Keep Cutting - Sunk Cost Fallacy and Game Development - Extra Credits 

It hurts, but... sometimes cutting features from your game is the best way forward.

What you should do: use the features you where going to use from Game A, and put it into Game B instead This happens many times, where content is cut from one game, and used in another game, which is a smarter decision

Maybe you should talk about the other side of sunk-cost: When game devs use it to keep you invested in a game long after you find it fun.

Sunk cost fallacies affect the consumer too, ever told yourself to keep playing that MMORPG even though you know you're not having fun anymore. Just because you'd sunk so much time and money into it.

The artist, again, amazed me with subtle emotions portrayed on faces. Props to them for taking complex ideas in the script, and hitting a home run drawing them.

Crowdfunding makes the problem even worse. Even if the developers realize a feature is not working, they can't cut it if they already promised it as part of the campaign.

Or you could do what Blizzard did: save the source code and assets, then start on a new project and draw on the old resources whenever necessary. It works better if, like Titan, the project dies before details are announced.

Even though I don't plan on being a game designer, I feel like I've still learned a lot of applicable lessons from this show

You said there's 2 options when a game gets bloated like this... abandon, or wrap up... but there's actually a 3rd option... a radical one that I only know of happening successfully once.... Re-build the project from the ground up. The case im referring to... is Final Fantasy 14...so much bloat, so much 'throw more resources at the project and it'll work.' It's actually suprising that the producer, Naoki Yoshida, actually managed to convince the Squeenix execs that his plan to rebuild would work.

6:08 MOVING PICTURES?

Cough... No Man's Sky Launch...

This is why game devs sometimes need cold businessmen. They can make painfull decisions for them that in the end might save the studio. Game development will always be a two sided coin of artistic expression and profitability. (indy passion project aside that is)

You seem to be trying really hard to not mention Duke Nukem Forever.

This explains so much! Sometimes I see developers touting a game feature that I never really saw as all that great, and it always confused me as to how they could think it was such a worthwhile thing; or sometimes, how they could justify something I thought was obviously a bad feature. I'd never heard of the sunk cost fallacy before this, and now it all makes sense!

Game devs need to play more poker. When you have bet a chunk of money on a hand. And then the next card is flipped, ruining your hand, you need to understand that money in the pot is no longer yours. You can try to bluff and get every one else to leave the hand but when it comes down to it your just throwing more money at them. And all that extra wasted time and money you put in trying to win the pot isn't going to work. Its a neat parallel.

This is a life principle, not just a game design principle

I LOVE the added animation in these episodes! So nice to see! That little bit of polish goes A LONG WAY

Can you please cover the false advertising of mobile games by using stolen footage from other games who's developers have worked hard on their own game. I think the game community really needs to stand together on this and voice against it as it ruins the reputation of mobile games, and makes developers who put hard work into their game, that it was stolen by others and seemingly others claiming their work. Love your channel, has always had good content.

This video made me realize I'm a victim to this a lot in my daily life - I tend to get stuck refining an approach to solving a problem even if it doesn't work rather than giving up and trying something else... and then one hour later I've forgot what I was even trying to do in the first place. Definitely worth thinking about.

If i make you dinner, and accidentally confuse sugar with salt while i make the dessert, would you rather want me to put in whatever i think might cover the taste, or to just skip the dessert and serve you salad and main dish only?

Not all work needs to be lost. If what you are developing is transferable, you can always put it in the next game. Just know when you have to abandon ideas. Art is like this.

Here in the UK, we call the sunk cost fallacy the "Concorde fallacy".

The last part of this sounds very similar to the concept of "kill your darlings" in creative work (anything from fiction writing to technical essays to music and beyond). No matter how much you love that one thing you made, if it doesn't tangibly add to the work you're likely better off cutting it.

Sometimes making the hard call can pay off. For instance, Blizzard spent 7 years and sunk at least 50 million into a game called "Titan" only to cancel it. Most of the original team started over and about 3 years later they came out with Overwatch, which netted them over 1.5 billion for the quarter.

Shit some people stay in college or refuse to change majors early because of this.

*Headbutts through wall* DID SOMEONE MENTION PSYCHOLOGY?!

One of my writing professors hammered on "killing our darlings". No matter how hard you worked on that sentence, or how cool it sounds, if it does not make sense in your paper, you cut it. When academic writing becomes brutal murder.

This makes me wonder about all the "early access" games that are already dead upon arrival, hiding under the guise of "oh hey it's incomplete but we're still working on it".

