Game Psychology 🧠 | Extra Credits Compilation | Extra Credits Gaming

Hey everyone. Uh wow, why is there music playing at the beginning of the episode? Oh, right, right, right. No, I I get it, but I don't think we should really do this. It seems a little cheap, right? Oh, what the heck. Clang, clang, clang went the trolley. Five folks stand on the rail. Save five lives and kill just one. From the moment I heard it, I felt morally indecisive. Alas, this isn't the long-awaited Extra Credits episode about the correlation between old movie musicals and game design. Though I am pushing for that one soon, Judy. Rather, today, I'm going to need your help with a different philosophical challenge in a train car. So, hop aboard. The trolley problem is a well-known ethical thought experiment that recently popped back into pop culture via the fan tastic

television show, The Good Place. Seriously, side note, go watch that show if you already haven't. It's phenomenal. As Chidi tells us, the trolley problem was crafted in its current form by British philosopher Philippa Foot in 1967 as part of a larger ethical question. It goes like this. An unstoppable trolley with only you on board is racing out of control toward five people standing on the track. Now, why they don't just move, Professor Foot doesn't say. But wait, there's a junction ahead of the trolley with a side track diverging from the main line. And you can easily pull a lever to divert the train if you so choose. But wait again, you can also see a single different person standing on said side track. So, what do you do? Do nothing and let the trolley hit the first five, or pull the lever and doom the one lone victim? One school of philosophy argues that deciding to pull the lever and thereby sacrificing one person to save five is the best course of action, while another says that the act of choosing to kill either one person or five people is morally wrong. So, to do nothing is correct. This brain teaser has been with us in one variation or another since

1905, when philosophy professor Frank Chapman Sharp presented a variation of it to his undergraduate students. In Sharp's version, rather than being on board the trolley, they were standing next to the tracks near a lever that controlled track operation, but the lone victim on the side track is their own child. Yeah. And while this may seem like an entirely make-believe scenario, many people are confronted with situations similar to this in real life. For instance, physicians with limited time or resources during a pandemic may be forced to make decisions about which patients they can treat. Should they struggle to save the most serious cases or treat a greater number of patients who have a better chance of surviving? Not to mention the trolley problem is an issue now being debated in regards to a completely different vehicle, one where the decision isn't left up to a human at all, but rather software. Of course, here I'm referencing autonomous driverless vehicles that are in theory supposed to make our road safer. But if a car with four people in it is crossing a bridge when someone steps out in front of the car, how should the car react? Do we want the vehicle's software to value the driver and passengers more, or

should it cause the car to swerve off the bridge to save the life of one pedestrian? But regardless if a human or a machine is making the call, what is the best solution to the trolley problem? I mean, what would you do? Fortunately, not only is this question a great conversation starter at parties and a terrific icebreaker on a first date, or maybe not, it's also an ethical conundrum we as gamers face quite a lot because many of the games we play force us to make choices like the trolley problem all the time. And the best part is, in games, designers don't need there to be a right answer. In fact, in most cases, designers want both sides of every choice to be meaningful to the player's experience. For instance, think about the life and death decisions healers make in MMOs like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV. When fighting a raid boss, do I heal the tank that's protecting our team or the mage who's really toasting that sucker with her pyroblasts? It's a difficult decision and my resources are limited. So with that in mind, let's look at some games that revel in their trolley problems. And it's not hard to start with Telltale's The Walking Dead. In

that series, almost all the trolley problems are life and death where you're weighing various characters' lives against each other. Save Carley or Doug. Save Shawn or Duck. Kill Lee? No, not our writer. We need our writer. And those were just some of the choices in season 1. But whichever the player chooses, the choice is meaningful to them because of the philosophical weight that's tied to their personal understanding of that choice. Another great example is the choices we're given in Life is Strange. From telling about the gun to dealing with Victoria to confronting Kate. Situations like these affect both the player character Max and you as the player playing the game in multiple meaningful ways depending on your own code of moral ethics. And many game endings feature trolley problems. The choices of what you do with BioShock's Little Sisters, the moral conundrums you face at the end of a Fallout game, the list could go on and on. But what if you want a bucket of trolley problems all in one place? Then try Doctor Trolley's Problem. Oh, yeah. It's a game featuring dozens of ethical problems inspired by You get the idea. So when looking at the trolley problem, it's important to realize that it's

