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Can You Suggest Any Non-Zero Sum Games?
Posted by
Cliff
on Fri Feb 02, 2001 12:51 PM
from the competition-isn't-everything dept.
from the competition-isn't-everything dept.
epeus asks: "I have noticed that most games for children (and adults) are Zero-sum by a game theory definition - you have to battle over limited resources either implictly (Chess, Frustration) or explicitly (Monopoly). Modern economic theory (dating back to the Enlightenment) makes it clear that the world is not like that - buying and selling creates value; confiscation destroys it. The 'Gift Culture' notion of Open Source described by ESR takes this a stage further. Can Slashdot readers suggest Non-Zero Sum games for children and adults to help break this mentality? The only ones I can think of are Victorian parlour games like Charades or Ghosts, where the point of the game is playing, not scoring it." I too think that there are times when we may focus too much on competition when we might be better off with entertainment. Don't get me wrong, there is a satisfying feeling to compete and win (or even to compete), but sometimes just the act of playing should be rewarding in and of itself. As always, feel free to share your thoughts on the subject.
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Beer Chess (Score:2)
First, you need a big board. Ours was constructed to hold ice (to keep your beer cold). Next, all the pieces have to be a beer or bottle of some kind. Each move you make, you sip from that beer. If you lose a piece, you have to drink the whole thing.
We used to shotglasses filled with Jack Daniels as Pawns, but we never seemed to finish the game for some reason...so we switched to those little 8 oz. Budweiser cans.
For Rooks, we use the big fat Foster Cans.
We have a few other favorites, but it doesn't matter too much since we made paper "hats" to put on the bottles to distinguish who is who.
Not for the weak of liver...
I get paid [sendmoreinfo.com] a nickel for every email I read!
Re:Any roleplaying game fits (Score:3)
Tell that to the orcs and dragons who were killed and whose treasure was taken. It was pretty zero-sum to them. Damned PCs.
I don't know if ALL games are like that (Score:2)
As for regular games, it depends partially on what you consider a "game." Most athletic games are zero sum affairs by nature, because it just isn't fun for everybody to get out on the football field and help the other team get the football to the end of the field... Unfortunatly, if an activity doesn't involve competition in some way, many people consider it a hobby or a pasttime instead of a game. Maybe you should look into some new hobbies.
I personally like model building for example, but I'd hardly call it a "game".
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
Re:Rethink (Score:3)
One more point, you mentioned something about non-zero life being unfair? Sure it is, everybody (well at least more than 1/2 of the people) "win". That's hardly depressing in my book, in fact that's something to be happy about. It's a peace and love world where I can trade something of mine for something of yours and we both come out ahead.
Oh, and books aren't always happy, and card games are almost invariably zero-sum. That said, I do agree with you on one point, if you make a game boring (Everybody wins all the time! Don't even bother trying kids!) then you've lost the point of playing a game in the first place.
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
Wow- what an incredible incomprehension (Score:5)
The reason RMS is held in high regard is because he personally, consistently, and repeatedly acts against the zero-sum concept wherever it presents itself. He began doing this when a LISP machine company gutted the MIT computer lab, imposing zero-sum conditions and blocking communication, and Stallman personally and singlehandedly reverse-engineered huge amounts of IP simply to give them to the 'loser' in the equation. He invented the GPL and specifically designed it so the single overriding requirement it imposes is that you may not make GPLed software zero-sum! It must always be left as an unlimited resource that cannot be seized as property by any 'player'. He continues to follow this purpose in everything he does, and won't bend an inch to accomodate those who want to make things more into 'winners' and 'losers'. To him, you are either part of the free society cooperating completely and socially, or you're in the way and need to stop being in the way, or be run over. If you're in the way you're not a competitor- you're a WALL. You're a locked door and the point is to open you, not beat you...
Are you (heh, 'WindowsTroll'. didn't notice that at first) following any of this? It's difficult to open a mind that is completely set in its ways. Whether or not you're following this, it can be summed up as, "No, that is not the way things are." Zero-sum and social ways of doing things coexist. They have _always_ coexisted, and your argument that social ways don't exist is just plain wrong- as wrong as a contrasting argument that competition and zero-sum could be completely eliminated.
