Interesting material yeah—thanks for sharing! Having played a bunch of these, I think I’d extend this to “being correctly perceived is generally bad for you”—that is, it’s both bad to be a bad liar who’s known as bad, and bad to be good liar who’s known as good (compared to this not being known). For instance, even if you’re a bad liar, it’s useful to you if other players have uncertainty about whether you’re actually a good liar who’s double-bluffing.
I do think the difference between games and real-life may be less about one-time vs repeated interactions, and more about the ability to choose one’s collaborators in general? Vs teammates generally being assigned in the games.
One interesting experience I’ve had, which maybe validates this: I played a lot of One Night Ultimate Werewolf with a mixed-skill group. Compared to other games, ONUW has relatively more ability to choose teammates—because some roles (like doppelgänger or paranormal investigator, or sometimes witch) essentially can choose to join the team of another player.
Suppose Tom was the best player. Over time, more and more players in our group would choose actions that made them more likely to join Tom’s team, which was basically a virtuous cycle for Tom: in a given game, he was relatively more likely to have a larger number of teammates—and # teammates is a strong factor in likelihood of winning.
But, this dynamic would have applied equally in a one-time game I think, provided people knew this about Tom and still had a means of joining his team.
Interesting material yeah—thanks for sharing! Having played a bunch of these, I think I’d extend this to “being correctly perceived is generally bad for you”—that is, it’s both bad to be a bad liar who’s known as bad, and bad to be good liar who’s known as good (compared to this not being known). For instance, even if you’re a bad liar, it’s useful to you if other players have uncertainty about whether you’re actually a good liar who’s double-bluffing.
I do think the difference between games and real-life may be less about one-time vs repeated interactions, and more about the ability to choose one’s collaborators in general? Vs teammates generally being assigned in the games.
One interesting experience I’ve had, which maybe validates this: I played a lot of One Night Ultimate Werewolf with a mixed-skill group. Compared to other games, ONUW has relatively more ability to choose teammates—because some roles (like doppelgänger or paranormal investigator, or sometimes witch) essentially can choose to join the team of another player.
Suppose Tom was the best player. Over time, more and more players in our group would choose actions that made them more likely to join Tom’s team, which was basically a virtuous cycle for Tom: in a given game, he was relatively more likely to have a larger number of teammates—and # teammates is a strong factor in likelihood of winning.
But, this dynamic would have applied equally in a one-time game I think, provided people knew this about Tom and still had a means of joining his team.