Choice Architecture: Manipulation for Fun and Profit! | Extra Credits Gaming

Hey there everyone. Now, some of you might have come here from seeing our short on this topic. And if so, first off, welcome. And second, you already know what we're going to ask today, don't you? Right. What's World of Warcraft have to do with whether you order a steak from a restaurant or how much cash you spend on a free-to-play game? Any idea what the answer is? Correct again. In all of these things, our will isn't as free as we think. Speaking of which, would you rather eat dirt, get audited on your taxes, or get a discount on a NEBULA SUBSCRIPTION? WOW, WHAT A GREAT EXAMPLE of choice architecture. Is the idea that by arranging choices in a certain way, or by putting them in a certain context, you can influence a person's decision-making. You can give them the illusion of free will, saying, "Hey, here's some options. Choose freely." While subtly, without telling them, actually be manipulating their decision towards the one you want. A really great

example of this out in the wilds of the IRL world are restaurant prices. Because they manipulate us all the time. Of course, at a restaurant, when you have a menu in front of you, you're free to choose what you want, or even walk away, right? Well, sort of. Because humans have been serving other humans food for so long, we've learned a lot of tricks for how to get the most value out of that experience. For example, if a restaurant just puts a plain grilled chicken breast on its menu, most people are never really going to order it. I mean, why would you? There's a bunch of other ways to get that same thing cheaper and at the same quality without putting in a ton of work. But, if the restaurant puts that same grilled chicken breast under a category labeled healthy options, it's not going to be flying off the shelves, but suddenly you're going to see more people than before buying this high-profit item. Or let's say at that same restaurant, everything on the menu just seems super expensive. But after you see the $60 steak and $70 lobster, are you kidding me? Well, now that $20 cheeseburger doesn't seem that outrageous. And of course, the restaurant would love to

sell you an overpriced steak or lobster, but that's not really why they're on the menu, right? And if my diner experiences in Queens tell me anything, they might not even stock a large quantity of them. Rather, the real reason they're on the menu is just to anchor you, to change your perception of what is reasonable, and let them get away with charging you 20 bucks for a burger. And actually, if you want to get into the nitty-gritty of the anchoring effect, we did a whole video on that back in the day, and you can check that out right here. Now, the science on this sort of thing is all over the place. Heck, even when it works, it doesn't work on everyone. It's a numbers game. But at high enough volume, it's going to work on some people, and it costs you very little to do. So, assuming you don't have any moral reservations about it, why not do it? Which brings us to games. A space where a lot of people end up going through the same experience in an industry that at times has shown a, let's call it, an impressive amount of moral flexibility. First, let's talk about framing, i.e., what the restaurant is doing. And to do that, we are going to take a quick stroll through the caverns of time all the way back to the

WoW beta. Wait, really? Damn, well, how are we going to get there? Yeah, Jeff with the save. I knew hanging onto that DeLorean from our history of D&D episode was a good call. Let's ride to what might be considered a prehistoric game design discussion. Originally, WoW didn't have a rest bonus. Instead, it had an unrested penalty. When your character wasn't rested, you would only get half XP. Players hated this, so instead, they introduced the rest bonus, where while your character was rested, you get double XP, and the players loved it. And they're exactly the same. They didn't really change anything about rest other than the framing. The amount of XP you got was the same. The penalty for doing things unrested was the same. But by saying that unrested XP was the and the resting XP was a bonus instead of rested XP being the baseline and unrested XP being a penalty, players embraced the system. We do this all the

