Here is a relatively low-stakes one: I play Settlers of Catan with a group. It’s generally fun, but much less fun when one person shows up. Why? They routinely target me. For example, they will bribe other players to rob me or lie about other player’s best placements to hurt mine. “I know you’re better at this game than the other players, so I’ve got to preemptively target you. And Settlers of Catan is a social game, you’ve got to play with the players you have, not just with perfectly rational agents.”
It sucks to be on the receiving end of the targeting, much more than the little joy they get from targeting me. It also erodes a norm I think is important in making games fun: the ability to have honest conversations. With honest conversations you can suggest mutually beneficial moves, making the game more interesting and improving everyone’s skill level over time. Also, with rational agents silence is just as good as dishonesty. However, in social manipulation games where players attempt to convince others to make suboptimal plays, this trust disappears. ‘I’m not sure I believe him; I’m just going to have to trust my own gut and maybe do an analysis at the end of the game.’
I’m the crazy Alex here. I get upset, call them a liar, and everyone looks at me like I’m overreacting. It’s just a game. Worst case scenario I can stop playing games with this group when this guy is around. But it’s hard to explain why I suddenly don’t want to play.
“I feel like he targets me, and then goes around lying, manipulating, and eroding good game-playing norms for funsies. The game is no longer fun with him around.”
“Oh c’mon, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little? It’s just part of the game.”
Also, why should I be the one to stop playing when he’s the one playing negative-sum games?
Also, with rational agents silence is just as good as dishonesty.
I don’t think this claim particularly matters to the thrust of your post, since I think we agree that you’re not playing with perfectly rational agents, but I’m interested in the claim as a matter of game theory.
To be clear, I’m interpreting this as saying something at least as strong as: “In a game of Catan where there is common knowledge that all players are perfectly rational, speaking a falsehood is never more advantageous for the speaker than remaining silent.”
After pondering this for about 20 minutes, I’m pretty convinced the claim is false, and I suspect you are over-generalizing from two-player games.
If Adam and Beth are playing a two-player zero-sum game, and Adam knows that Beth is perfectly rational, then:
If Beth reacts in any way to anything Adam says, then that reaction must be beneficial to Beth (since she is assumed perfectly rational), which means it must be harmful to Adam (because the game is zero-sum), which means Adam shouldn’t have said it.
By similar reasoning, if Beth says anything (that’s not required by the rules), then the fact that she said it can’t be harmful to herself, which means it can’t be beneficial to Adam, which means whatever Adam does in response won’t be (predictably) better than what he would have done anyway.
Therefore, Adam can safely adopt a policy of never saying anything and ignoring whatever Beth says, and this will be no worse than any other policy.
But Catan is played with at least 3 players. The game as a whole is zero-sum, but it’s possible for an action to benefit both Adam and Beth at the same time, provided it harms Chris.[1]
In a non-zero-sum negotiation, it is sometimes helpful to share information in order to coordinate on a mutually-beneficial action. So silence is not, in general, a global optimum.
But if there are situations where you would share some information if it were true, and the other player is aware of this, then silence becomes a tacit admission that it’s not true. So it might become necessary to lie in order to avoid passively leaking secrets.
The lie will only be believable if it’s a claim you would have made if it were true, which sharply limits what lies you can tell. But it does not, in general, limit it to the empty set.
This is not a proof, since I have not constructed an example game position where I can mathematically demonstrate that all of the relevant properties apply at the same time. It is conceivable there’s some reason that hasn’t occurred to me that they can’t all apply at the same time. But I have no candidates for what such a reason would be, and my brief Internet searches have failed to turn up any known result that matches the original claim.
I’m not sure if this is known art, but I’ve found it helpful to think of zero-sum-ness as applying to a set of players rather than to a game. In a 3-player Catan game with Adam, Beth, and Chris, the set (Adam, Beth, Chris) is zero-sum, but the set (Adam, Beth) is non-zero-sum. Note that any non-zero-sum game can be converted to a strategically-equivalent zero-sum game by adding a dummy player whose score is the negative sum of all other players’ scores (or vice versa, by adding a dummy player whose score isn’t that), so it cannot be strategically important whether “the whole game” is zero-sum if we haven’t changed the zero-sum-ness of any particular subset of players.