Shinji Mikami seemed to do this often with the RE games he worked on. Often having a project nearly finished just to be reworked into what it ended being. Shadow of the Colossus cut the number of bosses it was going to originally have. The biggest turn around I've heard is when Iwata told Itoi he had to recode his game. And it was faster to recode it than to fix what they had. Sometimes is easier to restart than to fix something, which may relate to that other episode of failing early.

Is it just me or does the little red monster seem very cute.

The only Sunk Cost Fallacy that's not a Fallacy is getting a Sunk Cost Fallacy Plushy. Whenever one is made.

in the dojo, sensei passed forward a story of the sengoku jidai that carried profound meaning, ressonanting with today's video: Yagyu Jubei (I may have got the name wrong, this storys are oral tradition, not written) was a great swordsmen from a young age, but he was arrogant, and one day he infuriated his father to the point he took the closest rock to him and threw at his son. Upon losing the left eye, Yagyu protected his right one. At that moment his father realized "you will be an even greater bushi (warrior) than me". The reason: he did not wasted effort protecting that which was already lost (his left eye), and instead, drove his efforts to protected that whoch could still be saved (his right eye). I find it to ressonate well with all this story about the sunk cost, how people lose the "battle" of releasing a good game because they insist on protecting a failed part of the project, instead of moving on to what is working and achieving sucess from there.

WOW A GAME PLUSHIE Now we only need a choice dragon one...

Reminds me of something I learned in writing. "Learn to kill your children." Basically, even though these features/characters/plot points/whatever are really near and dear to your heart, if it doesn't work in the grand scheme of things, ax it. Also reminds me of that advice given earlier, "Fail faster."

Came for the extra history, stayed for the extra credits. This channel is the bomb!

I always love reading the stories about ideas that didn't work in one project getting cut...then being polished and added to a different project entirely...where they do work.

I want a plush of that red monster...

Why did you throw Bioshock infinite in there as an example? Wouldn't Mass effect Andromeda be the way more obvious example?

This doesn't just happen in games, it can happen to any software project, and it's horrifyingly beautiful when it happens. Like watching a trainwreck in slow motion, only you're in the train. Mind you it's only beautiful once you look BACK on it, not so much when you're stuck on the train.

Hey, just wanted to say thanks for using my music in the outro!

It's interesting this comes up due to people overcomitting to an idea or system. Because it implies one of the big issues in the industry is people are too passionate about their work.

This reminds me of Overwatch. Blizzard cancelled their Titan game after putting a lot of time and resources into it, so the team that was working on it felt crushed and very highly motivated to show their very best on the next project they were assigned to - Overwatch. We all know how that turned out :)

Caught the reference at 1:50. Hats off to the animator for being a fellow Monster Factory connoisseur.

This can also be super infuriating when you're working beneath the people making these decisions - when middle management refuse to cut or kill a project, they're also wasting the time of all the people who could be working elsewhere and who KNOW the project is sick or dying but aren't in a position to tell their bosses that.

Ah! Sudden animated bits! CHANGE IS SCARY! (I'm kidding by the way.)

Daikatana and Duke Nukem are classic examples.

One great example is the XCom: Enemy Unknown "pipes" feature, in which they attempted to provide all information into lines connecting all units together with different colors and dotted lines, etc. After doing essentially a brain jam, in which anyone can propose a random change, they cut it out.

Loved seeing the McElroy brothers at 1:50, excellent touch!

Sunk cost is soooo regular in politics. Something is not good ? An agency or a federal program is not perfoming well ? It is because there is not enough money, let "invest" (waste) more there.

I swear to god extra credits is a black hole. I go in intending to watch one video and then suddenly 3 days have gone by and I haven't seen daylight.

The psychological effect you describe in this video, the "straight-forward side" of the sunk cost fallacy, reminds me of a BBC documentary I watched a few years ago (I think it was on their Horizon series) which went into the psychology behind the decisions that led to the 2007-09 financial crash. The thought process among certain key groups within the financial services industry during the period leading up to the disaster was virtually identical to what you described.

From working on a fan project, I did notice a lot of the guys who had to work on arts had to thing where if whatever they worked on didn't get added, they would complain so much. To the point where instead of redoing the art, we just had them fix certain aspects of it to somewhat fit.

also dont advertise the feature without it already being in the game or else you might get sued for false advertisement

I can't avoid yo think that maybe that's what happened to Star Fox Zero.

wow this actually explains a ton you can look back a decade in game development and go this is why so many games just seem incomplete you can look at franchises that failed and go Oh here is why man what an eye opener

I was going to say that a good follow up to this would be to do a video on Minimum Viable Product, but you guys did it two years ago. Thanks for the videos!

