Comments on: Setting up rules so that all parties have the incentives to act in the way the designer prefers

By: Timothy

Timothy — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 18:37:53 +0000

You’re right, Jesper, that lots of game theory now is including different kinds of limited rationality and working hard to get to how people really play games.

Unfortunately, mechanism design–at least the core of it–is based on completely rational players (and a strong notion of rationality, even, since it involves attitudes towards risk and randomness), and it’s often been shown to be wrong.

One of the basic ideas of mechanism design is that you can find ways in which games are equivalent, and then you can pick one that’s equivalent in the ways you want and also has some other characteristics you want. It’s been shown experimentally that lots of the games which are supposed to be equivalent aren’t played like they’re equivalent.

So it’s a mess.

Game theorists are aware of that, and are aiming to improve it.

I have no idea about game designers :).

By: Jesper

Jesper — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:24:31 +0000

I think you are being a bit unfair to game theory – traditional game theory is about optimal ways of playing games (it’s prescriptive, not descriptive).

And much recent work studies how people actually play games (Behavioral game theory).

By: eben

eben — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 16:03:43 +0000

I’m totally with Charles here, there is no reason to construe all players of games as rational and oriented toward abstract and knowable goals. Perhaps even the players themselves are not totally aware of what ‘incentives’ they might respond to at any given time during gameplay. So why should we use game theory, where almost no attention is paid to the nuance and character of the player him/herself?

It seems to me that a successful design paradigm can never emerge from consideration of only the game itself as an abstract and discrete object/mechanism. We need to better understand the player to build better games, and what game theory (proper) does is make the assumption that players are rational, calculating bodies without history, personality or desires.

In game theory, in the end, the game plays you. It is a mechanism that resists and manipulates the players into positions they might not otherwise take. That is why it is so useful for international negotiation, and conversely why as a design paradigm it would fail to create a truly engaging gameplay experience.

By: Jesper

Jesper — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 15:00:18 +0000

To clarify: Most game designers I have met are aware of game theory and use its basic insights, but rarely use game theory for formal analysis of more complicated problems in their games.
Game theory is incredibly useful as a way of framing a range of game design problems, but formally analyzing those problems using game theory is disappointingly complex.

By: Ben Abraham

Ben Abraham — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:30:56 +0000

hey there, I’m a new reader and I like what I see.

Do you think that designers really AREN’T using game theory? I mean… has anyone actually asked them yet? :P

Maybe they’re just not telling yet…

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:47:58 +0000

I think the problem with using game theory to design games is that it relies on entirely ‘rational behavior’. The truth of course is that players, especially in non-competitive multi-player games, are often irrational.

By: Staffan Björk

Staffan Björk — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:00:58 +0000

Designers probably do intuitively use game theory but I guess that was not what you were meaning. From what I’ve understood there are people using game theory to set up the rules for bidding for national rights to broadcasting rights and such things, maybe someone should try to make those people design video games?

And I guess game theory is a better tool to analyze games than to design them, it is probably easier to use it to prove that a dominate strategy exists than to design the absence of a dominate strategy.

By: links for 2007-10-16 (Leapfroglog)

links for 2007-10-16 (Leapfroglog) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 06:28:59 +0000

[…] The Ludologist Â» Blog Archive Â» Setting up rules so that all parties have the incentives to act in… Juul points to the applicability of this year’s Nobel prize in economics â€“ mechanism design theory â€“ in MMOG design and asks wether anyone actually applies economic game theory. My guess is some savvy social software designers might. (tags: socialsoftware socialmedia economics gametheory mechanismtheory gamedesign MMOGs) […]

By: James Lillis

James Lillis — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:27:10 +0000

I guess you are referring back to Schelling’s Nobel prize for his work on ‘rational choice’. (An interesting take on it: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2005/nf20051011_3028_db084.htm)

I have tried many times to use game theory examples to create lively games in the classroom – without too much luck…

I wonder if game theory works better as a principle than a formal science – the principle being that you can gain a great amount of insight into a situation by simply asking the question “If this was a game, how would you play, and how would you win?”

– James (The Kryptonite Cafe)