Consider the 2-player game where A is allowed to broadcast a public message, then B is allowed to press one of 9 buttons or pass, and then A and B receive a result. Add a dummy player C as you suggested if you wish to make the game “zero sum” among 3 players rather than non-zero-sum among 2 players.
Rules: * 10% of the time, all buttons are red, while 90% of the time, a uniform random single one of the buttons is blue while all other buttons are red. * If B presses a blue button the resulting utility for (A,B) is (1, 1). If B presses a red button the result is (0, 0). If B passes, the result is (-1, 0.5). * A has private information—only A can see the color of the buttons. B (and C, if C exists) is colorblind/blindfolded/whatever, but aside from that the rules of the game are common knowledge.
The following is a Nash equilibrium: * If one of the buttons is blue, A always says truthfully which button is blue. * If no button is blue, A picks one of the buttons uniformly at random and lies and says that button is blue. * B always trusts A and presses the button that A claims was blue.
This is a Nash equilibrium because no player can do better in expectation by unilaterally deviating from this protocol. (A is receiving the maximum possible utility they can in every scenario so A cannot improve by unilaterally deviating. B doesn’t see the button colors so it boils down to trust A and get expected utility 0.9, or pass and get utility 0.5, so B should continue to trust A even though A lies sometimes).
Does this provide the kind of example you were thinking of?
Yes, that is the sort of example I meant. Though of course this particular example does not prove that the game of Catan, in particular, has situations like this.
Based on his other reply, I expect James would want to point out that there is an equivalent equilibrium where player A, instead of saying “button N is blue”, says “either button N is blue or no button is”, which produces the same outcome without technically lying.
I’m coming to think that there should be some other distinction we can draw that rhymes with the truthful/lying distinction but that talks about consequences instead of semantics, and therefore can’t be dodged by relabeling the signals. Still thinking about it.
Though of course this particular example does not prove that the game of Catan, in particular, has situations like this.
A has 7 points, “Year of Plenty” card, 1 brick and 3 wood. A can get Longest Road either by building 4 roads or by breaking B’s road with a settlement, but to build this settlement A has to first build one road.
B has 9 points including 2 points from Longest Road and enough resources so they can build a settlement in one turn unless 7 is rolled.
C has 9 points, 1 brick and can maybe win in one turn depending on dice rolls.
A’s turn.
A: “I have Road Builder card, 3 wood, but only 1 brick. C, can you sell me brick for wood? I will build 4 roads, get Longest Road, B will not win in their turn and then we both have a chance.”
C: “I don’t really need wood, but I see that B probably wins if we don’t do it, so OK.”
A plays “Year of Plenty”, takes grain and wool, builds one road and a settlement, wins the game.
I do not have a formal proof, but here is an outline:
Consider a message one player can transmit to the group .
If it is beneficial to transmit , it must be detrimental to a subset , and at least neutral for .
The subsets and are in zero-sum conflict, so as an entity does not benefit from transmitting .
Thus, for to be beneficial to a player within , it must be at the expense of the other players, contradicting the definition.
Also, if there are several coalition-forming messages, and one of them leads to the highest payoff whether or not it is true, it is always beneficial to transmit that message, so it is cheap talk.
Therefore, the highest-payoff coalition-forming message is either true or silence.
The third step is a little tricky. What if the coalition forming itself benefits everyone in ? Well then they will form a coalition with the true message, “we should build a coalition”. The fifth step is also tricky. What if there are many possibilities for your secret, and the coalition you build with, “I am type 1″ is good when you are types 1, 2, or 3, but bad when you are type 4? Then everyone should expect you to transmit this when you are types 1, 2, or 3, so if it really does build a coalition it must be equivalent to transmitting, “I am type 1, 2, or 3, but definitely not 4”.
In that sentence, you are not arguing that the lie is no better than silence, you are arguing that it is no better than some truthful message. (This is technically still a falsification of my previously-stated interpretation of your claim.)
This argument is based on the assumption that the other players already know all circumstances under which you would transmit this message, so there’s no harm in admitting them.
I now realize that if all players have perfect knowledge of the exact conditions under which you would transmit some message, then the actual informational payload of every message is that those conditions are true. (Even with a randomized strategy, you can just interpret the RNG output as part of the conditions.) You might as well literally say “message #27”. Classifying the message itself as truth or lie becomes academic, because no one is expected or intended to pay attention to its face-value claim, and in fact there’s no reason for it to make a face-value claim at all. (Under this very strong assumption.)
