Nudge and game design - Part 1

Recently I read the beautiful book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. In this book, the authors explore how to influence people's decisions by simply altering how those decisions are presented. The decision architect, who is in charge of designing how the choice is framed, can influence the decision maker, giving him a “nudge” in a certain direction. Many times game designers are also decision architects, so I decided to explore this subject to see if the techniques in the book can also be applied to game design. 

Now, the book deals with the moral dilemma: “How can we nudge consumers towards what’s right for them without taking away their freedom? How can we know what’s right for them?”. 

Luckily, in our case, we don’t have any moral dilemma. Most of the time we wanna nudge players towards a specific behavior, and framing can go a long way in helping us. But understanding the importance of nudges can also help when you don’t want to push players towards a choice but want to adjust your framing to account for some biases. For example, your choices can be balanced but players perceive them in a way that makes them prefer one over the other most of the time. This is why I believe that studying the ideas behind nudges can help even when you don’t want to influence players towards a specific behavior. 

So, without further ado, let’s see some nudges and how to apply them in games.

Default option

One of the most powerful nudges is the default option. People don’t question it, relying on what the developer chose for them, or simply they don’t wanna make the effort to change it. This is why in games you should always choose carefully what are your settings or your controls. Even if people can change it, most of your audience will play with the default ones. If you really want to encourage players to make an active choice, you can force it as soon as they start the game, without having a default option. It’s useful to guide players in this choice nonetheless. For example many games make you choose the difficulty level (but giving a suggested option) or the brightness of the screen (with images on the screen to guide you towards the optimum level). 

In Total War games, units have many possible behaviors, but each one has a default behavior, depending on the type of unit. Archers automatically have a defensive behavior that makes them run away from enemies, while melee units will hold the ground. Players can change them, but the developers have already selected what’s in their best interest.

Friction reduction

People always try to minimize their efforts, so to encourage them towards certain paths, you need to reduce friction, that is, reduce all little obstacles they can meet. When I say little, I really do mean it. For example, the reason why default settings don’t get changed, is precisely because of the friction players face to change them. It may seem like a small thing to do, but people play games to relax or have fun, and when they are in the flow of the game, it may feel excruciatingly boring to open a menu and think about the consequences of each option.

Let’s take a look at The Witcher 3 vs Elden Ring. In both games you have a single button to cast spells, and you may change which one is cast during the fight. But:

• In The Witcher you may change which one from a radial menu 

• In Elden Ring, you can have more than one spell equipped, changing seamlessly among them with a single button. 

The radial menu is a good choice for a fast paced game, but still, it presents more friction than switching with a single button. This means that The Witcher doesn’t encourage you to cast many different spells in the same fight. This makes players more focused on the swordplay, with spells only complementing it. Elden Ring in turn, has some builds more focused on spellcasting, and wants to encourage players to use different spells in each fight. 

This shows us that in real time games, the simple comfort offered by some buttons instead of others can make a great impact. 

Loss aversion

Humans don’t like losing things, and by framing something as a loss, you may skew people away from it. Furthermore the idea of losing can make people angry and frustrated. A 10% percent discount when paying by card is the same as a 10% surcharge when paying by cash, but they are perceived very differently. In a video game, having the health of all the enemies increased is the same thing as reducing your damages. But one is seen as an exciting challenge, while the other as a depressing nerf.

It’s not a surprise that many Roguelikes, when they introduce extra difficulty after your first successful run, do so by increasing all the challenges you face instead of decreasing your power, or by increasing the costs in the shop instead of having you gain less money, etc.

Risk aversion

Connected to loss aversion is risk aversion. People usually don’t like uncertain outcomes, and tend to resort to the most safe options, even when they are not convenient (the most convenient option is usually the one with the highest expected value, that is the chance multiplied for the successful outcome). Usually people gravitate towards the options with a greater chance of success, because it makes the outcome more predictable, even if it is a less desirable outcome. In games when probabilities are known to players, this tendency becomes evident and some adjustments will be needed.

Risk aversion and loss aversion usually combine. Take the difference between:

• 30% chance of losing a character

• 70% chance of survival

The second option seems much more desirable, even if it’s exactly the same. Depending on which choice you want to encourage, don’t forget that you can frame an option differently, highlighting or hiding loss and risk.

Ciao!

I had a lot to write, so I decided to make this a two-parter. Join me next week for the second article about nudges.