really not a test of right or wrong. It's a challenge to the ethical systems of those who take it. One life or five? Intervene or do nothing? But now I want to hear your thoughts on this. So I'm going to leave you with a hopefully meaningful choice. In the comments below, either share some of your own examples of great trolley problems in games and tell us what you thought of those or just tell us what you would do in the classic trolley problem and why. Okay, so Judy, would you say that the contrivances of everyday people bursting into song and dance is your medium essentially locking folks into a modal state or would you kind of consider that more like a quick time event? Let me tell you a story. It's a murder mystery. It's a human drama. But it's also the most famous game theory problem ever proposed. A call comes into the station. There's been a murder. The police rush out to the scene. The scene's clean. No prints, no weapon, no leads. It's time to round up the

usual suspects and see who talks. Word on the street is that Alice Two Guns McKenzie and Bob The Knife Stefano did the deed. Everyone knows it, but no one's willing to go on record and help us make the case. So, it's time to bring in the suspects and see if we can get one of them to flip. Alice and Bob, or as our files refer to them, A and B, are in two separate holding cells. The detectives are pressing them. They both have outstanding warrants for minor crimes, so if neither of them talk, they're both going to still get a year in the slammer. But, the cops don't want that. They need a conviction, so they offer both A and B the same deal. If they rat out the other one, then the one who did the squawking gets to do the walking. No jail time and old warrants swept under the rug. But, A and B know that if they both blame one another, the cops are just going to call them both accessories to the murder, and they're each going to get 10 years up state. They have no way to communicate with each other, and they're told they have an hour to

decide. Time's up. What do A and B do? Now, assuming that there's no later repercussions, like getting whacked for being a snitch, there's actually only one rational course of action here. But, the reason this problem is so interesting is that that course of action is bad for everyone. And it's why the Prisoner's Dilemma serves to provide us with an understanding of why so often, as a species or as a group, we'll all agree that a particular course of action is bad and yet proceed to do it anyway. How? Well, let's look at the Prisoner's Dilemma more closely. You can think of it as a two-by-two grid with participants, choices, and outcomes. So, as you can see here, if A turns over B and B stays silent, A gets to walk out free, and B gets a lifetime in jail. If A stays silent and B turns over A, then A gets a lifetime in jail, and B gets to walk free. If they both rat each other out though, they both spend 10 years in prison. And if both stay silent, they both get off with only 1 year in jail.

So, what's the best option for the two of them? To both stay silent. If they did that, they'd serve a sum of 2 years total. But, what's the best option for either of them individually? Clearly, to turn state's evidence. Because in this situation, it's the choice you'll never regret. If your partner stays silent and you give up the goods on them, you get to walk away free. But, if your partner tries to pin the murder on you, well, at least this way you're only going to be serving 10 years instead of a life sentence. If both players are playing optimally for themselves, then the only logical choice is to blame the other person. In fact, the only outcome where neither participant regrets their decision, or feels as though they should have done something else when both players decisions are revealed, is both A and B blame each other. This is called a Nash equilibrium, and it's something we might talk about in detail some other day. But, you can see that outcome is actually terrible, even though it's the only rational choice from each individual player's perspective. This behavior comes into play all the time in

teamwork-based games. Ever play a MOBA where one player hogs all the kills? This is why. Or if you've ever been in a game where one of the DPS characters spams "I need healing." when it's clear you should be healing the tank, the root of that behavior can be found here, too. But, nowhere is this clearer than in the real world. And a great example of this is as a group, the overwhelming majority of nations agree it would be best for the world if we banded together and did something about climate change. But, let's look at that decision grid for any individual country. Your country can either opt in to lower its carbon output and pay for research, or not. If you do, and the rest of the world does not, then you're bearing the majority of the cost. Your economy is weaker for not exploiting fossil fuels, and climate change still isn't solved, because it required a group effort. If you don't, and the rest of the world does, everyone else is left shouldering the cost of fighting climate change, while you still get to reap your oily rewards. If you and everyone else decide to actually fight climate change, well then you had