So if we’re going to assume players have perfect knowledge of each others’ strategies (including what messages they send under what circumstances), I no longer think it makes sense to distinguish “true” and “false” messages.
I note that “common knowledge that all players are perfectly rational” does not (I think) logically entail perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy, since a game can have more than one Nash equilibrium. So technically neither of us stated “perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy” as an assumption in the first place, though I admit I sort of hand-waved towards it when I talked about what players would infer from your failure to say something.
I still think that if we don’t assume “perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy” then lying is potentially beneficial.
Given that clarification, I’m not sure if your numbered chain of reasoning is a crux for either of us, but for the record I found that chain extremely confusing to read, I think step 3 is invalid, and your final paragraph (after the numbered list) was the only part of the comment I found helpful.
In step 3, you seem to be trying to treat the groups and as if they were each a single player so that you can apply the conclusions from two-player games, but I don’t think that’s valid. The two-player result was based on an implicit assumption that transmitting a message from Beth to Adam cannot have any effect on the game except through Adam’s reaction, but that’s not true here because isn’t a unified agent, so transmitting can change the game (by affecting other members of ) even if refuses to react to it. does not get a veto on changing the game, like Adam does. Chris does not need to be listening in order for Adam and Beth to strike a mutually-beneficial deal at his expense.
So the inference that as a group cannot be profiting is invalid.
(Also note that your claim proves too much: If this were accepted, you haven’t proven that false messages are useless, you’ve proven that all messages are useless.)
Have you talked explicitly with them about the norms you’d like to have? I, for one, would not have assumed that “don’t try to manipulate other players to your own advantage” would be an expected norm, but would probably be willing to go along with it if the group asked me to.
You also might consider offering to play with a handicap, so that they don’t feel that they need to target you to prevent you from winning too often.
As a rule of thumb, I strongly approve of play groups mutually agreeing on whatever rules and norms work best for them. But I also think that trying to win (within the rules) is a pretty good default norm, and shouldn’t be interpreted as a defection if you haven’t agreed on something else. I don’t think “having honest conversations” is the primary value proposition that games offer to most gamers, and in fact I can think of several popular games with dynamics that preclude it.
I do notice that you seem quite confident that this is harming your enjoyment more than it’s helping anyone else’s, and this seems...plausible, but not self-evident to me, based on the information provided. Some people really like politicking in games. It’s also the sort of thing you’d be tempted to believe even if it weren’t true, which is cause for epistemic caution.
Supposing it’s true that this is more important to you than to everyone else combined, then I think they probably ought to be willing to negotiate to follow your norms, but that you should expect to give them something else in return (even if it’s just owing them one). Try to strike a deal that’s a positive for every individual, not merely positive-sum. You shouldn’t be able to demand people accommodate you just by being a utility monster. (Though you absolutely should be allowed to stop playing, if that’s your BATNA...and if they care more about having you play with them than they do about the norms, then playing with them could perhaps be the payment for changing the norms.)
I appreciate your replies. I did talk explicitly with them about this before writing my comment. I learned they were committed to social manipulation, though they did agree to target me less. I like your suggestion of a handicap, and I might bring that up next time we play.
I agree that I was underestimating how fun social manipulation is. Looking back, when I play Secret Hitler online I absolutely lie all the time, just because it’s fun to sew chaos. So, I think I’m being hypocritical and annoyingly principled. Why draw the line at in-person games?[1]
I remember them repeating something like, “it’s really fun to play the social manipulation game, it’s not all about winning.” I told them (paraphrasing), “okay, but can’t you do that after following the norm for awhile, so everyone has gotten better at the game? Then you get the enjoyment of social manipulation plus the enjoyment of an interesting game!” They said they didn’t really care for that. They didn’t elaborate. My guess is their discount rate is lower, or maybe it’s more fun to manipulate people who don’t understand the game.
I did tell them that I’m probably going to just stop playing Settler’s of Catan with them. As you said, I should seek to strike a mutually beneficial deal, and I don’t think that’s actually possible here. The game is just as fun without me—maybe more fun, because the competition is gone. What selfish rational incentive is there to play a less fun game just so I can play a more fun game?
To be more charitable, the line is when with significantly less skilled players. Online Catan? Not cool. Offline SH? Not cool. Online SH? Go for it. It’s still norm breaking since players want to win, and sewing chaos hurts your team’s chances. It’s a different norm, but maybe one people care about more, and makes me a hypocrite regardless.
