There are a number of heuristics that people use when they make decisions. In this episode, we discuss the availability heuristic and how we use it when playing games.
Battlefield, Celeste, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Doom, Dungeons and Dragons, Fog of Love, Gorogoa, Inis, Modern Art, Rising Sun, Secret Hitler, Sleuth, The Witness
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.
Games can be thought of as solving one big problem: How do I win? Cognitive psychologists think about problem solving in terms of a search process, how to get from your current state to a goal state. I discuss what this means for how we play games.
Assassin’s Creed, Breath of the Wild, Chess, Dungeons and Dragons, Europa Universalis IV, Go, Just Cause, Legend of the Five Rings, Magic: The Gathering, Othello, Pac Man, Ratchet and Clank, Space Invaders, Tic-tac-toe, Ticket to Ride, Twilight Imperium
Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human Problem Solving. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.