I surveyed some participants about their preferences. I believe this is nine generals plus a petrov (second from bottom).
9 people prefer peace; 1 deranged person says “peace = mutual destruction” and “I was kinda hoping the other side would launch the nukes”; fortunately we survived them.
If one side had admitted to launching nukes, it looks like at least one person on the other side would have favored retaliating; unclear whether they’d get a majority (and unclear whether they’d launch without a majority).
I agree with the long note. I think anonymity is ~necessary to get decent P(defection) from a small group of high-karma users. But there are issues with that and the ritual is fine with low P(destruction).
I played General Anderson and also wrote that note. My feeling is that this year seemed more “game-like” and less “ritual-like” than past years, but the “game” part suffered for the reasons I mentioned above, and the combination to me felt awkward. Choosing to emphasize either the “game” nature or the “ritual” nature seems to have some pros and cons. Since participating in the game inevitably made me curious about the choices involved, I will be interested to hear the LW team’s opinion on this in the retrospective.
I spent some time reading the board game geek discussion threads about cohabitation games here. There was a group of writers there who judged game success in relative terms and didn’t distinguish “everyone wins” from “everyone loses” in games. I wonder if that’s going on here.
I surveyed some participants about their preferences. I believe this is nine generals plus a petrov (second from bottom).
9 people prefer peace; 1 deranged person says “peace = mutual destruction” and “I was kinda hoping the other side would launch the nukes”; fortunately we survived them.
If one side had admitted to launching nukes, it looks like at least one person on the other side would have favored retaliating; unclear whether they’d get a majority (and unclear whether they’d launch without a majority).
I agree with the long note. I think anonymity is ~necessary to get decent P(defection) from a small group of high-karma users. But there are issues with that and the ritual is fine with low P(destruction).
I played General Anderson and also wrote that note. My feeling is that this year seemed more “game-like” and less “ritual-like” than past years, but the “game” part suffered for the reasons I mentioned above, and the combination to me felt awkward. Choosing to emphasize either the “game” nature or the “ritual” nature seems to have some pros and cons. Since participating in the game inevitably made me curious about the choices involved, I will be interested to hear the LW team’s opinion on this in the retrospective.
Re peace = mutual destruction.
I spent some time reading the board game geek discussion threads about cohabitation games here. There was a group of writers there who judged game success in relative terms and didn’t distinguish “everyone wins” from “everyone loses” in games. I wonder if that’s going on here.
Could also have been a typo...
Update with two new responses:
I think this is 10 generals, 1 petrov, and one other person (either the other petrov or a citizen, not sure, wasn’t super rigorous)