In the event that your arguing itself is zero-sum, and the expectation that you'll just plain deny what I'm saying, I would have to say- fine, believe what you want. There's room in the world for your way of thinking. However, you are not entitled to be treated as if your way of thinking was the ONLY way of thinking- because there is also room in the world for cooperation at all levels, up to the very highest and down to the simplest level- and whether you like it or not, people are going to go on cooperating without your approval.
Jigsaw puzzles (Score:3)
Re:prisoner's dilemna...(information) (Score:4)
Here is a link to an online version of the game:g /prisoners_dilemma.html [dhegarty.de]
http://www.dhegarty.de/pop_philosophy/downshiftin
For those too lazy to look at the link, the summary is that you have two prisoners. One will be let out based on the results of a game. It's played in rounds. Each round each prisoner decides to cooperate or compete.
I'm not sure this is pro-cooperative. Oh well.
One of the greatest games of all time... (Score:3)
But "Dragonriders" (based on the McCaffrey series of novels) went beyond that. The two players could cooperate or compete to whatever degree they preferred. But cooperation was always more successful than competition.
The way the game played was you each rode a dragon which had the ability to breathe fire and destroy parasitic thread falling from the sky. Each player independently chose an maneuver simultaneously. Then an ingenious relative movement system allowed the dragons to execute the two maneuvers simultaneously without giving away the action of the first player to call out their action to the other.
If one player maneuvered his dragon between the other dragon and the thread, his dragon got burned. It was even possible to destroy two threads simultaneously, if both players cooperated.
Cooperation always produced the best results. If one player played competitively while the other tried to help him, the competitive player would "score" higher yet not as high as if both cooperated. But, if both players played competitively (each trying to get more than the other), the result was almost always failure with the thread not being destroyed and reaching the ground (where it would destroy crops).
I don't believe this game is still available. I think the publisher has gone out of business. It would probably translate very easily to a web game (two or more players sending in their maneuvers to a central server). I could be wrong about the publisher because they have another game system ("Lost Worlds," featuring fantasy hand-to-hand combat) and occasionally I see a new release based on this system (the most recent being a comic-book-based combat system).
There are actually quite a few non-zero-sum games which have been quite successful through the years. Many have been mentioned here, so I won't repeat with a post so far down on the main thread.
I would like to comment on two groups of these games mentioned in earlier posts: RPGs (role-playing games like "Dungeons and Dragons") and diplomacy games (like "Illuminati" or "Dune" or "Cosmic Encounter").
RPGs are true non-zero-sum games. While they can be played with varying degrees of competition (even competition between the referee and the players), they are intended to be non-zero-sum games and anyone who doesn't play them that way is not really playing the game.
Diplomacy games are games which are fundamentally zero-sum games which are played with so many competing players that a single winner is difficult (sometimes bordering on impossibility if one player threatening to win can always be stopped by a large coalition of opponents). Such games sometimes admit of non-zero-sum solutions by allowing two or more players to share a victory. Thus a cooperative element may become necessary, but this is not quite the same as a non-zero-sum game because a coalition victory still requires that the others lose.
A similar situation occurs in the party game "Mafia" which almost always has more than one winner, but a win still requires losers. (BTW, this game would be another which would make a great web game along the line of "Survivor." Does anyone know if the rights are owned by anyone? Maybe I should create an "Ask Slashdot" question out of this.)
I cannot leave this without mentioning another of the best games ever (whose name I cannot remember). It was a kind of an anthropology simulation published by a non-profit (I'm thinking the publisher may have been associated with the University of Denver, but I could be wrong). I believe there was an adult version and a children's version, but I only played the kids' version.
It was specifically designed for the purposes described by the poster of this question: To provide a non-zero-sum game to teach to a medium-sized group of children. Its only drawback is they could only play it once.
The group of players was divided into two pseudo-cultures. Separated into two rooms, each group was told about their culture and its values. Then each was taught a "game within a game" which reflected those values. Each group practiced their game, separated from the other "culture."
Then, in the next phase of the game, each group sent a party of envoys or anthropologists to observe the other. Each would try to play the other's game. After a time, the envoys would return to their own culture and try to describe what they observed. Armed with these descriptions, another group of envoys would then be sent, playing the other culture's game, and reporting back.
Once everybody gets a chance to play envoy, the two groups get back together and each tries to describe the rules of the other's game and their culture.