In principle, IF the norms are more important to you than to everyone else combined, then there should be some amount you can pay them that is higher than how much they care about the norms but lower than how much you care about them.
(In practice, finding that amount may be hard, and treating it too much like a transaction may have friendship-corroding effects.)
I think this is much more of a culture clash than an issue of principle. My board game culture is that players should try to win, which entails both (a) treating the social environment of the game as part of the field of play and (b) understanding which players are your greatest threats and acting accordingly. So to me your opponent is doing exactly what they should. Now, “he’s targeting me and manipulating you all” may be a good strategic move within the game, but outside the game, in my culture, it’s not a valid complaint.
That we have different cultural expectations was really driven home for me when I saw your “when I play Secret Hitler online I absolutely lie all the time, just because it’s fun to sew chaos” below. In my culture taking actions that make you less likely to win because chaos is fun is absolutely not done, and is seen as making the game worse for everyone else. And doing it in a team game where people are trying to decode complex signals and solve a puzzle is beyond the pale for me.
Talking openly about this with your friends, as you discuss below, is good. But mostly my takeaway is that some people shouldn’t play board games with some other people.
Defect back. Next time you’re in a game with him, make sure he loses—pick another player at the table, and make trades with them that are wildly unfair in that other player’s favor.
I think that ordinarily, social manipulation games do not erode the norm of being able to have honest conversations. I think you are on some level aware of the norms I’m going to describe and are acting in accordance with them, I just want to describe them explicitly. As I understand them, the norms for playing social manipulation games is that there is a distinction between statements made with the game and statements made outside the game. Statements made within the game are not bound by the norms of honesty outside of the game. A player lying or misleading within a game does not impact their reputation outside the game, tho it may impact a reputation a playing is trying to maintain within the game that other players are tracking separately. There is an implicit agreement by joining a social manipulation game to suspend these rules of honesty.
A difficulty is that like all implicit agreements the details of it can be misunderstood; in particular, it can ambiguous which statements are made within the game and outside the game. Certainly not every statement within the duration of the game is within the game in this sense — if a player says “I have an important appointment so I need to stop playing soon” and is lying then that would be a genuine norm-violating dishonesty. In casual game-playing people often discuss the strategy of the game during the game and that can be considered statements outside the game. This is especially true for a game like Settlers of Catan which is not primarily a social manipulation game, tho it involves some social strategizing. If a false or misleading statement is made which some people think is within the game and others think is outside the game then that does lead to a genuine degradation of the norm of honesty.
One way to remedy this is to aim to be more explicit about the norms of the game before playing. For example, in your case, asking the other player whether they agree to not trick or target people. If they disagree, the explictness has nonetheless deescalated the dispute from a challenge to personal integrity into a disagreement on how to play games. This disagreement can still be acrimonious, for example leading the two of you not to play games together, but I think it’s an improvement.
Here is a relatively low-stakes one: I play Settlers of Catan with a group. It’s generally fun, but much less fun when one person shows up. Why? They routinely target me. For example, they will bribe other players to rob me or lie about other player’s best placements to hurt mine. “I know you’re better at this game than the other players, so I’ve got to preemptively target you. And Settlers of Catan is a social game, you’ve got to play with the players you have, not just with perfectly rational agents.”
It sucks to be on the receiving end of the targeting, much more than the little joy they get from targeting me. It also erodes a norm I think is important in making games fun: the ability to have honest conversations. With honest conversations you can suggest mutually beneficial moves, making the game more interesting and improving everyone’s skill level over time. Also, with rational agents silence is just as good as dishonesty. However, in social manipulation games where players attempt to convince others to make suboptimal plays, this trust disappears. ‘I’m not sure I believe him; I’m just going to have to trust my own gut and maybe do an analysis at the end of the game.’
I’m the crazy Alex here. I get upset, call them a liar, and everyone looks at me like I’m overreacting. It’s just a game. Worst case scenario I can stop playing games with this group when this guy is around. But it’s hard to explain why I suddenly don’t want to play.
“I feel like he targets me, and then goes around lying, manipulating, and eroding good game-playing norms for funsies. The game is no longer fun with him around.”
“Oh c’mon, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little? It’s just part of the game.”
Also, why should I be the one to stop playing when he’s the one playing negative-sum games?
