The iterated prisoners dilemma and the Day Z experiment

[Flatline 32]

TL, DR: Player behaviour in Day Z can be easily understood and adjusted by looking at human psychology and the iterated prisoners dilemma. Things will (probably) get better.

Why are DayZ getting a lot of angry players, fed up with Pvp and griefers?

Because, as most of you already know, the game currently rewards banditry and betrayal much more than cooperation.

What is the iterated prisoners dilemma?

It is a part of game theory that explains human behaviour in a situation such as Day Z. Originally named after an imagined situation in a prison, for Day Z a more suitable name might be Iterated Survivors Dilemma.

http://en.wikipedia....r's_dilemma

If we illustrate the choices a player faces every time they meet another player in a classical prisoners (survivors) dilemma:

.............................. ....................Player B cooperates........................................................................... Player B betrays
Player A cooperates					both get something											 B gets everything
Player A betrays					 A gets everything											 A or B gets everything

With this in mind, it is clear that you would win the most by choosing betrayal. Of course, additional factors such as waste of ammo and so forth can be added, but ammo is not important enough in the current form of DayZ to influence behaviour. Another thing that will change the values in the equation is the respawning ammo bug. When all ammo "cheats" gets fixed, would you really waste precious ammo on humans just for fun, or save it for the one enemy you can't negotiate with? Add to this the fact that the game currently revolves around "cool" weapons, real stress/tension and the fact that most players want action and betrayal becomes even more inviting. Right now, the actual value of cooperation is low.

However, the Iterated dilemma is what happens when you repeat the above dilemma over and over with the same players. Over time, tests show that people will actually start to choose the safest option when mutual trust increases. Provided the following things happen, cooperation will become more logical:

• The player base growth slows down, ie noobs get less common so that it is a coherent group of players that repeat the DayZ experiment
  
• There exists a genuine benefit to cooperation
  
• Players cannot switch identity between deaths, ie accountability and trust remains after you've died
  
• A genuine feeling of growth and connection to your character exists
  

In an iterated dilemma with the same group, it usually goes like this:

At first, players are all new and careful. They start out with the best intentions and initially try to cooperate. This would be the first weeks of the DayZ alpha, when players were more inclined to explore the mod together and help each other in doings so. Then, all it took was a few instances when players realised there was more to gain from shooting. Suddenly, the group falls apart to betrayal and it becomes the given choice. This would be up til now in Day Z, where banditry and pvp is the rule of law. If the above conditions are met though, players will gradually start realising that the one way to constantly be safe and improve is to always choose cooperate before betrayal. Betrayal will never fully disappear, but in other iterated dilemmas, this is what usually happens. Whether Rocket and the team manages to include this remains to be seen. It probably won't be easy, but bloody impressive if they do.

Rocket is obviously aware of this equation, as are most players. Nothing in this post is really new, but I thought I'd try to illustrate the pvp "problem" from a new angle. Rocket is doing everything right so far, if you ask me.

What is needed is not to restrict betrayal but to incentivize cooperation.

For example, in the old Operation Flashpoint mod FDF (Finnish Defence Forces) there was a heavy weapon that required one player to carry the tripod mounting and ammo, while another player carried the weapon itself. To operate it, cooperation was needed.

Radios have been discussed. What if the group channel could be activated for those that found radios/walkietalkies? Would that create incentive to talk tom players before you had them in your sights? Could you choose a group leader (a feature already in the game) and create a radio group? Mods for this already exist.

If the potential value of cooperation matches the potential value of betrayal, it will be more of a player choice whether to be "good or bad" than down to pure economics, as it is right now. Betrayal simply is more rewarding in many aspects. You get the thrill, the loot, and hopefully survival. Cooperation gets you a noob with lee enfield that will have you dead by mistake faster than it took you to read this somewhat long post.

Edited July 26, 2012 by Flatline

[Gogster (DayZ) 626]

Nice post - with some interesting views.

Thanks.

[danielreid 84]

Interesting and well-written, have my beans!

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

The problem is with Dayz's current mechanics we never get the effects of the Iterated Dilemma only the standalone dilemma which as you rightly point out leaves Betrayal as the best choice. So Dayz will never evolve past this.

