ABSTRACT
The human brain began evolving well before any hominids walked the Earth and has further evolved over thousands of generations as our ancestors survived the harsh life in the African savanna. However, our modern life is very different from prehistoric times, and we face many problems that are new for our brain in terms of the relatively slow scale of evolution. Therefore, understanding the wonders and limitations of our brain as it navigates the complexity of the modern world is useful for improving our decision-making on a daily basis. And this is what we’re going to talk about all throughout the first part of this book. I will mostly limit myself to describing what should be the most useful things to know in the context of game development though, so if you are curious about the subject as applied to broader situations, you will find some useful tips in the book Mind Hacks (2005) from cognitive scientist Tom Stafford and engineer Matt Webb.