Been thinking more about this claim:
I don’t think this claim particularly matters to the thrust of your post, since I think we agree that you’re not playing with perfectly rational agents, but I’m interested in the claim as a matter of game theory.
To be clear, I’m interpreting this as saying something at least as strong as: “In a game of Catan where there is common knowledge that all players are perfectly rational, speaking a falsehood is never more advantageous for the speaker than remaining silent.”
After pondering this for about 20 minutes, I’m pretty convinced the claim is false, and I suspect you are over-generalizing from two-player games.
If Adam and Beth are playing a two-player zero-sum game, and Adam knows that Beth is perfectly rational, then:
If Beth reacts in any way to anything Adam says, then that reaction must be beneficial to Beth (since she is assumed perfectly rational), which means it must be harmful to Adam (because the game is zero-sum), which means Adam shouldn’t have said it.
By similar reasoning, if Beth says anything (that’s not required by the rules), then the fact that she said it can’t be harmful to herself, which means it can’t be beneficial to Adam, which means whatever Adam does in response won’t be (predictably) better than what he would have done anyway.
Therefore, Adam can safely adopt a policy of never saying anything and ignoring whatever Beth says, and this will be no worse than any other policy.
But Catan is played with at least 3 players. The game as a whole is zero-sum, but it’s possible for an action to benefit both Adam and Beth at the same time, provided it harms Chris.[1]
In a non-zero-sum negotiation, it is sometimes helpful to share information in order to coordinate on a mutually-beneficial action. So silence is not, in general, a global optimum.
But if there are situations where you would share some information if it were true, and the other player is aware of this, then silence becomes a tacit admission that it’s not true. So it might become necessary to lie in order to avoid passively leaking secrets.
The lie will only be believable if it’s a claim you would have made if it were true, which sharply limits what lies you can tell. But it does not, in general, limit it to the empty set.
This is not a proof, since I have not constructed an example game position where I can mathematically demonstrate that all of the relevant properties apply at the same time. It is conceivable there’s some reason that hasn’t occurred to me that they can’t all apply at the same time. But I have no candidates for what such a reason would be, and my brief Internet searches have failed to turn up any known result that matches the original claim.
Do you think I’ve missed something?
I’m not sure if this is known art, but I’ve found it helpful to think of zero-sum-ness as applying to a set of players rather than to a game. In a 3-player Catan game with Adam, Beth, and Chris, the set (Adam, Beth, Chris) is zero-sum, but the set (Adam, Beth) is non-zero-sum.
Note that any non-zero-sum game can be converted to a strategically-equivalent zero-sum game by adding a dummy player whose score is the negative sum of all other players’ scores (or vice versa, by adding a dummy player whose score isn’t that), so it cannot be strategically important whether “the whole game” is zero-sum if we haven’t changed the zero-sum-ness of any particular subset of players.
Consider the 2-player game where A is allowed to broadcast a public message, then B is allowed to press one of 9 buttons or pass, and then A and B receive a result. Add a dummy player C as you suggested if you wish to make the game “zero sum” among 3 players rather than non-zero-sum among 2 players.
Rules:
* 10% of the time, all buttons are red, while 90% of the time, a uniform random single one of the buttons is blue while all other buttons are red.
* If B presses a blue button the resulting utility for (A,B) is (1, 1). If B presses a red button the result is (0, 0). If B passes, the result is (-1, 0.5).
* A has private information—only A can see the color of the buttons. B (and C, if C exists) is colorblind/blindfolded/whatever, but aside from that the rules of the game are common knowledge.
The following is a Nash equilibrium:
* If one of the buttons is blue, A always says truthfully which button is blue.
* If no button is blue, A picks one of the buttons uniformly at random and lies and says that button is blue.
* B always trusts A and presses the button that A claims was blue.
This is a Nash equilibrium because no player can do better in expectation by unilaterally deviating from this protocol. (A is receiving the maximum possible utility they can in every scenario so A cannot improve by unilaterally deviating. B doesn’t see the button colors so it boils down to trust A and get expected utility 0.9, or pass and get utility 0.5, so B should continue to trust A even though A lies sometimes).
Does this provide the kind of example you were thinking of?
Yes, that is the sort of example I meant. Though of course this particular example does not prove that the game of Catan, in particular, has situations like this.
