I guess I might as well post about my own experiences, even though I'm probably not a typical game player:
I noticed myself developing the habit of seeking the dead ends first in video games, but I thought that it was just a bad habit that I developed, and that most other people don't play like that. My brother doesn't play like that. But I continue using this strategy even in games where there isn't a reward at the dead ends. I deliberately choose the path that's more likely to be a dead end first, just for my own peace of mind, to know that it's a dead end, and I don't have to mentally keep track of another decision branch that I might have to come back and try later. And I also apply this strategy in real life, in any situation that involves a branching set of decisions, where if I take the wrong branch, I'll need to go back to a previous branch, and there is some cost involved in backtracking, even if the cost is just a trivial amount of time or mental bookkeeping. And I've found that this is actually a good and helpful strategy. Or maybe it just feels helpful, despite often being counterproductive. If, for example, you're trying to track down a bug in your source code, and... actually, rather than trying to explain in words, I'll just link to this XKCD comic, which illustrates what happens you follow the opposite of this strategy.
I'm not afraid of spoilers. And I have the bad (or maybe not so bad?) habit of always playing to win, as opposed to playing for fun. If there is a guide for the game, I'll read it. Unless reading the guide would actually be more work than figuring things out for myself, or if reading the guide would prevent me from learning or practicing a skill that's actually important. Guides can save you from having to do lots of pointless searching, or experimenting, and can prevent you from making wrong choices early in a game that have big harmful consequences later in a game. And they can contain other important information that you wouldn't have had much chance of figuring out on your own. Also, I often find reading the guide to be more fun than actually playing the game.
I apply the same paranoia to games that I apply to real life. I err on the side of spending too much effort researching which choice to make, rather than risking making the wrong choice by deciding arbitrarily on a whim. And this is often necessary even in video games, due to imbalanced classes, or classes that just don't fit my playing style.
Another example of this paranoia: I'm constantly expecting that at any moment, the game might contain a challenge that's impossible, or that is only possible if I haven't made any other mistakes or wasted any rare items until I reached that challenge. And this is sometimes necessary even in video games.
I also apply the same frugality in video games that I apply in real life, even if I know that the game's currency inflates dramatically as the game continues, making this strategy counterproductive. I just can't bring myself to act in any other way. I avoid buying any items I probably don't need. I avoid using up nonrenewable items, often to the point where it's useless to keep them in my inventory because I never use them. And yet I still try to collect as many of these nonrenewable items as possible, even though I know I'm probably never going to use them. The problem with this strategy was illustrated in this 8-bit-theater comic. Specifically, the quote "I merely realized that my reluctance to sacrifice spell slots or use items for the express purpose of maintaining my peak level of versatility was a vicious cycle of stagnation."
Actually, this strategy sometimes causes problems in real life. Usually with food going bad because I was reluctant to use it up... just because of some irrational inhibition about using up any resource that can't be easily replaced.
I really hate playing "deathmatch mode" in FPS games, because the usual rules about trying to survive at all costs no longer apply, because you're competing for the highest number of kills, not trying to be the last person standing. After years of trying, I still can't get used to playing like that. And so I've mostly stopped trying.
I suspect that video games have made me more risk averse than I would have been otherwise, by constantly providing me with examples of ways that things can go terribly wrong. I'm still undecided about whether this has an overall positive effect. For example, when I'm driving, it makes me constantly be on the lookout for objects that could potentially move into my path or otherwise collide with my car. But sometimes it makes me panic, with dangerous results.
I guess I had better stop writing now, this comment has already grown too long.
...I also apply the same frugality in video games that I apply in real life, even if I know that the game's currency inflates dramatically as the game continues, making this strategy counterproductive. I just can't bring myself to act in any other way. I avoid buying any items I probably don't need. I avoid using up nonrenewable items, often to the point where it's useless to keep them in my inventory because I never use them. And yet I still try to collect as many of these nonrenewable items as possible, even though I know I'm probably never going to use th
Hello, player character, and welcome to the Mazes of Menace! Your goal is to get to the center and defeat the Big Bad. You know this is your goal because you received a message from a very authoritative source that said so. Alas, the maze is filled with guards and traps that make every step dangerous. You have reached an intersection, and there are two doors before you. Door A leads towards the center; it probably takes you to your destination. Door B leads away from the center; it could loop back, but it's probably a dead end. Which door do you choose?
The correct answer, and the answer which every habitual video game player will instinctively choose, is door B: the probable dead end. Because your goal is not to reach the end quickly, but to search as much of the maze's area as you can, and by RPG genre convention, dead ends come with treasure. Similarly, if you're on a quest to save the world, you do side-quests to put it off as long as possible, because you're optimizing for fraction-of-content-seen, rather than probability-world-is-saved, which is 1.0 from the very beginning.
If you optimize for one thing, while thinking that you're optimizing something else, then you may generate incorrect subgoals and heuristics. If seen clearly, the doors represent a trade-off between time spent and area explored. But what happens if that trade-off is never acknowledged, and you can't see the situation for what it really is? Then you're loading garbage into your goal system. I'm writing this because someone reported what looks like a video game heuristic leaking into the real world. While this hasn't been studied, it could plausibly be a common problem. Here are some of the common memetic hazards I've found in video games.
For most games, there's a guide that explains exactly how to complete your objective perfectly, but to read it would be cheating. Your goal is not to master the game, but to experience the process of mastering the game as laid out by the game's designers, without outside interference. In the real world, if there's a guide for a skill you want to learn, you read it.
Permanent choices can be chosen arbitrarily on a whim, or based solely on what you think best matches your style, and you don't need to research which is better. This is because in games, the classes, skills, races and alignments are meant to be balanced, so they're all close to equally good. Applying this reasoning to the real world would mean choosing a career without bothering to find out what sort of salary and lifestyle it supports; but things in the real world are almost never balanced in this sense. (Many people, in fact, do not do this research, which is why colleges turn out so many English majors.)
Tasks are arranged in order of difficulty, from easiest to hardest. If you try something and it's too hard, then you must have taken a wrong turn into an area you're not supposed to be. When playing a game, level ten is harder than level nine, and a shortcut from level one to level ten is a bad idea. Reality is the opposite; most of the difficulty comes up front, and it gets easier as you learn. When writing a book, chapter ten is easier than writing chapter nine. Games teach us to expect an easy start, and a tough finale; this makes the tough starts reality offers more discouraging.
You shouldn't save gold pieces, because they lose their value quickly to inflation as you level. Treating real-world currency that way would be irresponsible. You should collect junk, since even useless items can be sold to vendors for in-game money. In the real world, getting rid of junk costs money in effort and disposal fees instead.
These oddities are dangerous only when they are both confusing and unknown, and to illustrate the contrast, here is one more example. There are hordes of creatures that look just like humans, except that they attack on sight and have no moral significance. Objects which are not nailed down are unowned and may be claimed without legal repercussions, and homes which are not locked may be explored. But no one would ever confuse killing an NPC for real murder, nor clicking an item for larceny, nor exploring a level for burglary; these actions are so dissimilar that there is no possible confusion.
But remember that search is not like exploration, manuals are not cheats, careers are not balanced, difficulty is front-loaded, and dollars do not inflate like gold pieces. Because these distinctions are tricky, and failing to make them can have consequences.