So this is what happened to Mighty No. 9? (At least, a part of it)

Is star citizen a good example of the sunk cost fallacy?

Another point to mention: What has to be cut from one game can sometimes find a home in another. Perhaps even as the basis for a whole new one.

Major features that are worth huge time/money investments are usually valuable to the project for other reasons, usually because of marketing reasons like a promised feature in a kickstarter campaign or a level design that got showcased in an E3 trailer or something like that. It's more than just the team's wasted time at stake when they cut money pits from a game.

"Keep cutting"

Just as a sidenote: FINALLY someone taking shots at Bioshock Infinite. I had it up to here (imagine my hand...you can do it) with people treating Infinite like a holy cow. Nuff said...just had to get that one of my chest

Reminds me of what a youtuber called 3kliksphilip said about the time he designed games and that was that you end up getting the idea of how amazing your game will be and what you can do in the game that it has become an unachievable goal.

This ties back in with your "Fail Faster" episode. The longer it takes developers to discover that a feature isn't working, the more likely they'll try to rationalize continuing to plug away at it. Sometimes it's unavoidable, because the feature is so complex that the entire work pipeline has to be built up from scratch. But there are probably some cases where it would be faster to prototype in some off-the-shelf engine, or build a simpler system that'll have to be remade in order to mesh with the rest of the game. And if it works, yes, you will have to do part of the development process twice and it'll feel like a waste. But it's worth it for the certainty that you're not building a whole game only to have it fall apart.

Dear my 5 bosses. I know. we aren't in game dev. But please. WATCH THIS VIDEO.

cough cough No Man's Sky cough cough

As a side note... When you DO make that tough call to cut a feature from your current project - that doesn't mean you toss all that work into /dev/null. It means you stop working on it. The end. You NEVER know when or if something that DIDN'T work for the project that originally spawned it WILL work in a different one entirely. So you keep it around for later use. Just stop working on it within the constraints of the current project.

This somehow rings with an old episode you did on "failing faster". I.e. it seems to me that failing faster is, possibly, a way to stem off sunk costs. The faster you learn that sexy feature isn't so sexy, the easier it is to cut it (less commitment).

Cyperpunk 2077 game be like..

Sounds like games need producers to stick around and stop this.

6:09 I'm really liking the animations that you guys are putting into these. It makes it feel more professional and they're usually entertaining.

I think this explains a LOT of disappointing games over the years and it's actually a fairly valid reason for a game falling short. Worst part is, I can fully understand why people would find it so hard to avoid this pitfall. Any creator worth his salt knows how to take at least some pride in his work; having to simply throw out something you've committed to is...excruciating at best.

Wait... What's the problem of Bioshock Infinite?

Star Citizen................................................................

I am not a supersuccessful gamedeveloper (yet). But I do want to share a trick we used a few times to ease cutting out "features that don't work": Instead of saying "we will not use this feature!" We say "we will not use this feature *here*!" Instead of pushing an uneasy truth that we have to abandon all this time and hard work altogether, we consider it an investment to our next project. Usually this still means that the feature will get buried and forgotren. But it makes the process of letting go easier.

Extra Credits once ran an episode on how to best avoid running into sunk cost fallacy with game feature implementation: rapid prototyping. Get a version of your feature idea built quickly, and test it. Even if it's blatantly unfinished, any fundamental flaws will show up immediately. Then iterate on the design if it makes sense to, or back out if the feature is clearly irredeemable due to core incompatibility with the game. It's a lot easier to cut a feature that's in its earliest and least-developed state than to cut it when you've dumped a ton of resources into it. You will save so much time, money, and manpower if you take the rapid prototyping path.

No man sky

Hey EC, try making a video about in game language. Or of us making up for a lack of in game chat or way to communicate. No chat? We tend to use gestures that wern't meant to be used. Like moving your camera and therefore in game head, or point in a direction. Why is this? There are reasons for a lack of chat in some games. Yet we make one. Thats strange. A book with no words is just paper. We dont do anything with it. But not with games. Ive gone on for to long now. Any way you know what i mean.

Man, this is a hard lesson. But very good to have is analyzed and laid out like this. Also, at 01:50 - I see those good good mcelboys there! I love that y'all love monster factory as much as I do.

