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Games
A Beautiful Theory
Tim Harford 12.14.06, 9:00 AM ET
A revolution in the social sciences began in the 1920s, when the man Time magazine called "the best brain in the world" decided he would work out how to win at poker. John von Neumann's quicksilver genius accelerated the development of the atomic bomb by a year, and he was one of the fathers of the computer. He also spawned dozens of stories about his prodigious mathematical ability: In one, he turned down funding for an early supercomputer designed to solve a mathematical problem--and instead came up with a solution using pencil and paper.
Von Neumann was only interested in poker because he saw it as a path toward developing a mathematics of life itself. He wanted a general theory--he called it "game theory"--that could be applied to diplomacy, war, love, evolution or business strategy. But he thought that there could be no better starting point than poker: "Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do. And that is what games are about in my theory."
In 1944, Von Neumann teamed up with the economist Oskar Morgenstern to publish the bible of game theory, A Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. The essence of the theory was the mathematical modeling of a strategic interaction between rational adversaries, where each side's actions would depend on what the other side was likely to do.
Von Neumann and Morgenstern developed a way to represent such clashes as mathematical objects. All you needed to do to work out what each side should do was solve the mathematical equations. Understanding the most tricky strategic contests could be boiled down to doing the math.
A Theory of Games and Economic Behavior was widely hailed as an original and rigorous foundation for modern social science. One contemporary review trumpeted, "Posterity may regard this book as one of the major scientific achievements of the first half of the 20th century."
The admirers were soon disillusioned. To understand why, consider the toy model of poker presented in A Theory of Games. The model certainly meets the challenge that Von Neumann set for himself--bluffing, which seems to be such a psychological affair, emerges from the pure mathematics of the game's equations. Armed with Von Neumann's mathematics, even a computer could learn when to bluff.
But the trouble is that it would take a supercomputer--or a Von Neumann--to crunch through the complexities of the model's mathematics. Worse, in order to reach a solution, Von Neumann had to simplify the game of poker dramatically. Real poker is hugely more complicated--and so, too, is real life.
This is a more serious problem than it appears, because game theory is all about "asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do." Von Neumann's approach assumed that the "other man" was another Von Neumann, another brilliant calculating machine. But if the other man is a regular Joe who didn't grasp all the complexities of the game, Von Neumann's super-sophisticated game theory is not much use.
Von Neumann may have played down this objection because he and Morgenstern developed a theory of "zero sum" games, such as poker, where one player's loss is the other player's gain. If you play the optimum strategy in that sort of situation, and the other player makes mistakes, you will win.
But real-life games are not usually zero-sum. Consider the plot of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," in which the Soviets rationally create a Doomsday Device which will wipe out the world if they are attacked. Before they can tell anyone, a rogue general launches a strike against them. Peace was a possibility, but instead, the human race is destroyed. That's about as non-zero-sum as you can get.
It is also a reminder that in most situations, the point is not to beat some opponent but to do well for yourself. That will involve understanding the man on the other side of the game. If you think he is rational, and he isn't, your strategy will go badly wrong.
Some brilliant mathematicians and economists have worked hard to patch up these holes in the Von Neumann project, including Nobel prize winners Robert Aumann, John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten. The most famous of them all is John Nash, who was surprisingly made a celebrity after Russell Crowe played him in the biopic A Beautiful Mind.
Nash worked out a way to model non-zero sum games. Von Neumann, consumed with envy, dismissed the young Nash's result as "trivial"--meaning mathematically simple. Sure, it was simple enough, but only once Nash had pointed it out. As a practical advance in game theory, it was far from trivial.
Yet perhaps more important was Thomas Schelling, a man who eschewed mathematics in favor of some witty and memorable essays on practical game theory: using it to understand nuclear deterrence, extortion, disciplining children or even giving up smoking. Because Schelling used words, not mathematics, few economic papers are direct descendants of his work. But everyone read him--and half the Kennedy administration attended his Harvard seminars concerning the game theory of deterrence and arms control.
The year 2000 saw two landmarks in the use of game theory. One was pure Von Neumann: a lanky computer scientist by the name of Chris "Jesus" Ferguson won the World Series of Poker using the game theoretic calculations he had developed, run on powerful, modern computers, and committed to memory. The Von Neumann poker model triumphed at last.
The second was more important and for much higher stakes: the sale for around $35 billion of licenses to operate the latest generation of mobile phones in the United Kingdom. The academic economist behind the auction design, Paul Klemperer, had been using Schelling-style game theory. Rather than employ deep mathematics, Klemperer argued that the success of the auction was getting the basics right: preventing cheating, encouraging competition and closing up legal loopholes.
Schelling's contribution to game theory was to recast Von Neumann's ideas firmly in common sense. That turned out to be fundamental. Game theory has a lot to contribute to the analysis of life, love and economics. But the game will only go according to plan if you're sure the other fellow knows the rules.
Tim Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times, is author of The Undercover Economist.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/12
Games
Cheating Is Good For You
Mia Consalvo 12.14.06, 9:00 AM ET
Most of the time, we think of cheating as despicable. Cheating is what lazy people do. It's the easy way out. Calling someone a cheater is rarely a compliment, and being cheated is never a good thing.
At least, in everyday life it isn't--outside of the occasional "cheat day" on a diet. But what about in the world of videogames? After spending the last five years talking with game players, game developers, security experts and others, I've learned a few counterintuitive things about cheating.