to bear some of the costs, but climate change might actually get solved. And finally, let's say you, nor any other country, tries to do anything at all. Well, at least you didn't have to pay any costs for trying. So, with all that in mind, what's the only rational answer from an individual actor's perspective? To not try. Of course, this is terrible reasoning, and it shows the fundamental problem with the prisoner's dilemma. It's not actually how real-world problems work. It's a simplification that ends up leaving out a lot. I mean, on the positive side, there's all sorts of ancillary benefits to getting off fossil fuels, or developing alternative energy technologies. Or, if Alice rats out Bob, she's going to have to watch her back for the rest of her life, which is a pretty big negative. Unfortunately, people in real-life situations do often think in terms of the prisoner's dilemma, especially when those individuals involved are actually large bureaucratic organizations, like governments or corporations. Which leads us to a world where individual actors are continuously making decisions that

appear to be the right one for them, that really end up being worse for everyone, themselves included. But with all that said, we can actually end this episode on a positive note, because a large number of psychological studies have shown that at least when dealing with each other as active individuals, as specific human beings, where we know other human beings welfare's are at stake, we tend to choose cooperation. Perhaps it's an evolutionary holdover, perhaps it's out of some sense of fairness or community, but we do often opt to work together well beyond the bounds of any statistical noise. So, in the spirit of that, please don't be an Alice or a Bob or even a bad Genji, because sometimes the best possible outcome requires a decision that doesn't seem best for you. You're hiking a mountain trail. You've got your map, backpack full of snacks, and you're enjoying the peaceful solitude of nature. Then, you round the bend and discover a stranger sitting on the other side of the path. "Help!" they call out. "I think I broke my ankle." No

one is around except the two of you. So, you would probably help that person, right? Now, let's switch the scene. What if you were walking through a downtown plaza, heels clicking on the stone pavement as you move with the crowd. Then, you see a person sitting against the fountain. "Help!" they cry to the crowd. "I think I broke my ankle." Though you're surrounded by people, no one around you is responding. Now, what do you do? Real quick, up top, please welcome Lane Stanley, who guest wrote this episode. Thanks so much, Lane. We might like to think that we would help in both situations, but it turns out people are much more likely to help in an emergency when they're the only person around. In fact, statistically, the more people present for an emergency, the less likely anyone is to call for help. This is called the bystander effect, and you may have experienced it both in real life and even in some multiplayer games and MMOs all the way back to EverQuest. For instance, if you see a player in need who's part of a guild, you might not step in to help. While if you saw a solo player in need of a res, you might be more inclined. But, why? Shouldn't more

witnesses mean more calls for aid? More heroic actions? More knowledge and skill to help the person in need? Sadly, research actually says no. But, this has less to do with our desire to help someone and more with the way we interact with a crowd. Often, we base the seriousness of a situation on how everyone else reacts. So, if no one else is acting like an emergency is taking place, we are more likely to mirror the crowd's reaction and assume that the situation must not be as serious as we first thought. The term bystander effect was first coined in the late 1960s after the murder of Kitty Genovese when the case became a huge news sensation, not because of the murder itself, but because of close to 38 witnesses who didn't step in or call the police when she called for help. Which brings us to the idea of diffusion of responsibility. The more people there are, the more each person assumes someone else will deal with the problem. Top laner getting crushed in League? Well, it's a long walk up there and the jungler will probably handle it. Playing mystery heroes with four healers on your team and a Genji always spamming I need

healing? Well, you could go heal them, but surely one of the others will get to it. You've got some mercy sniping to do. Between these two factors, mirroring crowd reactions and the diffusion of responsibility, we have the root cause of the bystander effect. Of course, there are lots of reasons why someone might not intervene, whether there's a crowd or not. For instance, we might fear for our own safety. I mean, that top laner that's been getting crushed, well, their opponent's pretty fed and we'll just die if we go up there, so we should probably just leave them to their fate. We might worry that we don't have the right skills to help. For instance, if we're not a healer, nothing we can do for that person tanking. Or we might worry that we're misreading the situation. For instance, have you ever helped out another player during a fight only for them to be mad at you for stealing their kill? And distressingly, all of this translates into real life. And in real life, willingness to help also often depends on the relationship a bystander has to the person or type of person in need. Studies have found that actors dressed in shabby clothes receive help several minutes later than actors dressed in professional wear. Male

