I've never been a huge fan of game theory, a branch of mathematics focused on individual decisions. As an economics student in Maastricht, I had to take a required course in it, and 15 years later in Princeton, I encountered it again. This time, it was voluntary, in one of my negotiation courses.

In that last vacation, I particularly enjoyed the moment when, through a negotiation game, it became clear that people toc behave differently than rational-mathematical models predict. During a negotiation game, it turned out that we had succeeded in building trust together with the other team and achieving significant gains for both parties, despite the fact that game theory had predicted doom and gloom.

Yet, we make it at the SSE Academy and make good use of game theory. This is how we play our X/Y game both online and on location. Players rarely achieve the maximum score for themselves or for the group as a whole; players often end up with losses of millions. An educational, fun, and therefore worthwhile exercise that simplifies the complex daily world into two elementary choices: cooperationof to oppose. With thanks to the original Prisoner's Dilemma by Princeton mathematician Albert Tucker in the 1950s.

Six months ago, my colleagues Robin Schram and Mart Scheepers pointed me to an online version that is many times more extensive than our short game version with X and Y. Canadian game designer Nicky Case designed it a few years ago The Evolution of Trust. It's an online experience that combines multiple insights from game theory layer by layer, offering a very realistic and accessible understanding of how social trust actually works. It takes place in a multi-party setting, making it much more realistic than the classic one-on-one interaction of the original Prisoner's Dilemma. Beautifully designed, Case's game convincingly demonstrates how trust can erode and disappear, or evolve into a constructive interplay between parties, creating the society we aspire to.

We first used Nicky Case's version in a training for diplomats from Europe and Asia. The beauty of it is: you can play it online in your own time “against” the program that Case wrote. In 30 minutes, you'll be taken through fundamental insights:

• What strategy works best against which type of other players and in what composition of naive, mean, calculating, or chaotic teammates?
• What is the role of little or much (mis)communication?
• What happens if the reward for cooperation goes down or up?
• How many rounds do you need to incentivize other parties to exhibit constructive behavior?

The red line is about the question of whether we are stuck in a system together (and behave accordingly) or whether we actually determine that system through our behavior. The paradox (spoiler alert!) is that both are true at the same time. Or as Nicky Case puts it:

In the short run, the game defines the players. But in the long run, it's us players who define the game.

Nicky Case

What Case does great is that it offers insights experienced before they can be rationally understood. And because of that, you learn more and it sticks better. That's what you call Hardcore gaming; playfully discovering how trust works and evolves. Accessible to everyone and drawn from mathematical formulas that I was so skeptical about a few years ago.

The evolution of trust. That's a nice Christmas present. If everyone gifted Nicky Case's (free) game to two other people, an R-number of 2, so to speak, then we can expect much more cooperation in 2022.

PS: You might like The Evolution of Trust here. These and other game formats from Nicky Case are freely accessible and available for use. However, you can support the work with a donation.

Director

Stefan Szepesi