I have been in Ashley’s situation—roped in to play a similar parlour game to demonstrate game theory in action.
In my case it was in a work setting: part of a two day brainstorming / team building boondongle.
In my game there were five tables each with eight people, all playing the same, iterarted game.
In four out of five table every single person cooperated in every single iteration—including the first and last one. On the fifth table they got confused about the rules.
The reason for the behaviour was clear—the purpose of the game was to demonstrate that cooperation increased the total size of the pot (the game was structered that way). In a workplace setting the prize was to win the approbation of the trainers and managers, by demonstrating that we were teamplayers, and certainly NOT to be the asshole who cheated his tablemates and walked off with $50.
On the the fifth table they managed to confuse themselves such that on the first iteration two of them unwittingly defected. Their table therefore ended up with the least money, but the two individuals of course ended up the richest in the room—they were hideously embarrassed.
I was left wondering what amount of money it would have taken to change behaviour. Would people defect if there was $1000 at stake? In that setting, I think still not. $10,000? $100,000 ?
Practical game-theory experiments would be quite expensive to run, I think.
I’m reminded of a real-world similar example: World of Warcraft loot ninjas.
Background: when a good item drops in a dungeon, each group member is presented with two buttons, a die icon (“need”) and a pile-of-gold icon (“greed”). If one or more people click “need”, the server rolls a random 100-sided die for each player who clicked “need”, and the player with the highest roll wins the item. If no one in the group clicked “need”, then the server rolls dice for everyone in the group. Usually players enter dungeons in the hopes of obtaining items that directly improve their combat effectiveness, but many items can also be sold at the in-game auction house, sometimes for a substantial amount of gold, so that a character can still benefit indirectly even if the item itself has no immediate worth.
As you can imagine, “pick-up groups” (i.e. four random strangers you might never party with again) often suffer from loot ninjas: people who intentionally click on the “need” button to vastly improve their odds of obtaining items, even when the item holds no direct value for themselves but does hold direct value for another party member.
And, indeed, a common loot ninja strategy is to feign ignorance of the “need versus greed” loot roll system (which, to be fair, has legitimately confusing icons) and to use every other possible trick to elicit sympathy, such as feigning bad spelling and grammar, for as long as possible before being booted from the party and forcibly expelled from the dungeon.
I have been in Ashley’s situation—roped in to play a similar parlour game to demonstrate game theory in action.
In my case it was in a work setting: part of a two day brainstorming / team building boondongle.
In my game there were five tables each with eight people, all playing the same, iterarted game.
In four out of five table every single person cooperated in every single iteration—including the first and last one. On the fifth table they got confused about the rules.
The reason for the behaviour was clear—the purpose of the game was to demonstrate that cooperation increased the total size of the pot (the game was structered that way). In a workplace setting the prize was to win the approbation of the trainers and managers, by demonstrating that we were teamplayers, and certainly NOT to be the asshole who cheated his tablemates and walked off with $50.
On the the fifth table they managed to confuse themselves such that on the first iteration two of them unwittingly defected. Their table therefore ended up with the least money, but the two individuals of course ended up the richest in the room—they were hideously embarrassed.
I was left wondering what amount of money it would have taken to change behaviour. Would people defect if there was $1000 at stake? In that setting, I think still not. $10,000? $100,000 ?
Practical game-theory experiments would be quite expensive to run, I think.
Pretending to not understand the game and acting embarrassed in order to defect without social consequences seems like a pretty good strategy to me.
I’m reminded of a real-world similar example: World of Warcraft loot ninjas.
Background: when a good item drops in a dungeon, each group member is presented with two buttons, a die icon (“need”) and a pile-of-gold icon (“greed”). If one or more people click “need”, the server rolls a random 100-sided die for each player who clicked “need”, and the player with the highest roll wins the item. If no one in the group clicked “need”, then the server rolls dice for everyone in the group. Usually players enter dungeons in the hopes of obtaining items that directly improve their combat effectiveness, but many items can also be sold at the in-game auction house, sometimes for a substantial amount of gold, so that a character can still benefit indirectly even if the item itself has no immediate worth.
As you can imagine, “pick-up groups” (i.e. four random strangers you might never party with again) often suffer from loot ninjas: people who intentionally click on the “need” button to vastly improve their odds of obtaining items, even when the item holds no direct value for themselves but does hold direct value for another party member.
And, indeed, a common loot ninja strategy is to feign ignorance of the “need versus greed” loot roll system (which, to be fair, has legitimately confusing icons) and to use every other possible trick to elicit sympathy, such as feigning bad spelling and grammar, for as long as possible before being booted from the party and forcibly expelled from the dungeon.