Thursday, April 12, 2018

Colloquium on Games of Strategy: Chapter 11

Click here to directly download the MP3

Click here to watch the unedited version on Youtube

Welcome to the Colloquium on Games of Strategy.  Games of Strategy is a textbook on game theory written by Dixit (not the game), Skeath, and Reiley that we are reading to help improve our analysis of board games and board game design.  Paul Owen (owns 3rd edition) and I (own the 2nd and 1st editions) record a discussion about a chapter or two from the book every few weeks.

In the eleventh episode we talk about the Prisoner's Dilemma in board games.  Highlights include a discussion on different ways Paul's wife will prevent him from ever ratting her out to the police, multiple ways of escaping the Prisoner's Dilemma within a game, and how repeatedly paying games with a group of people creates an opportunity to escape the Prisoner's Dilemma within board games.

Note: Aaron misspoke when he said gambling is not a zero sum game.  Aaron was trying to emphasise that games with gambling can provide a marginal benefit or loss that changes player behavior when compare with games where either a player just wins or loses (e.g. a 12 run win and a 1 run win in baseball is still one game win).

You can find our previous discussion on Games of Strategy here.