App Designed Using Game Theory

Designing with Game Theory

From board games to brand strategy to nuclear war. The strategy we need for tomorrow's problems and how to learn it.

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G ame theory is not game design. It's a multifaceted study like architecture that mixes economics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and design into one academic practice. In other words, game theory is an asset like anything else in the creative professional's toolbox. It's something you can hone and seek out as a form of professional development the way reading novels improves copywriting, watching films improves art direction, and improv can make better presenters.

This article will give you a c rash course into game theory — the arcane art of Napoleon and Jeff Bezos. And it will defend my hobby from the advice of creative directors that game theory is "something you should drop for bigger, more relevant activities."

You can read textbooks on it. You can get a degree in it. You can even watch an award-winning movie about it.

Or you can level-up your craft the same way we did with data, AI, and human truths with something a little smaller. More fun. And a lot more accessible.

Let me explain with a quick parallel…

The Hobbyist's Backdoor to Competency

Ask any gearhead why they love a car, and the zealot will pop open the hood and show you its guts. Because most car enthusiasts eventually become car parts enthusiasts.

And these parts: the lungs, arteries, and steel organs of a car — they're the gateway to something more than just cars. Because the average driver loves the feeling of driving, but gearheads love what causes that feeling.

In the end, car lovers don't play with engines and gearboxes; they use engines and gearboxes to play with physics.

Car mastery means tinkering with gravity, matter, and chemistry. In other words: horsepower, torque, and mileage.

I realized this, unceremoniously, while assembling doors as an autoworker. Listening to salt-of-earth types banter about cars on their smoke breaks.

And it made me ask: What do we find when we lift the hood on my hobbies? What hidden forces do we play with when we begin to rearrange those elemental parts of game design?

Powered by Game Theory

All of those tiny rules and math-y, colorful pips on dice are called mechanics. Cars' mechanical parts are steel, but on a fundamental level, they're pure, uncut physics. Deep inside board games, those wood and plastic pieces aren't rules — they're game theory.

Here's an official definition of game theory:

Game theory is an academic study where we analyze and test an individual's options based on the motives and actions of others. So, whether it's by cooperation or competition, game theory is the study of strategic interaction while living in an interconnected world.

Strategic interaction is also the core engine of most board games, hence why the study borrows its name from them. The last time you, a magnificent layman, practiced game theory, was probably while playing a board game.

Chess, tic-tac-toe, and modern games like Ticket to Ride are all systems of strategic interaction. But game theory is to board gamers like physics is to car enthusiasts, it goes well beyond the world of tangible objects.

Real-life examples of game theory

In global economics , nation-states conduct trade, place embargoes, and make war on the plans and strategies of other countries. It's why some countries are synonymous with manufacturing, while others might produce the world's commerce of culture.

In political science , political parties vie for control of different seats and policies by carving up land and negotiating its rules like a real-life game of Risk. In the context of game theory, the idea of political parties trying to "game" the system is often too real; for example, gerrymandering is a corrupt behavior in the American system, but that doesn't mean it isn't the optimal strategy for winning elections.

In business management , firms and agencies study their competition to determine possible opportunities or positions where they can turn a profit. As a creative copywriter, I measure my client's taglines and brand messaging against the existence of others.

But these are human interactions, and the study of strategic interaction goes far beyond social interactions:

In biology , animals compete for resources, starve their ecosystem of resources when too aggressive, overpopulate when too successful, and go extinct when they lose. Game theory is used by biologists and conservationists to preserve balance within habitats.

In theoretical physics , game theory models the universe. It studies the Big Bang, the expansion of galaxies, and the entropy of the universe. Did you know the number of possible permutations in your standard 52 deck of playing cards is more numerous than there are atoms on Earth?

To summarize, the range of applications for game theory is endless. And its subjects often too complicated to observe conventionally. Which is where game theory and board games reconnect.

Here's some language game theory borrows from board games:

Game theory defines all decision-makers as "players" and all actions as "moves." To understand complicated scenarios, like economies or groups of people, game theory distills them into simpler, abstract models called "games."

This abstraction transforms complicated things into engines. Intricate but capable of being taken apart, rearranged, and when it's a board game — played with, learned, and enjoyed.

Designed to be Played

Game design, especially tabletop game design, is a medium and practice that encompasses more than game theory. For example, a game like Monopoly isn't just a model to study capitalism. Because if it were, it would be larger, more complicated, and less obscured with randomization, property names, or chance cards.

However, those forms of obfuscation are what make it playable. In most games, the optimal strategy for winning is never clear or constant — it is always evolving as the game progresses.

In this way, game design differs from the objectives of game theory. The inclusion of things like deception, randomness, emotion, body language, and hidden information is what makes a game fun. But they are also what make it an imperfect 1-to-1 ratio of game theory.

