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Zero Sum Games (with examples) | BGG
Main Post: Zero Sum Games (with examples) | BGG
Positive-sum games
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Are positive-sum games cooperative by definition? Or can a non-cooperative game be positive-sum? Please explain your reasoning.
Top Comment: i mean you can make prisoners dilmena positive sum, it still would be best to play it adversarially
Zero Sum Multiplayer Games: Why do We Enjoy Them?
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A Zero Sum Game is one where the gains of one player results from the losses of another.
For example in Risk you can only gain territory by taking it from others, there will never be "more territory" on the board. In Civilization there are a set number of tiles per game. To obtain more (at a certain point in the game), the land must be robbed from another.
There are many such games. However, I'm specifically talking about games that involve three or more players. Usually, a Zero Sum Game between only two players can be seen as a fair competition or test of skill between the two. However, once a third player enters the game, what results is an often frustrating social dance of trust and betrayal.
Many people have had the pleasure of experiencing the stress, frustration, and vile hatred associated with end-game scenarios of Risk and Monopoly. This type of anger manifests itself in any game working off the Diplomacy model, such as multiplayer Civilization without set teams. Many times I've seen people lose their minds and integrity in the custom Diplomacy maps of Starcraft:BW and Warcraft III. Success (winning defined by the game) often involves either ganging up upon weaker players, or lying through your teeth and betraying at the right moment.
But for all its frustration, it is still fun. Seeing the longevity of this game format, it must be fun for others as well. However, I cannot accurately identify why social frustration is fun, can anyone help me out?
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It's that risk/reward that makes it fun. A game is, in my opinion, MUCH more interesting if you have something to lose. Generally, the more you have to lose, the more you can gain from winning, the tenser the game is, the more fun it is.
More fundamentally, you can't have winners without losers. If someone is winning, then someone has to be losing. If nobody is losing, everybody wins, and it's not an interesting game because everyone knows the outcome ahead of time. It's an incredibly boring outcome, at that.
A zero sum free-for-all doesn't necessarily have to be a bunch of ganging up on people and backstabbing. Games like Halo and CoD have free-for-all modes where, while people will sometimes group up, it's only little groups of two and generally pretty rare. If you're playing a board game, it's generally those politics that make the game fun, leading to the Diplomacy model you mentioned.
Diplomacy style games are a whole different beast, IMO. Those are political games, and, while they're really interesting, they are definitely not something people play a whole lot. For most people, it's just a once in a while thing that is entertaining because, let's face it, it's fun to act like a sly bastard every once in a while.
Incidentally, since you mentioned them, my favorite WC3 mod used to be Murder at the Mansion. Eight or so players, each controlled a single incredibly weak unit, with one random player also controlling an invisible murder ghost. The players have to figure out who's the murderer. If the murderer was slick enough, he could totally get everyone to blame some innocent guy. Fun stuff. I haven't played anything like it since.
How do you sum up the courage to play scary games?
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I can't get anywhere near my copy of Deadspace:(
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I got a better idea. At midnight tonight go find a graveyard and bring some LSD and your ipod. Once you are in the middle of the graveyard take the LSD and set your ipod music to the 28 days later theme song on repeat. Now you will be tripping shit and listening to a song you associate with zombies. You will start imaging zombies and monster in the graveyard. Blackout from the sheer terror and drugs. Wake up in the woods butt naked but with one shoe. Now when you try to play dead space or any other scary game you will never be scared again because you have already experienced the scariest trip ever.
Can someone sum up the previous games please? : metro
Main Post: Can someone sum up the previous games please? : metro
Much of life is a competitive, zero-sum game. What are examples of non-zero-sum human conditions?
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The thought that one person’s gain is another person’s loss is brutal.
We aren’t always good—we are a complex species—but I’d be curious to learn of examples in which we are synergistic, commensal, or thriving without one side losing during the exchange.
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Is it good for sum games??
Main Post: Is it good for sum games??
Top Comment:
Solitaire, Minesweeper, Pinball and early 2000s/late 90s games.
Are options really a zero sum game.
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I've been selling options since 2017. I've tried a few strategies over the years but I mainly sell naked puts. I use tasty trade and sell options that are 30-45 days out that are 85-90% pop. I've had two really good years where I made over 100% profit on $30-40k account but I've also had two years where I completely blew up my account on one bad trade. The other years I've made modest profit or loss. Basically I've more or less broken even over time but I've really lost because of taxes on the good years. If I just put 100% of my account long on SPY I would have done much better the last couple of years. My goal when I started was to grow my account over years and be a at a point where I could replace my income with options or at least supplement it by 50%. But the ups and downs have made that impossible. I know there are safer strategies but I also know that they aren't going to generate significant money on an account my size. At the end of the day I feel like I can invest my money in other ways that make the same returns in a passive way that I don't have to manage and stress about as much.
Top Comment: Yes. They really are. I don't think you understand what "zero sum" means.
Why zero-sum?
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In many papers, you can see phrases like "because the game is zero-sum", "we tackle the problem in a zero-sum game", etc., but why is zero-sum important? What properties of zero-sum make training easier?
For example, in a 2P setting, it is easy to see that whatever player A earns, player B loses. What about multiplayer (>2) games?
As another example, imagine a game where players have abilities. Player A has the ability to produce 10 gold for himself. B steals 5 gold from one other player of choice. C makes all other players lose 5 gold. This is clearly not zero-sum, but can't you just train the agents as per normal?
Top Comment: Nash equilibria convergence rate/ complexity of convergence.
