Optimism Bias

The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes and underestimate risk, affecting both player decisions and developer planning.

In games, this means

Players overestimate their ability to win a difficult fight before attempting it, leading to frequent fail states that can feel unfair rather than self-caused. Developers overestimate how quickly players will learn systems, leading to under-explained mechanics. Tutorial skip rates are often much higher than developers predict because of optimism bias about player patience.