GDC 2010: Sid Meier Keynote - "Everything You Know is Wrong"

Why HN readers recommended it

HN points to it as the best talk on how people misunderstand probabilities and how designers handle that.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

GameSpot

Topic

game design probability perception

Format

talk

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

2

HN mentions in dataset

5

Recommendation years in dataset

2014–2019

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• Sid Meier (Civilization) gave a great GDC keynote in 2010 where he describes his multi-decade struggle to convey to users ideas like "Stuff that only has a 10% chance of happening still happens sometimes." [VIDEO] Multiply that by a million daily active users and it …

• This article, and some of the comments here, reminded me of another article (and GDC talk) by Civilization game designer Sid Meier, about his experience with players' perception of probability in games. Sid's talk grapples with the issue "If the game says you have 3-to-1 …

• I believe you're thinking of Sid Meier's GDC 2010 keynote "Everything You Know Is Wrong" [1]. The entire talk is interesting, but section on player perception of probability is about 20 minutes in. One takeaway is to be careful about how strength numbers translate into …