Dealing with “Biases”
Facing the music that our decision-making stories generate
We have a limited capacity of making good decisions on a daily basis - see “Judge’s lunchtime leniency” - and we can’t stay constantly vigilant of everything, lest everything becomes a “cognitive bias”. Foster a collaborative win-win environment, and use context. What worked in the past could have been due to serendipity, and it may not work for your present scenario. Be introspective about what a success and failure story is. Game development is very interconnected, and there are so many variables at play, that we lose track of what is a “factor of success/best practice”. We are past the age of the golden middle.
Humans are storytellers. I can go on about logic, fallacies, and reasoning or provide a narrative that will probably stick with the reader long after this article is finished…” at a conference far far away, a business deal was made that changed everything” It’s just easier to get lost in a good story to prove a point. It’s just as easy to bull-shit someone with it.
So, we must be diligent about how we approach storytelling and apply it to the present.
It’s the best in us and the worst in us, as each individual’s story builds upon other narratives, that can impact how we developed games and cooperate with one another.
I’ve placed some of my observations here:
The reason should balance out emotions. We can’t create without the latter
When thinking to copy or reproduce, remember no two teams are alike
An open-minded perpetual learner mindset helps
Be humble even if you are successful and make all the “right decisions”
Randomness and irrationality play a big role in game development (more than we think)
Position yourself and the team so that bad decisions don’t lead to complete ruin or take way too long to fix
Account for unknown unknowns in decisions and timelines
People used to think the world is in the center of the universe and that the sun revolves around the earth (geocentrism). It didn’t make it true
Volatility is the name of the game in the games industry
Each decision comes with an asymmetry - ups, and downs. Convexity means that after the result of a decision comes in your upside is bigger
Focus on the consequences of a decision and not on the probability of it being the right one
In a system - developing/publishing a title - second-order effects apply not to our immediate surroundings, but to those impacted by our decisions (teammates, stakeholders, players, etc.)
Differentiate what is a signal (relevant information) that factors in decisions vs Noise, demagogic rhetoric, and nonsense with no added value
Listen more, and speak less in meetings. Interrupting with a “Sorry to interrupt” is a status-game, that is zero-sum
Our memories are not perfect recollection mechanisms, apply them cautiously
Stories woven in emotional states become easily rationalized and become reasoning. Emotional attachments are important but they need to be tempered with reason
Decision-making when working on games is a mix of intuitions, and reasons, that need to be adjusted with the process of trial and error. I’ll leave you with one final interpretation (narrative) of the Turkey Problem of Nassim Taleb, placed in the gaming industry:
Before Thanksgiving (release date), the Lovertorian family (dev/pub) had a beautiful turkey named Bardulina (game name). They treated Bardulina like a member of their family. In their eyes, this creature possessed the greatest features and charm. They fed the turkey well, made crucial decisions about how to best develop Bardulina, and grew as a unit alongside it. Then when Thanksgiving arrived, the Lovertorians invited their friends over (market) and Bardulina was eaten as part of nature’s course. It didn’t taste well, so the family started explaining themselves, trying to find the reasons why
Book sources
Daniel Kahneman: “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, “Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment”; Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Incerto: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, Barry Schwartz - “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less”, Donella Meadows: ” Thinking in Systems”
Credits: artwork created by Tanya Timosina
