Players Making Decisions: Game Design Essentials and the Art of Understanding Your Players

26. Human Decision-Making

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

—JOSHUA REYNOLDS

Humans are often bad at decision-making. We consistently engage in behaviors that are conflict with our stated goals. We misread data and come to bad conclusions. We see things we want to see and hear things we want to hear. We misinterpret odds and act accordingly. The world is a complex and confusing place, and despite our profound ability to change and shape our world in remarkable ways, our ability to understand the world at any given time is limited. Because of this limitation, we take shortcuts. Those shortcuts are called heuristics (and their results are called biases) and they often result in costly mistakes. ...