college students who have expressed sexist beliefs are less likely to intervene when a woman is too intoxicated to give consent. And we've assuredly seen how a bystander might not intervene in a violent or unfair situation based on individual prejudice towards people of other races, sexual orientations, or gender identities. But most of us really do want to help and that's the beautiful thing. There are a ton of ways to help overcome the bystander effect, and most of them start by just being aware that we are susceptible to it. So, even just by watching this, you're starting that process. Because we're always mirroring the reactions of the crowd, remember that disrupting that pattern can make a huge difference. You can start by showing the person in need that you see them, even if it's just by shouting, "Hey, that person needs help." Or even, "Stop. We can change the situation." Then, you can do what's in your power to help the person. Of course, always be safe. For instance, if someone's stuck down a canyon and you are not trained in that particular style of rescue, don't try to go down there and help them, because you might get yourself stuck. So, if you can't help directly, you can

call out to others. Make eye contact with people in the crowd to foster empathy. Also, calling for specific people to do tasks, "You, in the striped shirt, call 911." can get them moving because it creates individual responsibility. Some researchers have claimed that people pulling out their smartphones to record violent incidents is a new form of the bystander effect, though I'm not sure on that one. While this documentation is often incredibly helpful in the long term, if you're going to record, first make sure someone in the moment has actually called for help or assisted in another way. And then afterward, offer the footage to the victim or log the video as evidence. Also, a different form of technology is moving us forward in bystander intervention training. The University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College are both using video games to train their students to better respond to incidents of bullying and sexual assault. Players are able to practice privately, so they can build up their confidence for if and when the time comes to act publicly. In life, there's not a quest reward waiting for us if we help others. It's often easy to do the wrong thing and hard to do the right one. But we can practice

how we react to someone in danger in our virtual worlds and train ourselves mentally to not let the bystander effect win, so that we're more ready if life calls on us to help. So, don't wait until you're in the middle of a scenario to think about how you'll react. Decide now. If I'm in a crowd and I see a person who's in need of help, what will I do? Have you ever started a new job, or been accepted into a university program, and then just felt terrible about it? You feel like you don't really belong, that you aren't good enough, and worst of all, eventually everybody's going to find out. That right there, that's the imposter syndrome talking, and it's absolutely no way to live. So today, we're going to discuss what imposter syndrome is, where it comes from, and most importantly, the ways you can overcome it. The imposter syndrome is a psychological phenomenon, where people feel like they're not as competent as their achievements indicate, and it can be a major problem, because it means you're living in a constant state of stress. You feel like you're faking it,

always looking over your shoulder to see if somebody's going to expose you, and it happens to people in many professions and levels of power, from CEOs of major corporations, all the way down to new writers and narrators of moderately popular YouTube shows. Imposter syndrome stunts people, even successful people, from reaching their full potential. Sufferers can get so worried that they'll be found out, that they develop unhealthy coping mechanics, such as overworking, not asking for raises or promotions, or ironically, procrastination, because they're afraid they'll just end up failing when they actually do the thing they were hired to do. Some people give up entirely, and settle for a menial job below their capabilities. It can manifest as physical symptoms, such as anxiety or stress panics, and in extreme cases, sufferers can turn to substance abuse. All of these things can negatively impact a person's productivity, causing actual burnout or failure, which in turn just makes those nagging imposter feelings even worse. Oddly enough, when imposter syndrome was initially researched, it was very wrongly thought to solely affect women, which is why so much literature on the subject is

primarily targeted towards them. But make no mistake, imposter syndrome affects all genders and ethnicities. However, cases affecting women and minority groups are heard about more often for one simple reason. One of the leading causes of imposter syndrome is feeling like the odd one out in a work environment, such as the historically white male-dominated game industry. However, there are a myriad of other causes. Another major source that many of us have unfortunately experienced is a hostile, hyper-competitive work culture. This is all too common in academia and creative fields, where people can be shunned for not volunteering for excessively long hours or often judged against one another. Unfortunately, too many of you probably know exactly what imposter syndrome feels like and maybe even have some thoughts about where it comes from for you. So, let's get to the most important bit, managing those imposter-esque feelings. When it comes down to it, imposter syndrome is really a symptom of having a warped idea of what constitutes competency. Feeling like you aren't supposed to be there or that you're failing everybody around you comes from expecting and demanding perfection from

yourself or the idea that you have to do everything on your own without asking for help. Therefore, first, you have to learn to accept that nobody's perfect. You don't need to do it all. It's okay to ask for help when you need it because you don't need to know everything. You don't need to be an expert at a job you just started or have read all the classics before your freshman year at a great school. Now, hopefully some of the pressure lifts when I tell you that nearly 70% of people experience the imposter syndrome at some point in their lives. For instance, our studio director, Jeff, mentioned feeling this way recently when a colleague explained some new server tech he didn't fully understand. Now, despite Jeff having over 20 years of experience working in MMOs, what up EverQuest, he felt like he'd have to learn that entirely new discipline just to keep up. And personally, if I could just break away from the script here for a second real quick, I actually felt this way when I first started at Extra Credits. It felt um like I had not earned my place and that I would never be doing the job well enough to What's the word I'm looking for? Deserve to be here,