I'm sure you can guess how this turns out, but until you try it you will not believe the insights which can be derived from this simple game. If anybody knows how to get ahold of it, I hope they post the resource for this "Ask Slashdot" question-raiser, as I'm sure this would be very appropriate for the situation he describes.
Re: Games are(n't) zero sum (Score:3)
game n. 1. An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime: party games; word games.
Ever heard of role-playing games?
Definition of zero-sum (Score:3)
My favourite game (Score:5)
Any roleplaying game fits (Score:5)
(Unfortunately, the RPG industry does seem to be a zero-sum game....)
The zero-sum game I played as a child (Score:5)
I don't remember the exact name, but it consisted of me (and usually, though not always, my brother) going outside.
The game we played consisted mainly of running and jumping, although we occasionally played a variant where we would lie on the grass and look up.
The object of the game usually was to imagine a new way in which we could save the planet from the meteors and asteroids and alien invaders that were falling down around us. We did occassionally alter the parameters to include in our mandate the destruction of all things Plastic (up to and including Star Wars figures that would now be worth approximately 18 jillion dollars).
While zero-sum, the game could actually produce a winner, if the participants could manage to stay outside after dark long enough to catch fireflies before the referee called for dinner. This happened on rare occasions, but it did occur.
There is an extensive equipment list, however. You need the Silver Surfer's surfboard, a Mega-Lox Rocket Pack, a couple of bazookas, wings, the ability to levitate, and a half dozen tanks. In the event that you're too poor to purchase these, cardboard boxes, unused window screens, and oddly shaped sticks may be substituted at no penalty.
Two things to beware of -- there is a danger that the participants will grow up to be creative thinkers who cherish freedom and independance. Do what you can to squash such desires by allowing the participants to watch as much television as possible, where they will be subjected to fads, trends, and groupthink. The other danger is of incidental damage to Evil Doers Everywhere, Galactic Invaders, and the neighbor's fence.
Re:Cashflow (Score:4)
Yes, it is The Good Capitalist. There are opportunities to give to charity, but, no, you're not going to find much in the way of subsidized healthcare and education in the game. It's a game about making money without working: indeed, about making enough money that you don't need to work.
Regarding price: yes, it's bloody expensive. It's expensive for good reason: the first step toward learning how to invest is to realize that you're going to have to spend money on learning.
Is it worth $200? Sure--if you've got six friends who'll kick in twenty-five bucks each to play it. And play it, you will: in six months, I've played upwards of three dozen times. Hell, we have a coffeehouse games night, now... anyone who wants to drop in and play, can play. Great fun.
That said, here's the general game play:
There's a large playing board. There are two loops on the board: one for the rat race, and one for the fast track. I'll describe the rat race: it's where by far most of your learning will take place.
The fast track is about three dozen "spaces." There are three each of 'paycheque,' 'doodad,' and 'market' spaces; one each of 'baby,' 'charity,' and 'downsize.' The remainder are 'opportunity' spaces.
Your game card contains income, expense and investment sections. You have a paycheque, from your 9-to-5 job; and expenses of a mortgage, various loans/credit cards, and living expenses. There's an additional expense for children, should you land on the 'baby' space.
Your income, less your expenses, is your cashflow. The money that you can save, and that you can invest.
When you pass or land on a 'paycheque,' you get the cashflow amount. When you land on a 'doodad,' it's an unexpected expense that comes out of your savings. When you land on 'charity,' you can donate and gain the use of a second die for three rolls, which gets you past paycheques more quickly (giving = getting, is the philosophy here). When you land on 'baby,' you add a kid to your expenses. And when you get downsized, you pay up your expenses en masse, from your savings, once, and then miss a few turns.
The real action is on the 'opportunity' and 'market' spaces. Opportunities come in two sizes: below $6K, and above $6K. They consist of opportunties to buy and sell one of four stocks and two bonds; to buy rental properties, from small condos to entire apartment complexes, with varying rates of return; to purchase land, gold or other property that has no immediate return; and to start up or purchase businesses.
It's up to you to figure out if the opportunity is worthwhile, whether you can afford it, whether you should carry a loan if you don't have the cash at hand, and whether it's time to sell it.
Selling properties and businesses (not stocks; stocks are sold in the oppoortunities deck of cards) happens with the 'market' cards. Some investments are good to keep as income; some are better off sold, to generate immediate cash that can be used for investing for better returns. Again, it's up to you to decide.
