[feoren]

"Player psychology has absolutely nothing to do with rational thought ... the attacking unit has a strength of 1.5, and the defending unit has a strength of 0.5. So the attacking unit should win 3 times for every 1 time the defending unit wins. It's 3:1. That's just math. That's what the math says."

Wow, I liked Sid Meyer a lot more before I listened to that arrogant diatribe about how stupid his players are and about how his decisions are unarguable Math-God-Given conclusions that you'd have to be A Stupid Irrational Loser to disagree with. Fuck you, Sid. You can design your game any way you want. Don't blame shitty game design on math; math didn't make you decide that combat strength should map linearly to odds of winning. That's a shit-ass combat system and not any more mathematically pure than "biggest number always wins", or using a health system like later games did. The audacity to stand up in front of people and lament how he had to get his pure, beautiful game all dirty because of the irrationality of his stupid loser players who just want a game that doesn't feel like bullshit ... come on. So much respect was just lost for that man. Never meet your heroes, nor listen to them talk about how much smarter they are than everyone else.

[Arc_Orion]

Hey friend. He's not saying they're stupid. He's saying they're irrational. And he's right. Humans aren't rational beings and our expectations differ from simple mathematical probabilities. When making Civilization 3 in the years leading up to 2001, his team had to make changes to the game so that it felt better to the players. They improved game design as you say that they should have, but made it an internal change so that the presented numbers "felt" right. They learned from this experience and he's presenting this learning in a lighthearted presentation to an audience containing some of the very players he's talking about. They got the humor in the situation fifteen years ago and thanks to that, you, me, and other people making and playing games today expect better presentation in our games.

[Dylan16807]

> He's not saying they're stupid. He's saying they're irrational. And he's right. Humans aren't rational beings and our expectations differ from simple mathematical probabilities.

He's right in that players are biased when it comes to rare player success versus rare player failure. He's not right that it's irrational to have different expectations from the "simple mathematical probabilities".

The simple math works when each side is trying to hit a single target that only needs to be hit once. It does not work for medium or large fights.

[feoren]

> He's saying they're irrational. And he's right.

No, he's not right. Humans only seem irrational when you myopically narrow your focus to one or two axes. This is something "smart" people do all the time: they're smart in one way, so everyone who acts in any way counter to what looks optimal from that narrow, simplified model is acting "irrationally". Economists will call humans irrational, but it's actually their over-simplified models that suck. Sid Meyer will call his players irrational, but it's actually his (originally) lame combat system that sucks. Rich MBAs will call lifelong employees irrational for not starting their own businesses, but they're ignoring a thousand factors that they took for granted. The people they are denigrating are incorporating more axes, more information, more context than their silly little models are.

There's a story I wish I could find about a young boy in India trying to answer his dad's math problems. His dad asks him questions like "A man wants 5 mangoes from a shopkeeper who is selling them for $4 each. How much money will he spend?" and gets increasingly exasperated that his child can't answer. But we see the child's inner thoughts, with things like "why would he spend $4 at this shopkeeper when they usually cost $2? Can't he just walk to a different shop and get them there? And what is he going to do with FIVE mangoes? He won't be able to use them all before they spoil!" etc. etc. Sid Meyer is the dad assuming his players are stupid (sorry, "irrational", meaning: stupid, losers, dumb, idiots, morons). They're not.

[waterhouse]

You might enjoy Gigerenzer's "Bias bias" paper. Discussed here: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/07/14/gigerenzer...

Paper itself: https://www.nowpublishers.com/article/OpenAccessDownload/RBE...

Abstract: "Behavioral economics began with the intention of eliminating the psychological blind spot in rational choice theory and ended up portraying psychology as the study of irrationality. In its portrayal, people have systematic cognitive biases that are not only as persistent as visual illusions but also costly in real life—meaning that governmental paternalism is called upon to steer people with the help of “nudges.” These biases have since attained the status of truisms. In contrast, I show that such a view of human nature is tainted by a “bias bias,” the tendency to spot biases even when there are none. This may occur by failing to notice when small sample statistics differ from large sample statistics, mistaking people’s random error for systematic error, or confusing intelligent inferences with logical errors. Unknown to most economists, much of psychological research reveals a different portrayal, where people appear to have largely fine-tuned intuitions about chance, frequency, and framing. A systematic review of the literature shows little evidence that the alleged biases are potentially costly in terms of less health, wealth, or happiness. Getting rid of the bias bias is a precondition for psychology to play a positive role in economics."

[feoren]

Thanks, that paper is arguing something very different from what I'm used to seeing so that alone makes it worth a look. It's nice to see that not everyone is taking it as a given that humans are irrational.