First, everybody cheats. Some may justify it, others proudly proclaim it, and others will deny their cheating vigorously, but it's a common activity. Players use walkthroughs, cheat codes, social engineering techniques (basically being crafty and tricking others), hacks and other unauthorized software. Cheats are popular, big business and not going away anytime soon. Individual gamers set boundaries for what they will or won't do, and there are several general reasons why people cheat. But either way, can the activity be good for you?
When I first started examining the practice of cheating, I took it as a given that most people viewed it as a negative activity. Cheating implies that you aren't a good enough player to finish a game on your own, or that you want an unfair--and unearned--advantage over other players. Yet in researching why people cheat and how they cheat, I've found that, much of the time, cheating actually implies a player is actively engaged in a game and wants to do well, even when the game fails them.
There are four major reasons why players cheat in a game: they're stuck, they want to play God, they are bored with the game, or they want to be a jerk. The overwhelming reason most players cheat is because they get stuck. Either the game is poorly designed, too hard, or the players are so inexperienced that they can't advance. A boss monster can't be beaten, or a puzzle solved, or the right direction found. In such situations, players face a choice: They either cheat or stop playing altogether.
The next most common reason is that we all like to play God sometimes. We want all the weapons or all the goodies, and we want them now. We don't want to wade through 20 levels to get to the one we like best--we want to beam directly there. We don't want to drive around in a boring car--we want to "unlock" the invincible bicycle instead. In those situations, cheating is about extending the play experience for ourselves. No one is harmed in the process.
Third, we can get bored with games. But as with an annoying novel, we still want the option of flipping to the last page to see how things turn out. In a game, we may find the fighting tedious, or the storyline dreary, or the never-ending grind to reach higher levels in World of Warcraft just too much trouble, and so we use some sort of cheat to jump ahead in the game's timeline, maybe all the way to the conclusion.
And finally, some people just can't resist cheating others. We want to overwhelm others, not just defeat them. We'll use "aimbots" (programs that automatically aim and shoot for us) or "wall hacks" (programs that allow you to see and even walk through walls) to gain every advantage in an online shooting game. Or we'll intercept the data stream in an online poker game to find out what cards our opponent is actually holding.
But even if everyone does it, why is cheating actually good for us?
First, players get stuck all the time. It doesn't matter if you are a master at real-time strategy games--if it's your first action-adventure game, you might be really bad at it. Likewise, maybe the game developer rushed the game out the door with less than perfect directions or a less than perfect design. In those situations, cheating lets the player keep playing the game they spent good money on. It can mean the difference between completing a game and abandoning it mid-stream.
Imagine reading a book and getting to a difficult passage in chapter three. And then imagine the book won't let you skip to chapter four until you have signified you understand that passage. This is how many video games are designed.
Now imagine instead that players can consult walkthroughs (in essence, detailed, step-by-step directions to winning a game) on an "as-needed" basis to help them through the troublesome spots, or receive "hints" that help them figure things out on their own. Players who have completed the game create these walkthroughs for later players. In short, players are teaching one another and learning from each other, and getting only the information they need to keep going. Everyone is taking an active part in playing and learning how to play. This is a good thing for everyone involved.
Next, players often use cheat codes, which unlock special items or powers, to get the most value from a game. This suggests that players enjoy the game so much that when they reach the end, they want to play it more. That means more opportunities for interaction with the game. Cheat codes can be hidden in a game for players to find and then share with others. Or, codes can be awarded to excellent players, or given to newer, more tentative players to encourage them to keep playing. Cheat codes can keep the experience enjoyable in different ways for different players.
What about when players get bored? Game designers don't usually want them skipping to the end of a game. Yet does the game need to have a linear progression? Could players choose where in the game to go next, or the elements they want to tackle? Are there different ways to succeed--through battle, through puzzle solving, through dialog? Different players have different skill sets, so giving everyone an equal shot at doing well is preferable. As is allowing players to more quickly get to the sections they find rewarding.
But what about the jerks? Everyone wants a perfect opponent like Lisa Simpson, but more often we end up playing with her brother Bart. In EVE Online, for instance, one player, Nightfreeze, allegedly cheated his in-game friends and rivals out of hundreds of millions of in-game "credits" using nothing but fake accounts, a public library's telephone, some help from friends, and his wits.
In such situations, the value is found not in the cheating itself, but in our reaction to it.
There are a couple of things that can be done to either stop this sort of cheating or make it a positive aspect of play. Users themselves often encourage a culture of non-cheating, making cheating not cool. Most commonly, player communities can take an active role in deciding what happens when people are discovered cheating. Psychologists have found that when playing games, if players aren't allowed to punish others they suspect of cheating, the game community falls apart. People will even pay money out of their own pocket to punish cheaters. So figuring out ways to keep the larger community involved in dealing with cheaters can keep the group engaged in ways that "regular" game play might never allow for.
As counter-intuitive as it may seem, cheating can sometimes be good for you. It can keep you active and involved in a game, reward game play and allow expert players to teach others. It can indicate to developers when games are too hard or flawed, and it can even help a community form. We will never get rid of cheating, but at least in games, we can make it a positive thing, even a way to teach and learn.
Mia Consalvo is an associate professor in the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University. Her current research examines women's game play, the economics of the videogame industry and pedagogical uses of games. She has just written the book Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames, to be released by MIT Press in 2007.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/12###
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