Author: James Nicol

Game Theory can be used to explain the inherent bias in some games that are presented as fair. The Skin Game, a card game where 2 players present cards and are rewarded based on the resulting cards, is inherently biased towards Player 1 and this bias can be shown with a payoff matrix. In the Skin Game, each player is given an ace of diamonds and an ace of clubs, Player 1 is given a 2 of diamonds and Player 2 is given a 2 of clubs. Both players select one card to show without knowing the opponents choice and the cards are then compared. Player 1 wins if the suits match, Player 2 wins if the suits don’t match and if both players present the 2’s, the payoff is zero for both. The below payoff matrix describes the Skin Game.

P1/P2	AD	AC	2C
AD	+1, -1	-1, +1	-1, +1
AC	-1, +1	+1, -1	+1, -1
2D	+1, -1	-1, +1	0, 0

Based on the above payoff matrix, we can see that Player 1 is advantaged if they never choose the ace of diamonds, while choosing the ace of clubs 60% of the time and the 2 of diamonds 40% of the time to remain random. With this setup Player 1 can expect to win 0.2 points per round. This simple game clearly has a strategy that can help a knowledgeable player make money. Games like these are used all over the world to make money from unsuspecting players, so learning Game Theory can help save you money.

Resources:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-game-theory-and-w/

We have been shown through numerous in-class examples that proximity and homophily play a key role in who we associate ourselves with. Some of the largest factors identified were age, nationality and race. The factors that were found to exist in virtual worlds such as EverQuest II in the study “Virtually There: Exploring Proximity and Homophily in a Virtual World” were proximity, age and game experience. One of the main factors of the study, proximity, was largely attributed to people bringing their real life friends into the game with them to experience it together.

The two main types of homophily that were experienced in EverQuest II and highlighted in the study were age and game experience which greatly determined players in-game relationships. Relationships were measured through teaming, messaging, trading and mailing patterns that took place throughout the game. The results showed that players routinely cooperated and communicated with people of similar ages and skill levels. An interesting note from the results was that gender homophily did not originally appear to be present, but upon further inspection it was found that this was caused by the low probability that 2 female players would interact with each other in the game. There are many possible reasons for this, with the prevailing one throughout the study being that most female players were brought in by male partners (boyfriends/husbands) or other males that they knew.

In many ways virtual worlds like EverQuest II emulate the real world since they are built on top of player-to-player interaction. Therefore, seeing homophily present should be of no surprise, but it is interesting nonetheless to see that even virtual birds of the same feather flock together.

Relevant Link
http://dmitriwilliams.com/proximity.pdf

References

Huang, Y., Shen, C., Williams, D., & Contractor, N. (2009). Virtually There: Exploring Proximity and Homophily in a Virtual World. International Conference on Computational Science and Engineering, 4, 354–359.