There are rules for handling bankruptcy, should you overextend yourself. Bankruptcy is stressful, but it doesn't necessarily take you out of the game. And it generally only happens if you play high-risk... which is a learning opportunity itself: sometimes, high-risk results in high payoffs, beyond one's expectations and hopes.
There's math involved. You have to get good at doing adding and subtracting, because your income and expense numbers are going to be changing, which will impact your bottom-line cashflow.
You get to learn about the value of bank loans, which can be used to invest in opportunities that pay so well that the interest costs for the loan are dwarfed by the cashflow the investment generates. You learn about investing in the stock market, and the kind of payoffs that can happen there. You learn about buying properties that are remarkably low-priced that you'd think are fucked-up, but turn out to pay off... and about rental property, some of the costs involved, and some of the risks involved (interest rate increases; tenant damage; etc).
All in all, it's a very stimulating game. If you're not currently investing in the stock market , rental properties and businesses, then it's worth getting the game: it'll let you learn and experiment, without actually risking tens of thousands of dollars.
--
Cashflow (Score:5)
There's no competition, really, once you understand the game. It's all about making decisions for oneself, investing wisely and generating enough passive income (income that you don't have to work for someone else to earn: i.e. stocks and bonds, rental properties, etc.) to outpace your fixed living expenses.
The best part is that it's fairly true-to-life (at least if you live in the USA; the rental property thing isn't nearly as profitable in, say, Canada), and gives you a chance to experiment with risk without actually putting one's hard-earned cash up for grabs.
(putting one's cash into investing takes place eventually, mind you: you'll sooner or later learn that to make money, you're gonna have to spend it...)
--
Re:The zero-sum game... (Score:4)
No winner, no loser. The games often ends, but can usually be startet again some minutes later.
A lot of books have been written on the meta-game of finding other participants. Some people prefer to play with the same participant over many games. Other try out different participants all the time.
Can be played in groups, pairs and sometimes just solitaire.
One of the most played games of all time... Sex!
Re:Any roleplaying game fits (Score:3)
We are actively soliciting programmers to help improve the classroom version, drop me an email if you are interested!
--
Q: What do you get when a Postmodernist joins the Mafia?
Re:Interesting (Score:4)
Would it still be called a peak if they didn't collapse shortly afterward?
Chess is zero-sum (Score:3)
There are a few examples of non zero-sum games: for example, "The Prisoner's Dilemma" is a non-zero sum game (and technically, it is a game, albeit a very serious one).
-----
"You owe me a case of beer. Sucka'."
Dungeons and Dragons (Score:4)
I think the card game Settlers of Catan is a more traditional board/card game that is also not zero-sum.
-m
Daisy Chain Game (Score:3)
Person1: daisy chain
Person2: chain smoking
Person3: king of the hill
etc, etc...
One of the best things about the game is that you will start to realize what kinds of phrases you will accept as a group and what kinds of phrases or sentences are just not common enough to be accepted. For example, we decided that if someone ends a phrase with a weird word (for example, Beef-A-Roni) we would accept a "morph" of that word, or word part, in order to start the next phrase. For example, we'd use "A-Roni" from Beef-A-Roni to start the phrase "Our only way out" ('A-Roni' was morphed into 'our only').
Conversely, we decided not to accept very flimsy sentences. For example, if someone's phrase ends with "close", we would accept "close call" from the next person, but not "close the door" (it was just too flimsy.)
I suppose you could score the game, but it'd be highly subjective as to how original each new phrase was and how many points each one should get. We always played for the fun of it and we'd pass hours just going around and around.
Re:Nomic (Score:3)
Calvinball!
it's the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
'course, it don't hurt to have an imaginary tiger to play with.
Re:kids turn most non-zero sum games in to competi (Score:3)
If you lose a pawn, the opponent actually gains nothing.
Chess is zero-sum in that there are only three possible outcomes to a game:
1) White wins, black loses.
2) Black wins, white loses.
3) It's a tie or stalemate.
The total score of all players at the end of any chess game is always "1".
However, you could consider the concept of pawn promotion to make the argument that you can come out of a game with more materiel then you went in with: in theory you could promote all 8 pawns to queens.
Umm, what was the question again?