time. Whenever you see an item with plus X bonus versus werewolves, say, it could just as easily read negative X versus non-werewolves, but we're always framing things positively to get players to embrace them. After all, even though some of you would read the stats and compare the baseline weapons against whatever else you found at your level, there are many of us, myself very much included, that would see something with the effect negative X versus non-werewolves and have our lizard brains immediately say, "Well, that weapon's garbage." This is honestly one of the first things system designers learn. Use bonuses and not penalties to keep players happy. Moving on. We also use choice architecture in different ways. For instance, to help break bad player habits. If you get to low health in a game and you see a pop-up that says, "Take a potion." and shows you the button to press, sure it's a helpful reminder, but now you're also a lot more likely to take that potion and not just squirrel away your consumables. You're a lot more likely to make a choice that wouldn't have been your choice without that little reminder. The next type of choice architecting is defaulting. No,

not on your mortgage, Tom Nook would have your guts for garters. We're talking about setting a default option. For instance, if you're going to buy something online, the way the sort is set on the store page or what is defaulted to being the top few slots when you search encourages purchases of those items. And the same is true of in-game choices. Studies have shown that we bias towards the first choice that we're presented with if all of the things being equal or if we're just unsure of the outcome of the choice. So, in games will often give you a list of dialogue options with one pre-selected or with them listed top to bottom. And when we do, we want you to choose that first one, that pre-selected one on top. Why? Well, it can be for a lot of reasons, but basically we think it's the best experience we have to give you a lot of the time. Some of the other choices may not be as fleshed out. We might think it's the route most people will enjoy or heck, the other might just have some worse writing or something. But whenever you see choices presented linearly or with a pre-selected option, know that game designers might be architecting that choice. Then of course, there's free-to-play games. You

knew this was coming. Because every game that sells you currency has both the steak and the lobster on the menu, right? And even though those are framed as the best deal, you'll notice they often have a default deal, too. Because their goal isn't really to get you to buy that $99 pack. Instead, it's to get you okay with the concept of buying one tier up from what you've been planning. And what pray tell is the option in the middle of your screen most times? Why it just so happens to be that one tier higher than what early data showed to be the most popular choice. What a coincidence. So that's choice architecture. It's not necessarily bad. Sometimes it can even be done with the player's best interest in mind. After all, a fully designed world where every choice and every moment is crafted with intent, is it that much different than putting say a light next to a door we want you to go to? But on the other hand, it's also something we should be aware of as players and really think about our use of as designers, especially when the choice in question involves separating your players from

their money. In those instances, if it feels scummy, it's probably scummy. So please design responsibly, friends. Because these days I really do try to look for responsible design in the things I use, the games I play, and the streaming services that I watch, which is why I just absolutely love Nebula. It is no secret by now that we are super proud of Nebula, our creator-owned and operated streaming service. Where you can see all of our Extra History videos available there a whole week early, meaning you can watch the first episode of our Nazi Occultism series right now before you can see it anywhere else. Plus every show from Nebula from its over 200 creators are always ad-free. And Nebula is home to a ton of other creator-led prestige originals. Just in time for spooky season, for instance, there's this new film Dracula's ex-girlfriend from Philosophy Tube and you know Star Wars and House of the Dragons Abigail Thorn that just got its fangs into me. It's so good. And I'm also happy to report that the complete season of my travel game show of subterfuge and deception The Getaway is now available for you to binge. Ooh, and

this just in, Riftrax is now on Nebula. Meaning you get to join the OG crew from Mystery Science Theater 3000 as they make movies just way more funny. I am incredibly excited about this. I've been fans of these guys for as long as I can remember being a fan of anything. And if you haven't actually seen a Riftrax movie before, a perfect place to start this season is their take on Night of the Living Dead. They will get you even if your name is not Barbara. You can see that and everything else Nebula has to offer for just $3 a month when you sign up for one of our annual plans or you can snag a Nebula gift card for a friend or even a lifetime membership that will last for as long as both you and Nebula exist. No tricks, no gimmicks, just $300 one time and you get Nebula access forever. So, just please be sure to use our link nebula.tv/extracredits or you won't get the discount and you won't be supporting our channel. Thank you for that, by the way. So, check out the difference Nebula makes right here or you know, stay on the YouTube machine and check out our next video here that will probably have ads.

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