Game theory

[canetoad]

Ok, I enjoy the odd video game, but don't know much about the topic of game theory so maybe one of you can expand on this.

What I do know is that rewards are necessary to keep the player engaged and keen. I guess the rewards vary, depending on your choice of game; a mystery/adventure game allows you to solve puzzles, a FPS (first person shooter) gives you kills. Game theory is a whole industry; university degrees are built around this topic.

Rewards can also consist of comforting and encouraging sounds and visuals. The whole point is making people feel good when they conquer goals in the game. This has been exhaustively researched.

Now, apply this theory to Trump and Qanon. What are the rewards? I can't be sure - acceptance in a group? Bucking the system? It's not a simple topic but I believe a partial answer to their insanity can be found in game theory.

[Celerity]

1. A Game Designer's Analysis Of QAnon

https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5



I am a game designer with experience in a very small niche. I create and research games designed to be played in reality. I’ve worked in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), LARPs, experience fiction, interactive theatre, and “serious games”. Stories and games that can start on a computer, and finish in the real world. Fictions designed to feel as real as possible. Games that teach you. Puzzles that come to life all around the players. Games where the deeper you dig, the more you find. Games with rabbit holes that invite you into wonderland and entice you through the looking glass.

When I saw QAnon, I knew exactly what it was and what it was doing. I had seen it before. I had almost built it before. It was gaming’s evil twin. A game that plays people. (cue ominous music) QAnon has often been compared to ARGs and LARPs and rightly so. It uses many of the same gaming mechanisms and rewards. It has a game-like feel to it that is evident to anyone who has ever played an ARG, online role-play (RP) or LARP before. The similarities are so striking that it has often been referred to as a LARP or ARG. However this beast is very very different from a game. It is the differences that shed the light on how QAnon works and many of them are hard to see if you’re not involved in game development. QAnon is like the reflection of a game in a mirror, it looks just like one, but it is inverted.

Guided Apophenia

In one of the very first experience fictions (XF) I ever designed, the players had to explore a creepy basement looking for clues. The object they were looking for was barely hidden and the clue was easy. It was Scooby Doo easy. I definitely expected no trouble in this part of the game. But there was trouble. I didn’t know it then, but its name was APOPHENIA.



As the participants started searching for the hidden object, on the dirt floor, were little random scraps of wood. How could that be a problem!? It was a problem because three of the pieces made the shape of a perfect arrow pointing right at a blank wall. It was uncanny. It had to be a clue. The investigators stopped and stared at the wall and were determined to figure out what the clue meant and they were not going one step further until they did. The whole game was derailed. Then, it got worse. Since there obviously was no clue there, the group decided the clue they were looking for was IN the wall. The collection of ordinary tools they found conveniently laying around seemed to enforce their conclusion that this was the correct direction. The arrow was pointing to the clue and the tools were how they would get to it. How obvious could it be?

I stared in horror because it all fit so well. It was better and more obvious than the clue I had hidden. I could see it. It was all random chance but I could see the connections that had been made were all completely logical. I had a crude backup plan and I used it quickly before these well-meaning players started tearing apart the basement wall with crowbars looking for clues that did not exist. These were normal people and their assumptions were normal and logical and completely wrong. These were normal people and their assumptions were normal and logical and completely wrong.

snip

[canetoad]

2. Aha, the paradox

Is my OP an example of apophenia?

I'll let you know after I've read the linked article.

[Celerity]

3. QAnon is a great example of apophenia, with its artificially constructed false templates

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. I read that at the time it came out and thought it was a good read. . . . .nt

[chia]

6. +1,000 I was going to post this same article. One of the best explainers I've seen, and this:

This thread:

Link to tweet

?s=20

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Note: you are on about the capitalism-psychology theory of games, not the mathematical one

Capitalism-psychology because it is the art and science of manipulating reward (as you say) for profit. I began by writing psycho-capitalism and almost kept it because in extremis, capitalism is kinda psychotic.

The math one is in its simplest form that there are three types of games: zero-sum, positive-sum, and negative-sum.

Democrats and progressives want the country to work together to make the game positive sum.

RepubliCons think it has to be a zero sum game (somebody's gain is their loss) and so they fight for themselves, their families and their groups (always defending privilege) against the "other". This of course makes the game negative sum if it becomes widespread. "Hands offa MY stack, Jack."


The invisible hand of capitalism requires enlightened self-interest for the rising tide to lift all boats.