The Psychology of Knowing Something is Sus | Extra Credits Gaming

Did you know the famous psychological experiment, the Iowa Gambling Task, reveals how our brains detect patterns? Participants are given four decks of cards, each containing rewards or penalties, with the goal of winning as much money as possible. The twist? The decks are rigged! Yet participants consciously figured out the trick after about 70 cards, had an inkling by 50, but their bodies showed stress by the 10th card, indicating an unconscious awareness. This phenomenon, known as Thin Slicing, shows our brains can detect patterns quickly, often before we can articulate them. Astonishing result and that is deeply relevant to game design!

Artist: David Hueso I Writer: James Portnow I Showrunner & Narrator: Matthew Krol I Video Editor: Devon House Creative I Audio Editor: Clean Waves I Studio Director: Geoffry Zatkin I Social Media: Kat Rider | ♪ Music "Coffee Beans" by Mike Wuerth

#ExtraCredits #Gaming #GameDesign

[amdreallyfast]

Ori and the Blind Forest did that "thin slicing" really well. You didn't have much in the way of combat in that game, and so most of the mechanics relied on movement, especially in the boss battles, in which you had to flee, making split second hunches about which direction to go for what seemed like a couple minutes. The cool part was, most of those split second decisions were right, cleverly nudging the player each step of the way.

[kingflumph]

Teacher here! Whats extra fun (read: confounding) about the "skip all the math steps" kids is that, in my experience, theyre right about 70-75% of the time at peak. And because they've made a habit of ignoring steps and thin slicing, like Matt says, when they are wrong, it's often really difficult to explain to them why they are wrong. They feel the process, but don't really understand what's happening to the numbers. Which makes them frustrated. But slowing down to learn the steps properly is also frustrating, so it's a real bear when there are difficulty spikes in math concepts (show me a lesson on division and ill show you a TIRED teacher haha). And for extra fun, because they're skipping steps, theyre probably not writing down their work either, so you can't even see where the mistake occurred without a fine tooth comb. Or their work is so sloppy and disorganized that THEY can't even understand it.

The experienced teacher spends a good amount of time building up a trusting relationship with those kids so that they'll believe you when you ask them to go on the step-writing journey with you!

[DaikoruArtwin]

It's actually funny that despite things being purely random with no bias whatsoever, somehow there are patterns that have become super popular. A famous one in MMORPGs, the more you want something, the less likely it's going to drop. And while it does indeed happen once in a while, it's mostly because of negative events having a stronger impact on our perception, and the average luck evens out over a long period of time.

[EfrainMan]

It definitely seems to be explaining, or at leas alluding to, beginner's luck.

A common, visible example is when streamers on Soulslikes do pretty darn good the first time they go against a boss, then struggle on further attempts for a while. Which makes me wonder if Fromsoft and other devs compensates for this in some manner, one way or the other.

[DragoniteSpam]

2:26 This is less about pattern recognition and more about people not having a great understanding about statistics work. In this instance, conflating independent and dependent probabilities.

[velvethunder]

love the fact that you finally admit that your real name is not ''Matt'' but 'Zoey's Dad'. FINALLY THIS DECEPTION HAS BEEN UNCOVERED!!!!

[KenMathis]

Every game should have a practice room with feedback where you can test out game mechanics to see how they work without consuming resources or risking death. One thing I hate is when games give you a powerful ability, but with resource constraints so you can't overuse it. But that means you rarely get the chance to use it to figure out when is the best time or way to use it. That uncertainty makes you not the ability, making having it in the game pointless.

[Venatius]

3:39 - I distinctly remember it being revealed the newer XCOM games (Enemy Unknown onward) explicitly invisibly cheated the player's odds up. Didn't stop people from thinking that a >50% chance means "will hit" and throwing a fit about the prediction being "wrong" whenever it didn't work, though. Reminded in turn of two meteorologists in Hungary who were fired for "predicting rain" (ie: forecasting it was likelier to rain than not) and were fired when it didn't rain, after they'd already canceled a fireworks display. People are just kinda terrible at understanding how chance works, I think. I suspect the rate of false positives on there being "something up" with a particular probability is way higher than false negatives (failing to detect when something is actually being hidden).

[MaxIzrin]

I participated in one of those experiments!

The rules:
Pick 1 of 4 options, if you get it right, you win money, but there's a catch...
The money you can win changes each round.
Two players play, and you can bet to go first, highest bet goes first.
If you go first, 3 of the options will give you the win.
If you go second, only 1 option will let you win.
*But if you're player 1, and you lose, you lose your bet.*
Player 2 has no risk.

Conclusion:
People tend to bet more when there's more money on the line, but also lose more as a result.
And so... never bet, and you'll win around 8.25% of the time with no risk.
Only 2 people walked away with more than a few dollars.

[EyalBrown]

I don't think I've ever complained about ads on YouTube, but just this once I'm going to.

The ad for The Getaway started at 6:30. This video is only 9 minutes long. Combine that with the teaser ad after the opening credit, and this video is almost 1/3 ad. I recognize that the revenue is necessary for making this show I love (hence why I don't complain about ads on YouTube generally), but that is absurd. The video was really interesting, but by the end I was thinking more about this service I'm not going to buy (sorry) than the actual interesting and important subject at hand.

[impofstpete]

A really interesting version of this actually occurs in Pokémon Yellow. Veteran players of Blue and Red may have had ideas for where certain objects might be or make choices that give them advantages on the first 2 gyms. However now you come in with that knowledge but instead have no choice on starters. You may know what is coming, but now you have to make a whole new strategy up

[okaytuesday]

4:41, hey the person in the green shirt is wrong, 2+2 doesn’t equal 24.

[malogibeaux]

If I had a nickel everytime an Extra credits video had a psychonauts reference, I'd have 2 nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

[segevstormlord]

Either I am very, very, very, VERY bad at "thin slicing, " or I instinctively distrust it so much that I refuse to heed it. Because if I act on hunches, I always lose. I have to analyze things to the Nth degree to have a shot at getting it right.

[drillerdev]

That Cuphead reviewer is never gonna see the end of that jump

[Heightren]

I think this has been very clear when watching League content creators playing the new Bullet Heaven mode, compared to us who already played some BH games, like the order of upgrades and priorities.

[eleviathan]

I feel like a good example of this is elemental weaknesses in video games. When there is an element system people usually figure out what's weak to what pretty quickly. Most of the time its intuitive, like ice being weak to fire and fire being weak to water, but there are times where it isn't clear and you feel like it will work. I know when i see a big bulky looking enemy, i instinctively will gravitate towards hard hitting physical or magic attacks, and tend to avoid low damage moves or projectiles.

[Carewolf]

The problem with X-com was that it produced the same result when you reloaded, and people not realising that would reload and experience missing a 95% shot as many times as they reloaded. Not everybody discovered the fixed outcomes but just noticed the random chances were messed up. Add to that a "bug" in the first version of the new X-Com series where some enemies would dodge after you "hit" them. The later fixed that bug by at least giving one point of damage, so a miss due to a later dodge didn't look like a miss.

[die_buzzies]

4:48 basically me in my math classes as a child, it was so boring. I got straight A+ but it was so boring

[DomyTheMad]

no offense but could y'all stop making Nebula even more amazing?
I'm bloody poor and all my favorite creators dangling golden carrots over my head nearly every single video is getting beyond insulting.