why video games provide dopamine when they offer no benefit to your survival
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The rewards center of the brain is an ancient product of evolution. Nobody programmed it to know what is good for your survival and what it not. Rather natural selection gave it a rough set of heuristics to use to reward or punish your psyche based on what you do. It rewards you for doing things that look, to it, vaguely like doing things that have historically promoted survival and reproduction. Collecting stuff, vanquishing foes, and strengthening social ties are really good for you. These and other things you might simulate in a video game are close enough to trick some part of your brain into believing you are achieving something good for you.
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