
The sunk cost fallacy: Devs describe how it almost destroyed them - tnolet
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/310063/The_sunk_cost_fallacy_Devs_describe_how_it_almost_destroyed_them.php
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amelius
And for every article like this, there's another article explaining how Apple
got big because they insisted on perfection.

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dannypgh
Relevance? You can seek perfection while ignoring sunk costs.

Avoiding the fallacy just means you compare the costs of reaching "perfection"
from your current position to the value of reaching perfection. The cost you
ignore is the cost you've spent to reach your current position, because that
cost was incurred regardless of your decisions now.

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stingraycharles
On how to deal with sunk costs, Seth Godin once said [1]

"Everything you own, all the clothing in your closet, your academic
achievements and beyond is simply a gift. It is a gift that your past self is
giving to your present self, and it’s up to you to decide whether you want
that gift today.

It is as simple as that–you owe your past self nothing, other than the
consideration of whether these gifts are helpful in the here and now."

I use this way of framing business decisions a lot nowadays. It's a very
effective way of removing the emotional baggage that sunk costs come with, and
focus on the actual goals you should be achieving.

1 [http://www.breakthetwitch.com/gift-past-
self/](http://www.breakthetwitch.com/gift-past-self/)

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ak39
I must admit, I've been put off Seth Godin recently.

But that quote you posted is something worth remembering.

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PostOnce
sounds like banner saga didn't need a ps vita port so much as it needed a vita
re-implementation

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Mithaldu
Kinda sounds like it needed a performant reimplementation, period. This is
what the game looks like. There's just a flat isometric plane of squares with
animated sprites in it.

[https://youtu.be/OBsRPhCm5sU?t=899](https://youtu.be/OBsRPhCm5sU?t=899)

The Vita and the PSP both have a lot of tactical RPGs that are a _lot_ higher
in complexity, with actual 3D environments as well as randomly generated ones
(much harder to handle than pre-made hard-coded ones).

Compare with best-in-class on that platform:
[https://youtu.be/nUhspS9VddQ?t=3539](https://youtu.be/nUhspS9VddQ?t=3539)

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Waterluvian
This reminds me of Binding of Isaac. The game kept getting re-written poorly
so it never ran well on some devices, such as the DS.

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Mithaldu
Yep. That one i wanted to play, but never could, since it literally wouldn't
run at 60 fps anywhere ever.

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senatorobama
What a painful process and with the promise of only a small return. It'd be
better working for a bank or something.

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mccosmos
Such is the wild life of a game programmer...

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alexasmyths
I love throwing out code. It makes me feel clean. :)

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Someone1234
Throwing out code is easy, throwing out hours you've spent investing into
something is hard (e.g. learning, promoting, developing, money, etc).

These aren't technical issues with technical solutions, these are issues
relating to people's egos and their willingness to throw out acquired skills
and effort.

For one example, you could go from being the biggest expert in that area to
being behind others just by turning against a technology you've helped
spearhead. I've seen it happen (and people resist it who knew they'd gone down
a dead end).

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alexasmyths
I fully get what you are saying, but pruning code is a valid thing to do on
it's own, and it doesn't necessarily mean changing tech or whatever.