That's the caveat for what I'm about to suggest. Game design is not game theory. Game theory, however, is a fundamental part of game design. And it's one of the most compelling reasons to examine it.

I love many board games because they model amazing, complicated scenarios no one has — or ever will — have the power to control. But at the table, you get to try. Like the car fanatics who squeeze Science to go faster, you might squeeze a game's Game Theory to command armies and build nations with dice and wooden pieces.

All games are, in some way, a model within game theory with a gamified addition or two. The difference between video games and board game design is the distance between players and the system they're manipulating.

Video games are a past time with the same foundational mechanics as their analog counterparts, but they mask those mechanical levers and gears with graphics, interfaces, and sound design. They have the luxury of adding more of those complications without burdening the player.

Meanwhile, board games don't have that luxury. If board games were cars, their hoods would remain permanently open. All the moving parts are moved solely by the player. All of the math is done exclusively in their head. And the only camouflage that makes a wooden piece suddenly a Napoleonic army is the symbolism players bestow on it.

Anyone who wants to admire and learn about strategic interaction should play board games because board games make the basics fun and accessible to everyone.

Board Game Examples of Game Theory

The more you understand and admire board games, the more you know game theory, here are just a few of my favorites:

Settlers of Catan is a game about economics, opportunity cost, and trying to negotiate your way out of scarcity of resources. In a session with highly-skilled players, the winner is not the person who is luckiest or shrewdest, but the person who can successfully negotiate a trade that makes them win.

That's because, at tournament-level play, the best players can see the optimal strategy miles away, even with random deviations in die-rolls. But the distance they see that optimal strategy is where one player may act more strategically than others and make more advantageous trades.

Secret Hitler is a game of social deduction that challenges players to build Germany's destined-to-fail 1933 parliament while other players, playing as hidden fascists, conspire to corrupt it. The design poses good guys with questions like the real-life liberals of 1933 and challenges them to win it.

Still, they must measure the opportunity cost of their actions and try desperately to maintain quorum as other players work to obscure it with logical fallacies.

The game is about strategic decision making with incomplete (often misleading) information. It's a social experiment that mimics real life. In that way, Secret Hitler is one part board game and one part time-machine. Can the players beat history? And what does it say about our present?

Monopoly , meanwhile, holds a special status. It's about attrition and entropy. The physics under its hood are mostly outside of player control. Strategic decisions can only impact the game so much.

When Elizabeth Magie designed the Landlord's Game (Monopoly's predecessor), she developed a game where players try to bankrupt each other. When one player is winning, everyone else feels like they're losing. In game theory, we call this a "zero-sum game." And in Monopoly, no optimal strategy exists to control that game. Players might think they're making calculated decisions, but these decisions do little against the fickle power of the dice and cards.

That's because the goal wasn't to create a fun game but an educational one. Monopoly mimics real-life scenarios where players (re. renters and homebuyers) are set-up to lose.

Try buying real estate in San Francisco; that's the late-game of Monopoly. If you can't afford to lose, you can't play. And in Monopoly, there can only be one winner. Everyone else loses.

Why We Should Play

The more we love board games and their mechanics, the more we practice game theory. It's like a gearhead tinkering with physics, except board gamers get to play with the forces of nations, economies, and culture.

Which brings us back to who I hope plays more: creatives and strategists.

We have always tried to generate results. More app downloads. More sales. More earned media. But those results are becoming increasingly significant, like shifting an entire company's market position with a rebrand, or curbing gun violence, or reversing climate change.

The bigger the problem, the more we need to create results by manipulating the abstract forces that cause them. Gone are the days that a lack of awareness caused every client problem.

Let's remember the real-life examples of game theory.

We cannot successfully reposition a company without knowing the resources and optimal strategies of its competing players. We cannot stop gun violence if other political players have rigged the rules in their favor. And we cannot reverse climate change if humans, the biological organisms causing it, can't have emotional reasons to behave differently.

Our industry is continuously evolving. As profit margins shrink, we're pushing into uncharted territories, bedecking our portfolios with issues more alien and more challenging than ever. Our old tools and methods will only scratch the surface.

Board games are not a solution, but what's under their hood might help us internalize what causes the problems. And the more we recognize and appreciate game theory, the more we can look to make bigger, long-lasting change.

So, next time you're looking to expand your horizons, pick up a game. It might sound unproductive, even childish, but you're already playing more games than you know. Why not practice winning one?

Thanks for reading. My name is Clayton Notestine. I'm a copywriter, designer, and strategically-minded person with Aspergers. If you liked this article, remember to give me a round of claps for the algorithm's Sauron-like eye.

I am the founder of a scrappy gaming incubator called Questing at the MullenLowe Group, and I'm the owner of the RPG game consultancy, Explorers. You can find me talking shop on LinkedIn and Working Not Working, and gushing about games on Twitter.