Ambiguity a game stopper

This link shows a study that proves that people will take known, risky bets over unknown, ambiguous bets. This seems pretty obvious: in any risk assesment, the unknown comes in second place to the quantified.

This tells us a little about why players act the way they do. If the game splits into two paths: one better defined than the other, the player will generally choose the better defined path, even if its more difficult. This doesn't just translate to actual paths, but control schemes, weapon choices and other decisions as well. Heck, I'd go so far as to say that it might be a major deciding factor on choosing what game to buy in the first place. If the player looks at a game, and can't tell what the game is like by the box, he'll probably go with the game he might like less, but is reasonably sure about what he is going to get out of the box.

Basically, the lesson is: give your players the information they need to understand exactly what it is they are getting into.