you know, putting on these shows for you every week. And it's tough, it it, know, it's tough. But something that did get me through it, I think, is knowing that it does happen to almost everyone. Mike Myers, Neil Gaiman, Maya Angelou, even Oprah, all hugely successful people, have spoken openly about dealing with imposter syndrome in the past. So, just like I sort of learned, I think it's important to remember that you are not alone. Now, something actionable you can do the next time you begin to feel the imposter syndrome creeping up is look around at everybody around you and remember that statistically, over half of them are feeling like imposters as well. So, how is it that they all seem so natural and competent compared to you? Because most people are faking it, at least to some degree. Nobody is actually perfect and totally competent, and we're all learning as we go. As cliche as the line fake it till you make it sounds, it can often be the most helpful mindset in overcoming the imposter syndrome. And though it is easier said than done, you can do that by reframing your thoughts away from negatives. Don't imagine all the ways that you'll fail. Instead, focus on the

positive outcomes you want. For instance, when showing your game, don't say to yourself, "Ugh, they'll hate it. My game isn't ready." Instead, think, "Ah, it's going to be great finding out what isn't working early so I can fix it." Another exercise that can be helpful, even though it can feel a little bit silly at first, is to write yourself your own letter of recommendation. People who suffer from imposter syndrome often have a habit of dismissing their achievements as luck or some other external reason. So, in your letter, objectively list what you've accomplished without downplaying your contributions. You'll often find you've achieved more than you ever let yourself admit. If your imposter feelings are too much to overcome by yourself, try to organize a group of friends and colleagues who might also be feeling the same way. If you put a call out on social media, I'm pretty sure you'll be surprised at how many of the people you felt inferior to might be feeling the same way about you. And if you're in a management position and notice this happening to new people, consider setting up a kind of mentorship program to ease in new hires. Imposter syndrome is, at its core, mostly a mental block. So, you have to keep reminding yourself

that you are not a fraud. You are capable and you deserve the success you've earned. Also remember, nobody got to where they are by themselves and it's never wrong to ask for help. We know it's scary to put yourself out there and possibly face judgement from others, but if you can shake off those insecurities and boldly present yourself, whether you really feel that confident or not, you'll almost certainly be surprised at how well things turn out. See you next time everybody. Wait a minute, you're not Zoe. Um hey everybody, Laszlo and Matt here to thank you for watching the first Extra Credits Collected. We are so excited to be moving some of our favorite EC episodes over from the Extra History channel to here and we hope that you are too. But, you know what I'm not excited about buddy? Oh gross. Well, that and scammers and data brokers. But, I actually have something to tell you about that might be able to help out with that and by me, I mean my animated better half. Take it away. Until we started working with Incogni, I had no idea how much of my personal information was being sold and published by data brokers online. Spoiler alert,

it was a lot. Not to mention data breaches leaking all of our personal information saw an uptick of 41.5% worldwide according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. That is a yikes. And your data being sold or stolen can lead to any number of issues ranging from the annoyance of constant robo calls all the way up to the absolutely catastrophic stuff like identity theft. But now with Incogni, I'm not alone in this fight because after a very speedy sign up, they got to work bombarding these data brokers and people search sites with take down notices to remove my personal info. Plus they keep the pressure on using regional laws and ordinances to make sure that my data stays removed even when new sites pop up. And it's easy to keep track of all this through their real time dashboard and email updates. Like this week, my report, as you see here, showed my personal data has now been scrubbed from over 200 sites. Go team. So, if you would like to keep your personal data, you know, your personal data, you can get 60% off Incogni right now by visiting incogni.com/extrahistory and then using our code extra history. Or you can get started by clicking right here. And then once you've ruined a data

broker's day, why not check out another of our videos here to celebrate. That's right Zoe, Cool Ya Koi, Joseph Blame, Izzy Coin, Ilkner, Hunter Z, Dominic Valenciana, Arclight Games, and Angela Valenciana are awesome legendary patrons.