It was mentioned in passing that sometimes committing more money or resources to a project does resolve the problem. It would be interesting to see a discussion on how to spot situations worthy of continued investment vs ones that aren't.

What, you'll reference Bioshock infinite, but no mention at all about Mass Effect Andromeda which fell victim to this exact thing?

I have a bunch of friends that tried to make a video game long story short after a year they canceled it but the silver lining of it is that they took all the content they had and now are publishing a book with all the story and dialogue they had for the game

I had that drawing tablet for the wii and I still do, I don't even have a wii anymore. Man that was a good solid hour of fun

Wow, was this video both enlightening and depressing all at the same time. I don't know how many times I've complained about half-baked games over the years that for all the time and money spent still felt unfinished. I never imagined that sunk cost fallacy could manifest itself in those ways.

This is the post-mortem for Cyberpunk 2077, as written by a time traveller.

Honestly, every business ought to have "motivational" posters in their offices, that read: "Stop. Are you succumbing to the Sunk Cost Fallacy?" Hell, we could make an entire line of posters, reminding people to consider whether they're falling into cognitive traps. Even if it's just a reminder, knowing they might be making a mistake might be enough to get them to reconsider.

Bioware cut Star Wars: The Old Republic as if it was a failing project, and in so doing, they turned it into a failed project. Of course, part of the problem was that they spent more budget on the CGI intro than they did on bug testing.

This is the best explanation of the F 35 development...

Former HomeFront QA guy here... the only commitment THQ had to HomeFront was $$$ for the hype machine. We were a hard working team but definitely in need of more resources.

Now one of the tricky parts, figuring out how to handle these transitions without utterly crushing moral.

Applies to so much of life too. You know you have to give up on something, but it's hard to abandon the work already put into it.

The whole thing with getting attached to a part of a project is definitely not only in video games. Honestly, I have done this sort of thing while cooking dinner

This, all this. My company spent a small fortune on a tool, which never worked. It took us 2 years to finally admit that it would never work.

Either this episode is not entirely about video games, or it is way to applicable to current events. Good job as always

I like the fact that this show is all about "IF You suck at this, here is how you can mitigate that."

Same applies to writing. Just because a scene took a while to write doesn’t mean you shouldn't scrap it if it's not good.

this is kind of unrelated to this video, but one thing I have noticed when making games is one will always suffer from what I call The Ralphie Syndrome (after the main character from A Christmas Story). In the film, Ralphie's plan was to write such a good essay that his parents would be forced to buy him a BB gun for Christmas. He then writes, "what I want for Christmas is a Fischer Red Rider carbine action 200 shot range range model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time. I don't think a football is a very good gift." He then says, "WOW" and thinks this crappy two sentence essay is the greatest thing ever written. The same is true when a person makes a video game. No matter how bad it is, the creator will always think it's awesome. When making a game it is important to get outside feedback and playtesters, as the game will never be as good as you think it is.

The thing about the Sunk Cost Fallacy is that, as you say at 1:30 you have to have data that "shows this is clearly not the case". If you invested massive time and resources in a project, however inefficient that may have been, but it really is just a small investment away from profitability or viability- much cheaper than starting over with a new project to achieve the same results- then this is the OPPOSITE of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. The ONLY thing that matters are the costs going forward. So if your poorly-spent time and money actually has put you on tbe edge of a major breakthrough, then you should definitely proceed. To do otherwise would be to take an illogical course of action due to excessive concern with falling into Sunk Cost Fallacy, and ending up practicing an entirely different fallacy. On the other hand, if all future time and resources put into a project are likely to just get it nowhere, and starting over would be cheaper and quicker, then it would be the Sunk Cost Fallacy to proceed... Sorry for the long reply- I actually find more people fall victim to the INVERSE of the Sunk Cost Fallacy (the idea that any progress already made on a project are meaningless just because they came at an excessive cost) than to the Sunk Cost Fallacy itself. For instance, if you go through college at ridiculous cost and are poised on the edge of getting into medical school, but can't quite make it yet and just need a couple more night-classes to get yourself in, then it would itself be a fallacy to point to the enormous, excessive resources invested to that point and say you should just give up- when taking those few night-classes would undoubtedly be cheaper and mire effective than starting over on any other career path from scratch... The section of your video on "Recoupment" is also very relevant to what I am saying.

Thanks for the good episode guys. Have a nice day.

Whether to start/keep learning a specific software platform or computer language can feel like a tricky sunk-cost problem at times.