Does anyone remember Super Nintendo? (Score:3)
Re:prisoner's dilemna...(information) (Score:5)
Aha! You've fallen into the trap of deceptive simplicity. The point is when you play this game multiple times in a row -- the iterative Prisoner's Dilemma.
I did this once as a bonus problem with a roomfull of math kids [jhu.edu]. For points I used Skittles [skittles.com]. I carefully explained the rules, divided the whole class into pairs and they played for 10 rounds.
Most of the class followed your strategy. If their opponent cooperated on the first round then defected the other nine, they got 14 Skittles and their "opponent" got 9. I asked the class "how do you win this game", and most of the replied "by getting more candy than your opponent". BZZT!
Exactly one pair of kids cooperated the entire way through. They each got 30 Skittles. I pointed this out, and figurative light bulbs flashed on all around the room. It was freaking perfect.
kids turn most non-zero sum games in to competitio (Score:5)
I would think that most things that don't follow this pattern are typically called "play" rather than called "games."
But there have been some good cooperative games written over the years for computers. My favorite is a very old game called bubble bobble (orginal nintento!)
dean
Re:kids turn most non-zero sum games in to competi (Score:3)
A mere pawn capture does not constitute a game of chess.
If you kept score by material, both sides would be strongly negative. If you kept score by enjoyment, any range from both being winners to both being losers would be possible. But, if you keep score by wins draws and losses, it is a zero sum game.
Game suggestion (Score:3)
Bippity/Boppity:
Everone stands in a circle. One person chosen as "It" approaches one of the circle-members and says either "Bippity" or "Boppity". If It says Bippity, then the circlemember must respond with Boppity. If It says Boppity, circlemember may not say anything. It may repeatedly say both words to anyone any number of times. i.e. you can go up to someone and say "bippity bippity boppity bippity" and the circlemember must make the proper response, then move on to someone else. When a circlemember either fails to say boppity when required, or says it out of place, they become It.
Advanced rules for this game
Elephant,"Charlie's Angels"
It may approach someone and say "Elephant". After It says this, the person they spoke to plus their neighbouring friends must pose like an elephant(center person sticks their hand out like a trunk and the sides raise their far hand to their head to imitate an ear. If this is not successful (ie someone goofs), that person is It. If more than one goofs, It selects someone to be It. Same thing with Charlie's Angels, except that the trio must pose in the manner of this show. (three gun pose, outer members turned to the side)
Gamemaster's role (Score:4)
The gamemaster's ultimate goal is neither coincident with the players' (if, above all else, he wanted the players to reach their goal, he could make it insanely easy for them to do so) nor opposed to it (if he wanted to stop them from achieving their goal, he could do that as well). The gamemaster's goal is to create an interesting game
Think dissociative identity disorder. A gamemaster can also be analyzed as two separate players; one represents Team Evil (who engages in zero-sum gaming against Team Good), and the other is the referee (who engages in non-zero-sum activity with both Team Good and Team Evil).
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them? [pineight.com]
1000 Blank White Cards (Score:3)
Tony
_____________
I'll bet / with my Net / I can get / those things yet.
SEX (Score:3)
Re:kids turn most non-zero sum games in to competi (Score:3)
Of course, compare this to ages past, where life defintly did have a set purpose and a set goal (get X amount of wheat farmed in X amount of time, or else you starve) the idea of playing a game WITHOUT purpose was a nice thought, since every minute of every day of their lives was setout by directions, people liked the idea of an occasional break from working to get stuff, and enjoyed None Zero Sum Games (should that be cap'd?) for the sake of the leisure they allowed.
Reversal of roles in life, reversal of what we define as fun.
Steve Jackson's Illuminati (Score:3)
Whoops, I was wrong. This game is still in production [sjgames.com]! Go buy a copy, but be sure to leave your friendships at the door. Non-zero-sum does not mean no losers! ;-)
Teaching Socialism (Score:5)
Check out this review by the Ludwig von Mises Institute for more details:
http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control =280&sortorder=authorlast [mises.org]
Such statism does imply a zero-sum picture of the world. The pie, after all, is never increased by government tax-and-spend.
Personally, puzzle games are my favorite. The good ones are simple, easy-to-learn, and require a good grasp of logic. No hidden premises either!
-- Diana Hsieh
Interesting (Score:5)
Of all the great empires of history, only one (Rome) got big enough to fool itself into thinking it conquered the world, and all great expansionist powers seem to collapse shortly after their peak.