Based on his other reply, I expect James would want to point out that there is an equivalent equilibrium where player A, instead of saying “button N is blue”, says “either button N is blue or no button is”, which produces the same outcome without technically lying.
I’m coming to think that there should be some other distinction we can draw that rhymes with the truthful/lying distinction but that talks about consequences instead of semantics, and therefore can’t be dodged by relabeling the signals. Still thinking about it.
A has 7 points, “Year of Plenty” card, 1 brick and 3 wood. A can get Longest Road either by building 4 roads or by breaking B’s road with a settlement, but to build this settlement A has to first build one road.
B has 9 points including 2 points from Longest Road and enough resources so they can build a settlement in one turn unless 7 is rolled.
C has 9 points, 1 brick and can maybe win in one turn depending on dice rolls.
A’s turn.
A: “I have Road Builder card, 3 wood, but only 1 brick. C, can you sell me brick for wood? I will build 4 roads, get Longest Road, B will not win in their turn and then we both have a chance.”
C: “I don’t really need wood, but I see that B probably wins if we don’t do it, so OK.”
A plays “Year of Plenty”, takes grain and wool, builds one road and a settlement, wins the game.
I do not have a formal proof, but here is an outline:
Consider a message
If it is beneficial to transmit
The subsets
Thus, for
Also, if there are several coalition-forming messages, and one of them leads to the highest payoff whether or not it is true, it is always beneficial to transmit that message, so it is cheap talk.
Therefore, the highest-payoff coalition-forming message is either true or silence.
The third step is a little tricky. What if the coalition forming itself benefits everyone in
Your final sentence clarified some things for me:
In that sentence, you are not arguing that the lie is no better than silence, you are arguing that it is no better than some truthful message. (This is technically still a falsification of my previously-stated interpretation of your claim.)
This argument is based on the assumption that the other players already know all circumstances under which you would transmit this message, so there’s no harm in admitting them.
I now realize that if all players have perfect knowledge of the exact conditions under which you would transmit some message, then the actual informational payload of every message is that those conditions are true. (Even with a randomized strategy, you can just interpret the RNG output as part of the conditions.) You might as well literally say “message #27”. Classifying the message itself as truth or lie becomes academic, because no one is expected or intended to pay attention to its face-value claim, and in fact there’s no reason for it to make a face-value claim at all. (Under this very strong assumption.)
So if we’re going to assume players have perfect knowledge of each others’ strategies (including what messages they send under what circumstances), I no longer think it makes sense to distinguish “true” and “false” messages.
I note that “common knowledge that all players are perfectly rational” does not (I think) logically entail perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy, since a game can have more than one Nash equilibrium. So technically neither of us stated “perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy” as an assumption in the first place, though I admit I sort of hand-waved towards it when I talked about what players would infer from your failure to say something.
I still think that if we don’t assume “perfect knowledge of everyone’s strategy” then lying is potentially beneficial.
Given that clarification, I’m not sure if your numbered chain of reasoning is a crux for either of us, but for the record I found that chain extremely confusing to read, I think step 3 is invalid, and your final paragraph (after the numbered list) was the only part of the comment I found helpful.
In step 3, you seem to be trying to treat the groups
So the inference that
(Also note that your claim proves too much: If this were accepted, you haven’t proven that false messages are useless, you’ve proven that all messages are useless.)
Have you talked explicitly with them about the norms you’d like to have? I, for one, would not have assumed that “don’t try to manipulate other players to your own advantage” would be an expected norm, but would probably be willing to go along with it if the group asked me to.
You also might consider offering to play with a handicap, so that they don’t feel that they need to target you to prevent you from winning too often.
As a rule of thumb, I strongly approve of play groups mutually agreeing on whatever rules and norms work best for them. But I also think that trying to win (within the rules) is a pretty good default norm, and shouldn’t be interpreted as a defection if you haven’t agreed on something else. I don’t think “having honest conversations” is the primary value proposition that games offer to most gamers, and in fact I can think of several popular games with dynamics that preclude it.
I do notice that you seem quite confident that this is harming your enjoyment more than it’s helping anyone else’s, and this seems...plausible, but not self-evident to me, based on the information provided. Some people really like politicking in games. It’s also the sort of thing you’d be tempted to believe even if it weren’t true, which is cause for epistemic caution.