Zero-sum games are the root cause of the lack in economic growth
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I was recently reading a very interesting book called Why Nations Fail, the Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. The TLDR of the book is that the reason why a country grows rich or becomes poor is in the underlying political institutions: inclusive political institutions have a central power and laws that permit free trade, and private property and they do not monopolize power to monopolies, dictators or kings. In contrast, extractive institutions hinder economic growth and innovation. If whatever you produce will end in the hands of a king or dictator, you will not innovate. If you have no secure property rights, you will not save or invest. If there's no law to enforce repayment, you will not loan your money.
This is all very well for explaining why South Korea is rich and North Korea is poor, why South America is poor and North America is rich, and so on. But I feel like there is more to this. Why are some rich countries richer than others? For example, why is the USA richer than Europe? They both have inclusive political institutions, right? We could talk about the dollar being the reserve currency, the amount of growth fuelled by quantitative easing in recent years, how easy it is to be an entrepreneur, laws, investment in technology, the presence of oil and other natural resources, language barriers, wars, and more.
But I think there is an underlying theme to all of that a level deeper: economies that play zero-sum games and those that play positive-sum games. Socialism is mostly a zero-sum game. Migration policies are a zero-sum game. Some examples:
- Rent limits: The landlord earns less money and the tenant saves that money (zero-sum). If rent prices are not regulated, an increase in price means a higher incentive to build apartment houses.
- "Not in my backyard" mentality: zoning laws and regulations that you cannot build, let's say, a building with 6 floors because the plot of land is made for a single-family home, or because it needs to respect some kind of aesthetic. It's zero-sum because many people lose (those who cannot afford a home there), for the good of those who live there.
- Migration regulations: Migration reduces wages, they say. Suppose this is true: Lower wages mean higher profit margins for companies, therefore more investment in business expansion and hiring more people. Migrants spend money on goods and services too, therefore more revenue for companies, and more hiring and investment in their business. It's a positive feedback loop!
I think part of the lack of competitiveness of Europe vs the USA is excessive regulation. Too much regulation creates zero-sum games which hinder competitiveness and make us all poor. Do not get me wrong: I am not an anarcho-capitalist, there must be laws and regulations to enforce the correct functioning of society, and there are things that might be better to be completely under the hands of the government to build or incentivize (roads, scientific research, police...) and I do not believe that GDP is synonymous with happiness or well-being. But the zero-sum games we constantly play on each other are our economy's foe.
Top Comment: I think your post is an example of historical ignorance in the west. South Korea was a repressive dictatorship for large parts of it economic miracle. It only became a democracy in 1987. The state straight up picked winners in the market, the famous chaebols such as Samsung and LG. The main reason South Korea became wealthy was basically because of forced industrialization, extensive American support and smart economic planning. It wasn't because it was some kind of liberal haven of democracy to the south of a dictatorship. That being said serious socialists do not care about markets deciding who gets perfume for example. What we care about is 1: worker ownership & democracy 2: elimination of class 3: collective ownership of the socially generated surplus
Infinite games vs finite games
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Infinite games vs finite games...🤔
One of my favorite business leaders to watch online is Alex Hormozi.
He has a great video about infinite games vs finite games which I wanted to break it down and apply it to the art of Jiu-Jitsu...
In a finite game, there are time perimeters, winners, and losers and the goal is to win (think Call of Duty or Chess).
In an infinite game, there are no real time perimeters, winners, or losers and the goal is to keep playing for as long as you can (think World of Warcraft or gardening).
In his video, Alex makes the comparison to marriage.
You don’t “win” marriage... the goal is to stay married.
You don’t “win” business... the goal is to stay in business.
In an infinite game, you will have victories and losses throughout (honeymoon to Croatia = victory, big fight = loss, etc) but ultimately these are small events when compared to the timeline of a lifetime.
This video by Alex helped me have an epiphany about the martial arts that I wanted to share...
Jiu-Jitsu is an infinite game.
One of the main reasons people quit is because martial arts APPEAR so easily to be a finite game.
It is SO easy to think that martial arts are a finite game because there seems to be clear winners and losers after every roll or tournament match.
It’s so easy for a beginner to roll with a purple belt and think “ah man I LOST! He tapped me five times!!”
This leads to disappointment and people quitting, even if they’ve been training for awhile... they think “I’ve been playing this game for a few years and I’m still losing... what gives??”
What you’re forgetting is that this isn’t the game we are playing.
Even in a tournament where there is a winner and a loser, after the match things go back to the life you had before the match.
Although you “lost” the match or the roll, you actually gained in experience and are a better martial artist as a result...
You’re a better overall person because you overcame fear and you showed determination in the face of adversity.
In the grand scheme of your entire martial arts career, that one loss in a tournament or one roll where you get beat up is NOT going to be what you remember on your death bed.
What you’ll remember are all the lessons you learned from training for a lifetime and all the friends that you made along the way ... THIS is the goal of training.
The goal of training martial arts is not so that you can one day “win” at martial arts.
It’s impossible to “win” martial arts... you might win a match here and lose another there but over the course of a lifetime these losses and wins are not what is most important.
Most important are the skills and personality traits that you develop over a lifetime of playing this infinite game we call “martial arts training “.
This is what your legacy will ultimately be to those who really matter.
Your kids won’t remember how many times you tapped out in training or competition...
BUT they will remember the quality of the character that you built over a lifetime of rigorous training and hard work.
So keep playing this infinite game 🙂 don’t quit.
Top Comment: I think you could apply that to any finite game though, e.g. chess may be a finite game but getting better at chess is an infinite game.