THE RATIONALITY ENGINE Homo Economicus vs. Homo Ludens Jonas Heide Smith (smith@itu.dk) ITU, 13/5-2005
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE Game
Player
The game-gaming gap
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE • What are players like? • The common assumption: They are über-selfish utility maximizers • True? no. • true? Yes. • Compulsory footnote: ”Selfishness” is a tricky term.
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE My suggestions: • It’s better to be wrong than unclear (successful strategy in media studies and economics) • Clarify assumptions and then analyze, analyze, analyze • Test predictions on real players
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE Analysis • Guiding questions: – What will the players do? – What will be the result of aggregate player behavior?
• Technique: – Keep It Simple, Scholar • Be as general as you can reasonably be – Describe victory conditions (that which the player is meant to maximize)
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE Example: Spacewar • Objective: Win by destroying the opposition • Sum-type: Zero-sum – Cooperation: None – Communication: None
Player 2
Player 1
Cooperate Defect
Cooperate
Defect
Bad, Bad
Bad, Good
Good, Bad
OK, OK
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE Example: Fire Truck • Objective: Win by collectively steering truck • Sum-type: Zero-sum (players vs. environment) – Cooperation: Full – Communication: Coordination Player 2
Player 1
Cooperate Defect
Cooperate
Defect
Good, Good
Bad, Bad
Bad, Bad
Bad, Bad
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE Example: Joust • Objective: Score points by killing others • Sum-type: Non-zero-sum – Cooperation: Unstable – Communication: Coordination, promises
Player 2
Player 1
Cooperate Defect
Cooperate
Defect
Good, Good
Bad, Great
Great, Bad
Mediocre, Mediocre
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE Example: Gauntlet • Objective: Score points by killing others • Sum-type: Non-zero-sum – Cooperation: None (?) – Communication: Coordination, promises
Player 2
Player 1
Cooperate
Defect
Cooperate
2,2
0,3
Defect
3,0
1,1
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE Type
Player interests
Challenge
Sum type
Examples
Cooperative
Exactly aligned
Game environment or other team
Any
Fire Truck (1978), co-op mode in Halo (2001)
Semicooperative
Collective goal shared but individual goals differ somewhat.
Game environment or other team and to a lesser extent the allied player(s.
Non-zeroJoust (1982), sum game Gauntlet (1985) with allies, any type against game environment or other team
Competitive
Directly opposed. Competitive The other two-player games will never player(s) inspire in-game cooperative behavior while games with more players may inspire temporary coalitions between players.
Zero-sum
Pong (1972), Tekken 4 (2002)
THE RATIONALITY ENGINE What can YOU do? • Help analyze – Pay particular attention to mixed-motive games (like CounterStrike) – What to do with MMORPGs? • Test it – Run tests – Help analyze data
• Let’s get that Nobel prize