10 votes

The hard truth of poker — and life: You’re never ‘due’ for good cards

7 comments

  1. [7]
    DonQuixote
    Link
    And then there's this tidbit of knowledge about video games (NOT rolling actual dice):

    And then there's this tidbit of knowledge about video games (NOT rolling actual dice):

    Frank Lantz has spent over twenty years designing games. When we meet at his office at NYU, where he currently runs the Game Center, he lets me in on an idiosyncrasy of game design. “In video games where there are random events — things like dice rolls — they often skew the randomness so that it corresponds more closely to people’s incorrect intuition,” he says. “If you flip heads twice in a row, you’re less likely to flip heads the third time. We know this isn’t actually true, but it feels like it should be true, because we have this weird intuition about large numbers and how randomness works.” The resulting games actually accommodate that wrongness so that people don’t feel like the setup is “rigged” or “unfair.”

    12 votes
    1. [4]
      stu2b50
      Link Parent
      A real example is modern Fire Emblem games, because when people see "80% chance to hit", they think "almost certainly hits", when anyone who's played Pokemon knows the fear of stone edge missing....

      A real example is modern Fire Emblem games, because when people see "80% chance to hit", they think "almost certainly hits", when anyone who's played Pokemon knows the fear of stone edge missing. This is amplified by the whole perma-death thing, so they actually roll twice and take the max (basically advantage in DnD).

      Speaking of DnD, bounded accuracy in general is kinda wonky in terms of real life intuition. Your lvl 20 barbarian, swinging at a lvl 1 kid, has at least a 5% chance to miss. Somehow. 5% is quite a bit.

      3 votes
      1. [3]
        DonQuixote
        Link Parent
        Do you think that given the popularity of videogames this warping of percentages from real world could have behavioral effects on people when they move to real-life probability assessment?

        Do you think that given the popularity of videogames this warping of percentages from real world could have behavioral effects on people when they move to real-life probability assessment?

        2 votes
        1. stu2b50
          Link Parent
          Hm, maybe. I think instead it might fail to give people better intuition, like video games that don't do it do. For instance, many people concluded Trumps victory as a evidence that 538's model...

          Hm, maybe. I think instead it might fail to give people better intuition, like video games that don't do it do.

          For instance, many people concluded Trumps victory as a evidence that 538's model was badly parametized (it had a 70/30 odds for Clinton), while it didn't surprise me at all from a probability point of view.

          I had waaay too many instances since I was 10 and missed with Thunder or Blizzard in Pokémon to consider a 30% to miss a rare event.

          You don't usually get a chance to roll a bunch of binomials at various percentages, so video games are traditionally a pretty good training for probability.

          4 votes
        2. Apos
          Link Parent
          For sure, games are a good way to learn about the world, but if they teach you wrong things it does affect the way you think. You end up with badly calibrated intuition.

          For sure, games are a good way to learn about the world, but if they teach you wrong things it does affect the way you think. You end up with badly calibrated intuition.

          1 vote
    2. viridian
      Link Parent
      I haven't played DotA in a long time, but it's an interesting game in that it has a hybridized approach, where certain hero abilities and items are truly random (especially for characters that...

      I haven't played DotA in a long time, but it's an interesting game in that it has a hybridized approach, where certain hero abilities and items are truly random (especially for characters that center around luck based risk reward mitigation) and other hero abilities, stats, and items rely on PRD, or pseudo random distribution:

      https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Random_distribution

      The interesting thing is that because this is a competitive game where people chase every advantage, this has a HUGE effect on gameplay at a high level, and is far more luck manipulation than mere quality of life.

      2 votes