Have you ever had a headache when choosing a game to play?

Choose in the eyes of gamers

As a gamer, have you ever fallen into a scene of a huge pool of games, many of which have never been touched (because you buy a bundle of many games, get free from giveaway, from subscription services like Humble) Bundle .) yet? And have you ever looked into that game store to find an entertaining game, looked back and forth, looked back and forth and decided… not playing at all or returning to play an old game that 'cleared' 7 × 7 = 49 times?

I do have one, and I'm sure you all have encountered similar situations many times. It is a general situation for humans, not just gamers, and was called 'overchoice' by Alvin Toffler in the book Future Shock, published in 1970.

Overchoice, also known as 'choice overload', occurs when people have too many similar options. Making decisions is extremely difficult because we can see a lot of consequences and potential risks if we make the wrong choice. Even if there are no consequences, having too many of the same good choices is extremely arduous because people will always want to weigh them together to find the best, most reasonable option.

It is possible to describe the relationship between the number of choices and the satisfaction after making the choice as an inverted U: too few or too many options do not make us satisfied after the choice, but we can only be satisfied with the 'just used' number. In life, we have many situations to choose like this, from small things like 'what to eat' this afternoon 'to choose which school, where to work, and . who to love. With the development of the internet, people have more information, more choices, and thus make it more difficult to make final decisions.

For us gamers, even if choosing the wrong game does not bring too big consequences (at least you waste time because the game was bought before), choosing a game to play among a mountain of games is still a problem. In this case, we spend too much time thinking about the games we didn't choose, instead of enjoying the games we chose. In more serious indecisive cases, you will always think about the hours of entertainment you can get with titles B, C, D if you choose game A, and therefore absolutely can not be defeated. determined to choose any game.

For nerds, this choice can sometimes be a problem. In Vindictus, in addition to naming characters, Beetle often wonders when choosing what to buy for characters, sexy or naive shirts, big or small swords, . In World of Warships, I am strangling my forehead. Think about whether you should buy Yoshino, a big cannon cruiser, a torpedo or Marceau, an agile little destroyer capable of dropping 'rain of bullets' on the enemy's head - both are Tier 10 ships so it is a tremendous benefit. the same (and this is the reason for this article).

In the hands of game makers

While gamers like Beetle scratched their ears because of the choices, the difficulty in this choice is also used by developers and publishers to make money for gamers. Psychologically, making decisions between an already difficult selection forest will be more difficult when a time limit is set for us, and so they come up with a unique technique called 'artifical scarcity. , 'or simply meant to intimidate the goods. Instead of selling everything in the cash shop for gamers at the same time, they will turn around selling each item one by one, each item for a few days and then replace it with another item to avoid gamers wondering and not buying anything. Any dish.

Higher hands, game publishers will combine this spin game with 'fear of missing out' (fear of missing the opportunity) to force gamers to open their wallets. This is a simple psychological game based on a person's fear, when they are afraid that others will have what they do not have, or do what they do not do. For example, League of Legends: gamers who buy expensive or legendary skins as soon as they are released will receive additional borders, icons or the like, and those who buy after the release will not receive this dish. So there will be many gamers immediately open their wallets to buy expensive costumes to receive gifts for 'equal to me'!

Another method of overchoice application in the game is not evil. By giving gamers new skills, new techniques, new weapons sequentially instead of pouring everything on them, and creating a separate effect for each item (as in Doom Eternal) has just launched), the developer will help gamers get familiar with the game easily and do not feel overwhelmed by the number of features of the game. When done right, this helps gamers love the game instead of getting tired of memorizing and wondering between too many different weapons.

Online games often have a lot of problems with overchoice. As a game grows, the number of features that developers put into the game will increase, and gamers will have more and more ways to play games and enhance their characters. This is what developers have to do to keep old gamers demanding new content but an obstacle to attracting rookies, because many features are synonymous with the huge amount of information newbies need. must know. It even makes it difficult for gamers who have quit the game but want to come back for the same reason. Warframe is probably a suitable example for this situation.

Epilogue

People always find it difficult to choose one of a range of options, and even if they have made a choice, chances are they will not be happy because they remember forever the options they have missed. Fortunately, in everyday life, we can reduce this headache by limiting our choices. In the game, developers always try to find a balance or take advantage of it to bring satisfaction to gamers after making a choice. Hopefully this article will help you avoid the psychological trap when encountering situations where you need to make similar decisions.

But we will return to headache because we think about whether we should choose Yoshino or Marceau.