It would be fun to put together a computer game where the goal is to run a nation (in a sort-of SimCity/Civilizaton style), and where success is measured according to the success of your nation, but where wiping out an enemy almost never serves your best interests, where a conquered nation can assemble an underground revolutionary movement and regain their sovereignty, and where the game simply continues to be played for as long as the participants are enjoying themselves.
I would buy a game like that, if it was well done.
SimCity's political agenda (Score:4)
"Everyone notices the obvious built-in political bias, whatever that is. But everyone sees it from a different perspective, so nobody agrees what its real political agenda actually is. I don't think it's all that important, since SimCity's political agenda pales in comparison to the political agenda in the eye of the beholder."
-Quoted from Designing User Interfaces to Simulation Games. A summary of Will Wright's talk, by Don Hopkins, at http://www.catalog.com/hopkins/simcity/WillWright. html
In the context of that essay about SimCity:
The anatomy of a simulation game:
There are several tightly coupled parts of a simulation game that must be designed closely together: the simulation model, the game play, the user interface, and the user's model.
In order for a game to be realizable, all of those different parts must be tractable. There are games that might have a great user interface, be fun to play, easy to understand, but involve processes that are currently impossible to simulate on a computer. There are also games that are possible to simulate, fun to play, easy to understand, but that don't afford a useable interface: Will has designed a great game called "Sim Thunder Storm", but he hasn't been able to think of a user interface that would make any sense.
On the user model:
The digital models running on a computer are only compilers for the mental models users construct in their heads. The actual end product of SimCity is not the shallow model of the city running in the computer. More importantly, it's the deeper model of the real world, and the intuitive understanding of complex dynamic systems, that people learn from playing it, in the context of everything else about a city that they already know. In that sense, SimCity, SimEarth, and SimAnt are quite educational, since they implant useful models in their users minds.
On the simulation model:
Many geeks have spent their time trying to reverse engineer the simulator by performing experiments to determine how it works, just for fun. This would be a great exercise for a programming class. When I first started playing SimCity, I constructed elaborate fantasies about how it was implemented, which turned out to be quite inaccurate. But the exercise of coming up with elaborate fantasies about how to simulate a city was very educational, because it's a hard problem!
The actual simulation is much less idealisticly general purpose that I would have thought, epitomizing the Nike "just do it" slogan. In SimCity classic, the representation of the city is low level and distilled down compactly enough that a small home computer can push it around. The city is represented by tiles, indexed by numbers that are literally scattered throughout the code, which is hardly general purpose or modular, but runs fast. It sacrifices expandability and modularity for speed and size, just the right trade-off for the wonderful game that it is.
Some educators have asked Maxis to make SimCity expose more about the actual simulation itself, instead of hiding its inner workings from the user. They want to see how it works and what it depends on, so it is less of a game, and more educational. But what's really going on inside is not as realistic as they would want to believe: because of its nature as a game, and the constraint that it must run on low end home computers, it tries to fool people into thinking it's doing more than it really is, by taking advantage of the knowledge and expectations people already have about how a city is supposed to work. Implication is more efficient than simulation.
People naturally attribute cause and effect relationships to events in SimCity that Will as the programmer knows are not actually related. Perhaps it is more educational for SimCity players to integrate what they already know to fill in the gaps, than letting them in on the secret of how simple and discrete it really is. As an educational game, SimCity stimulates students to learn more about the real world, without revealing the internals of its artificial simulation. The implementation details of SimCity are quite interesting for a programmer or game designer to study, but not your average high school social studies class.
Educators who want to expose the internals of SimCity to students may not realize how brittle and shallow it really is. I don't mean that as criticism of Will, SimCity, or the educators who are seeking open, realistic, general purpose simulators for use in teaching. SimCity does what it was designed to and much more, but it's not that. Their goals are noble, but the software's not there yet. Once kids master SimCity, they could learn Logo, or some high level visual programming language like KidSim, and write their own simulations and games!
Other people wanted to use SimCity for the less noble goal of teaching people what to think, instead of just teaching them to think.
Everyone notices the obvious built-in political bias, whatever that is. But everyone sees it from a different perspective, so nobody agrees what its real political agenda actually is. I don't think it's all that important, since SimCity's political agenda pales in comparison to the political agenda in the eye of the beholder.
