Why you spend longer picking a server than playing on one

Pocket edition. This is a shorter version of a longer article; you can read the full edition when you have more time.

If you open a server list, look through twenty and end up closing the game without joining any, it isn't indecision or a lack of wanting to play: it's what long lists do.

The psychologist Barry Schwartz called it the paradox of choice. More options widen freedom and, past a certain point, make the experience of choosing worse: deciding takes more effort, you enjoy what you chose less, and an awkward guest turns up — the suspicion that one of the others was better.

In a list of three hundred servers the problem isn't the number. It's that none of the differences that really matter — how people treat someone who has just arrived, whether anyone is online on a Tuesday afternoon — fits on the listing. You end up comparing what you can see: modes, votes, banners.

And there's a cost almost nobody writes down. The time spent choosing is paid for out of the same time you play with. Two hours comparing servers are two hours not playing on any of them, and they don't show up in any statistic.