For those who don’t know what Game Theory is, a simple definition of it is: Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, or games, in which an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others.
Take one of my favorite examples of Game Theory,[ The Prisoner’s Dilemna.](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/) The Prisoner’s Dilemna is a classic example of the conflict between rational self-interest and group cooperation.
How does this relate to Halo: Reach? I want to introduce Game Theory to the way players interact with maps and other players more than ever before. Game Theory has been in practically all video games, but let’s look at Reach. Using Game Theory when you are playing a Matchmaking game against complete strangers, it would be beneficial to both teams if they cooperate and end up tying thus making both teams the winner. But does this ever happen? No, because an individual’s rational self-interest takes precedent over the interests of strangers.
What I plan to do is make a new game style preferably in Multi-Team whose outcome is determined heavily by Game Theory. The reason for Multi-Team is for the allowance of multiple teams (for some reason I am leaning towards 4 teams of 4) to interact with each other and have the possibility of co-operating with each other to take advantage of the other teams. Here’s an example:
There are four teams: A, B, C, and D located on four corners of a map, the game is CTF.
Team A and B team up to overwhelm C or D (who have not allied) and capture the enemy’s flags easier and more efficiently (K/D spread for teams A and B will most likely be universally better than C and D).
How exactly can this be implemented into Reach? A basic idea would be to create a square map with each of the four teams’ bases (A, B, C, D) and spawns situated on a corner:
A—1—B
C—2—D
As shown here (numbers explained soon).
There would have to be incentives to vastly increase the benefits of allying up with another team instead of not allying with anyone. Instead of just having Teams B and C allying up to dominate A from both sides in a vanilla usage of Game Theory, I introduce an improvement fitting for Reach.
The idea would be a switch on both sides of either team’s bases, at points 1 and 2 (also 3 & 4 between A & C and B & D). If Team A wants to ally with Team B, both teams A and B will have to press a switch at point 1 which will unlock a secret passage/weapon armory that will help both teams attack C & D more efficiently. This secret passage/armory will only be unlocked if both teams press the switch.
in order to stop all the teams from simply unlocking all their switches right at the start, the switches will have to be a double-edged sword. It will unlock benefits to those teams but it will also open up a fast route into the heart of your base that your “ally” could use against you, so whichever team you ally up with has a good method of killing you/capturing your objective (likewise, your team also has the same advantage over your “ally”).
I don’t have a map thought up for this yet, but like I stated above I want it to be Multi-Team, preferably 4 teams, and the map has to be symmetrical for obvious reasons. Maybe after the Forgetacular contest I’ll think up some ideas to bring this theory to reality.
So go ahead and list your opinions on Game Theory in Reach and how to go about the successful implementation of this idea into a map. This isn’t a foolproof idea and I haven’t thought of everything that needs to go into this game style, so I need some help making this idea practical.