motivational structures they wont be able to stop.

Humans find the sweet spot sandwiched between too easy and too difficult irresistible. Its the land of just-challenging-enough computer games, financial targets, work ambitions, social media objectives and fitness goals. It is in this sweet spot where the need to stop crumbles before obsessive goal-setting that addictive experiences live.

This is an adapted extract of Irresistible by Adam Alter, published on 2 March by The Bodley Head in the UK and Penguin Press in the US on 7 March

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