Why ? Because you don't know who killed you (usually).

It doesn't matter if you can or cant switch identity because you'll never know who shot you, and even if you did they can just swap servers and you will never see them again. You would only start to see the behaviour change if players were locked to one server and could identify each other.

This is why , although people hated the bandit skins or other ideas to identify killers the game may need some artificial indication to simulate this effect otherwise we will never see different behaviour evolve. You will see people TRY and break out of this pattern, by forming a group of "good guys" for instance by meta gaming. But the anonymity of griefing in the game and lack of repercussions means they will always be destroyed by outsiders who can use the games mechanics against them and suffer no "punishment" such as losing trust.

Edited July 26, 2012 by Strategos

[Flatline 32]

A few facts that strengthen my belief that cooperation will increase over time:

All the forum threads from players trying to create law and order, safe havens, camps, anti-bandit groups and clans. (everyone seems to be a lawmaker here)

The short-lived fun of griefing (boring people like short-lived thrills, but scriptkiddies and griefers will die down when player growth slows down)

The increased stats tracking and increased player pride in managing to survive. (players will value their progress more)

The increased focus on vehicles and camp building (vehicles don't desync like crazy any more)

And one fact that keeps me thinking there will always be bandits to some degree:

Pvp is fun because tension is fun, and Day Z does tension like no other game.

Strategos:

I agree. The lack of long-time accountability needs more options for info-sharing. Notes, journals, bandit skins, sheriff badges, what have you.

Edited July 26, 2012 by Flatline

[wulfenrider@msn.com 14]

Thank you for taking the time to write out and explain the theory.

[JerFeelgood 34]

Interesting post re game theory, I think the limiting factors to PVP are much more easily contolled than you think. Limiting access to resources so one must trade, locked into a single easily identifiable PC by whatever means, a massive increase of the zombie threat level especially around population centres to decrease the PVP war zone effect (one would presume there would be a whole shed load more zombies in these areas with mortality rate in the cities...)

in my opinion two major factors are encouraging the PvP element in this game, ease of access to ready made consummables (blood, bullets, beans) and ease of communication (ventrilo, teamspeak etc). Without strict controls on both the game will remain on a war footing...

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

The prisoner's dilemma assumes both participants have the same goal - to avoid jail time.

In DayZ not everyone has the same goal. Some people want to gather equipment - others could care less about it. Some people value companionship and friends, others would rather be alone and still more like friends but have all they need and don't value more. Some people want to travel, others are happy remaining on the coast to witness the non-stop bloodbath. Some people want nothing more than to have a vehicle, others are perfectly happy on foot. Some people value murder above all else. That's okay too.

In short, the prisoner's dilemma is overly simplistic and does not apply appropriately to a situation in which many people participate and each have their own personal set of values, goals and objectives. You cannot place static values on cooperation or betrayal - it's different for everyone.

You can increase the inherent value of cooperation by introducing more cooperative mechanics or decrease the value of betrayal by introducing social functionality, but you cannot change how players personally weigh these things. For my part, I have all the friends I will ever need in the game already so no matter how many more cooperative mechanics get added, I'm still going to avoid or murder strangers I encounter because they pose a threat, however small, to my well-established system of trust and security.

Still, interesting post and thanks.

[Flatline 32]

The prisoner's dilemma assumes both participants have the same goal - to avoid jail time.

In DayZ not everyone has the same goal. Some people want to gather equipment - others could care less about it. Some people value companionship and friends, others would rather be alone and still more like friends but have all they need and don't value more. Some people want to travel, others are happy remaining on the coast to witness the non-stop bloodbath. Some people want nothing more than to have a vehicle, others are perfectly happy on foot. Some people value murder above all else. That's okay too.

In short, the prisoner's dilemma is overly simplistic and does not apply appropriately to a situation in which many people participate and each have their own personal set of values, goals and objectives. You cannot place static values on cooperation or betrayal - it's different for everyone.

You can increase the inherent value of cooperation by introducing more cooperative mechanics or decrease the value of betrayal by introducing social functionality, but you cannot change how players personally weigh these things. For my part, I have all the friends I will ever need in the game already so no matter how many more cooperative mechanics get added, I'm still going to avoid or murder strangers I encounter because they pose a threat, however small, to my well-established system of trust and security.