Some muckety-muck architecture magazine was interviewing Will Wright about SimCity, and they asked him a question something like "which ontological urban paridigm most influenced your design of the simulator, the Exo-Hamiltonian Pattern Language Movement, or the Intra-Urban Deconstructionist Sub-Culture Hypothesis?" He replied, "I just kind of optimized for game play."
Then there was the oil company who wanted "Sim Refinery", so you could use it to lay out oil tanker ports and petrolium storage and piping systems, because they thought that it would give their employees useful experience in toxic waste disaster management, in the same way SimCity gives kids useful experience in being the mayor of a city. They didn't realize that the real lessons of SimCity are much more subtle than teaching people how to be good mayors. But the oil company hoped they could use it to teach any other lessons on their agenda just by plugging in a new set of graphics, a few rules, and a bunch of disasters.
And there was the X-Terminal vendor who wanted to adapt the simulator in SimCity into a game called "Sim MIS", that they would distribute for free to Managers of Information Systems, whose job it is to decide what hardware to buy! The idea was that the poor overworked MIS would have fun playing this game in which they could build networks with PCs, X-Terminals, and servers (instead of roads with residential, commercial, and industrial buildings), that had disasters like "viruses" infecting the network of PC's, and "upgrades" forcing you to reinstall Windows on every PC, and business charts that would graphically highlight the high maintanence cost of PCs versus X-Terminals. Their idea was to use a fun game to subtly influence people into buying their product, by making them lose if they didn't. Unlike the oil company, they certainly realized the potential to exploit the indirect ways in which a game like SimCity can influence the user's mind, but they had no grip on the concept of subtlety or game design.
Continued in context at:. html [catalog.com]]
http://www.catalog.com/hopkins/simcity/WillWright
Negotiation games (Score:3)
Ultimately, the trade only benefits the winner. As such, it's still a zero-sum game. However, it's still an interesting game and certainly qualifies in the category of "games where you scheme, trade, manipulate, negotiate, etc.", which (to me) are more interesting than something "straight-forward" like checkers. You really can't say, "If you don't jump me, I'll make it worth your while latter on."
Monopoly used to be my favorite of these games. It's popular enough that it's easier to find players, but to really do well, you need to cook up a series of trades that're superficially beneficial to your trading partners but ultimately much more beneficial to you.
Of course, after I repeatedly kicked ass and took names, all the other players wised up and started refusing to trade with me under any and all circumstances, which more or less made the game pointless.
Re:I can see it now... (Score:3)
Prisoner's Dilemma and Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma are both interesting in their own ways, so there's a lot written about both.
Re:Nomic (Score:3)
Yes, it does, and yes, you're absolutely right, the game could change so that in the future it's no longer true that all the rules are changeable. Nomic could turn into a game of chess, even.
It's related to an interesting philosophical question: can an omnipotent being revoke his own omnipotence? That is, is he condemned to remain "omnipotent" forever, in which case he is not truly omnipotent? Or can he will himself to no longer be omnipotent--in which case, perhaps he truly is omnipotent at the moment, but there is no guarantee he will be so in the future.
If you're interested in this sort of question, I recommend The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Law, Logic, Omnipotence, and Change [earlham.edu] by Peter Suber, inventor of Nomic.
Nomic (Score:5)
Agora [dfw.net], one of the longest running nomics on the net, has had for long periods of its history no defined way to win the game at all. (Currently, it does, but most of its players seem supremely unconcerned about winning the game.)
(Note: if you've played other rule-changing games, Nomic is different from most of them in a subtle way. Most rule-changing games have a central unchangeable core of rules, which typically include the rules about how other rules are changed. In Nomic, all the rules, including those about how the rules are changed, are subject to change.)
What is zero-sum? (Score:5)
Neither is correct. A zero-sum game is one where an improvement in the standing (which I'll deliberately leave vague, but you can think of it as "chance to win") of one player necessarily results in a worsening of the standing of another player. Even though, when one team scores two points in basketball, the other team does not lose two points, it is still zero-sum because that score reduces the chances of the other team. And even though two players can cooperate in Diplomacy to improve the position of both, they can do so only at the cost of another player.