Still, interesting post and thanks.

Yes, in many ways it is a simplification. If you gather all the different player goals together under the main goal "to survive" I think it works well enough to describe the situation in Day Z, but it still misses the griefers that puts no value in their life and doesn't mind dying over and over. IMO, player death has to result in some really heavy drawbacks to make even griefers and suiciders contemplate the risk. Maybe a respawn timer that increases with every new survival attempt or something like it. Death is feared by almost all of mankind, after all, and Day Z should encourage that fear.

[Redshift 58]

Obviously the prisoners dilemma is simplistic, it is the most basic example of game theory. It is the example that is taught day 1 in classes dealing with game theory, That doesn't mean that there is no validity to it, only that you have to take into consideration it's limitations.

IMO, player death has to result in some really heavy drawbacks to make even griefers and suiciders contemplate the risk. Maybe a respawn timer that increases with every new survival attempt or something like it. Death is feared by almost all of mankind, after all, and Day Z should encourage that fear.

The problem with this is that it does the opposite of encouraging cooperation, it encourages griefing. A griefer gets off to making other people miserable, plain and simple. So if they kill someone and that person has to start over and work a few hours to get back to where they were previously, then the griefer is happy. However, if that person now has to be locked out of playing for x amount of time before starting that process, then the griefer is even happier. If the griefer can increase the amount of time and frustration caused to the first player by killing him repeatedly, then the griefer becomes ecstatic.

If we ignore griefers and look at normal players it still fosters "betrayal" over "cooperation", because there is an even larger penalty for being betrayed if you attempt to cooperate. For a Prisoners Dilemma example it would be the difference between:

-If you cooperate and the other player betrays, you go to jail for 1 day and he goes free.

and

-If you cooperate and the other player betrays, you go to jail for 5 years and he goes free.

The increased penalty only strengthens the incentive to betray.

[Flatline 32]

The problem with this is that it does the opposite of encouraging cooperation, it encourages griefing.

<snip>

Your're right, a countdown timer is a bad way of doing it, I had a feeling I should have left that out because I agree with you. Even if you tailor-made a countdown timer to only affect the bandits, that would be equal to nerfing banditry which must never happen, or Day Z loses its edge completely. Some other way of making every life count would be preferable. I had some more ideas on the matter, such as randomly spawning a rare personal item in the inventory with every new character, something that defines you and can't be dropped or traded. In short, anything that creates a connection to your character that counters the care-free view griefers have towards losing their life in game, while keeping true to the spirit of the game. What if there is something unique about every respawn that defines a bit of your background and makes you remember that very life long after? Be it a family portrait or a set of car keys or whatever. Just a thought, feel free to bash it.

[Redshift 58]

such as randomly spawning a rare personal item in the inventory with every new character, something that defines you and can't be dropped or traded.

This would just encourage people to suicide over and over again until they get the rare item they want. This is assuming it is some form of equipment.

In short, anything that creates a connection to your character that counters the care-free view griefers have towards losing their life in game, while keeping true to the spirit of the game. What if there is something unique about every respawn that defines a bit of your background and makes you remember that very life long after? Be it a family portrait or a set of car keys or whatever. Just a thought, feel free to bash it.

Personally I think this type of thing would be neat. I like the idea of a personal backstory, and connection to the character. Which probably stems from the years I spent playing table top and chatroom based rpgs (You cant help but become connected to a character you have been roleplaying for 4 years). But the truth of it is this won't affect most people. The majority of players will simply ignore this as being irrelevant to the game, and never bother to notice it, much less become connected to it.

And yes I notice that I am not offering up any counter proposals. This is because I can't think of a way that will work without breaking something else, and making a worse problem than what we are trying to fix.

[Flatline 32]

I also do quite a lot of tabletop RPGing, I know what you mean with the importance of building connections to your character. Maybe I'm just slightly more optimistic that by creating those connections, you can make a lot of pvp:ers into rpg:ers. Griefers will always be griefers though, but at least it is harder to respawn now.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Flatline