OTOH, all those people pointing out that RPGs are non-zero sum are entirely correct. It is possible to perform actions which improve the position of all players in the game simultaneously. Even if you count the gamemaster as a player, it's still non-zero sum. The gamemaster's ultimate goal is neither coincident with the players' (if, above all else, he wanted the players to reach their goal, he could make it insanely easy for them to do so) nor opposed to it (if he wanted to stop them from achieving their goal, he could do that as well). The gamemaster's goal is to create an interesting game, and that is neither directly coincident with nor directly opposed to the players' goal.
Karma Whoring (Score:3)
- gaining karma doesn't hurt others
- moderators increase your karma if your story amuses them, and only reduce it if it annoys them - so nobody is happy to make you lose
- you can always try again if you reach +50 or get bitchslapped
- anyone can play! it's free and fun for the whole family!
I challenge The Community to come up with something better...
Hacky-Sack (Score:4)
Bryguy
Re:prisoner's dilemna...(information) (Score:5)
I am an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin. Last semester, the students in my econ class (intermediate microeconomic theory) were given the oppertunity to participate in a "research study." We were told that we would play a network based game against (with?) other players, and we could earn as much as $40 based on our and others good economic decisions.
Needing beer money, I thought 'what the hell'. They'd give me $5 just for showing up, so I went. There were spots for 40 people to participate. We had our pictures taken with a digital camera, and were assigned to computers.
The game itself was web-based. The rules were simple. The game was divided into 40 rounds; and every 8 rounds you were placed onto a new "team" of 5. In each round, each player had 20 units to "invest" and all 20 units needed to be invested. There were two possible investments, red and blue. The red investment always paid you 2 cents per unit and the blue investment always paid 1 cent per unit to every player on your team.
Before you choose your investment for a given round, you could see the faces of your teammates. Also, unless it was the first round of a given team, you could see how much each teammate had invested in blue (either 0-15 or 16+, not the exact amount) the previous round.
If everyone on all of your teams cooporated (blue investment) throughout the game, you'd all make $40 over the game. Of course, the dominant stratgey for any particular round is to invest all of your money in red (regardless of what your team mates do, you're better off). If, through out the entire game, your team mates choose all blue, but you always choose red, you could make $48. Investing in red, however, gives you're team mates the impression that you're 'screwing' them (profiting off their blue investment, but not returning the favor).
At the end of the round, you could see who had invested in blue (same as before, not the exact amount) and how much you had earned during the round.
It was a really interesting experiment for a few reasons. I was suprised how easily everyone co-operated during the start of the game. As the rounds went by, though, co-operation became increasing unlikely. It was also interesting that you couldn't see the exact amount anyone invested, just if they put more than 16 in blue. This probably led to players investing 'just enough' (16) to appear that they were 'team players'.
Also, we were not allowed to talk at all during the experiment. We were seperated into neighboring computer labs, so only half of the players were in the same room. The only way to identify your teammates was the little digital camera picture on the screen. Even with that little information, I began to form opinions about the various other players as the game progressed. It was interesting to remember someone who "screwed me" by taking advantage of my good faith blue investment and investing red. As players I recoginzed showed up on my later teams, I found myself trying to screw them on the assumption that they wouldn't be helping me anyway.
All in all, a very interesting hour. I did all right, made it away with about $33 (enought for beer and then some), so it was worth the time.
Calvinball! (Score:4)
Thinking / Trivia games aren't zero-sum (Score:3)
BTW, if you haven't played Apples to Apples, you have missed a treat. You can get it here [gamesandgizmos.com] (at my favorite online games store - Games and Gizmos [gamesandgizmos.com], or at many other locations.
One more quick game review - if you haven't seen the card game Once Upon a Time [gamereport.com], you are missing another great game - and one that's good for children as well as adults.
SimStuff (Score:4)
My friends can turn all games into drinking games (Score:3)
Re: Can You Suggest Any Non-Zero Sum Games? (Score:3)
Rethink (Score:3)
Why do they have to teach us about zero sum?
They shouldn't teach us anything.
I think that's the most important lesson. Games are about escapism - tell your kids that the best thing to do in life is to go out and enjoy it, and they'll be doing pretty well. If you stopped trying to teach them things they'd be a lot happier.
Think like that.
Don't try and take the fun out of it for them. Kids who grow up thinking about game theory and who are taught that life is depressing and unfair (non-zero) will not be happy.
Just play cards with them.
Read them a book.
Take them to the movies - anything but depressing games.