Supposing it’s true that this is more important to you than to everyone else combined, then I think they probably ought to be willing to negotiate to follow your norms, but that you should expect to give them something else in return (even if it’s just owing them one). Try to strike a deal that’s a positive for every individual, not merely positive-sum. You shouldn’t be able to demand people accommodate you just by being a utility monster. (Though you absolutely should be allowed to stop playing, if that’s your BATNA...and if they care more about having you play with them than they do about the norms, then playing with them could perhaps be the payment for changing the norms.)
I appreciate your replies. I did talk explicitly with them about this before writing my comment. I learned they were committed to social manipulation, though they did agree to target me less. I like your suggestion of a handicap, and I might bring that up next time we play.
I agree that I was underestimating how fun social manipulation is. Looking back, when I play Secret Hitler online I absolutely lie all the time, just because it’s fun to sew chaos. So, I think I’m being hypocritical and annoyingly principled. Why draw the line at in-person games? [1]
I remember them repeating something like, “it’s really fun to play the social manipulation game, it’s not all about winning.” I told them (paraphrasing), “okay, but can’t you do that after following the norm for awhile, so everyone has gotten better at the game? Then you get the enjoyment of social manipulation plus the enjoyment of an interesting game!” They said they didn’t really care for that. They didn’t elaborate. My guess is their discount rate is lower, or maybe it’s more fun to manipulate people who don’t understand the game.
I did tell them that I’m probably going to just stop playing Settler’s of Catan with them. As you said, I should seek to strike a mutually beneficial deal, and I don’t think that’s actually possible here. The game is just as fun without me—maybe more fun, because the competition is gone. What selfish rational incentive is there to play a less fun game just so I can play a more fun game?
To be more charitable, the line is when with significantly less skilled players. Online Catan? Not cool. Offline SH? Not cool. Online SH? Go for it. It’s still norm breaking since players want to win, and sewing chaos hurts your team’s chances. It’s a different norm, but maybe one people care about more, and makes me a hypocrite regardless.
In principle, IF the norms are more important to you than to everyone else combined, then there should be some amount you can pay them that is higher than how much they care about the norms but lower than how much you care about them.
(In practice, finding that amount may be hard, and treating it too much like a transaction may have friendship-corroding effects.)
I think this is much more of a culture clash than an issue of principle. My board game culture is that players should try to win, which entails both (a) treating the social environment of the game as part of the field of play and (b) understanding which players are your greatest threats and acting accordingly. So to me your opponent is doing exactly what they should. Now, “he’s targeting me and manipulating you all” may be a good strategic move within the game, but outside the game, in my culture, it’s not a valid complaint.
That we have different cultural expectations was really driven home for me when I saw your “when I play Secret Hitler online I absolutely lie all the time, just because it’s fun to sew chaos” below. In my culture taking actions that make you less likely to win because chaos is fun is absolutely not done, and is seen as making the game worse for everyone else. And doing it in a team game where people are trying to decode complex signals and solve a puzzle is beyond the pale for me.
Talking openly about this with your friends, as you discuss below, is good. But mostly my takeaway is that some people shouldn’t play board games with some other people.
Defect back. Next time you’re in a game with him, make sure he loses—pick another player at the table, and make trades with them that are wildly unfair in that other player’s favor.
I think that ordinarily, social manipulation games do not erode the norm of being able to have honest conversations. I think you are on some level aware of the norms I’m going to describe and are acting in accordance with them, I just want to describe them explicitly. As I understand them, the norms for playing social manipulation games is that there is a distinction between statements made with the game and statements made outside the game. Statements made within the game are not bound by the norms of honesty outside of the game. A player lying or misleading within a game does not impact their reputation outside the game, tho it may impact a reputation a playing is trying to maintain within the game that other players are tracking separately. There is an implicit agreement by joining a social manipulation game to suspend these rules of honesty.
A difficulty is that like all implicit agreements the details of it can be misunderstood; in particular, it can ambiguous which statements are made within the game and outside the game. Certainly not every statement within the duration of the game is within the game in this sense — if a player says “I have an important appointment so I need to stop playing soon” and is lying then that would be a genuine norm-violating dishonesty. In casual game-playing people often discuss the strategy of the game during the game and that can be considered statements outside the game. This is especially true for a game like Settlers of Catan which is not primarily a social manipulation game, tho it involves some social strategizing. If a false or misleading statement is made which some people think is within the game and others think is outside the game then that does lead to a genuine degradation of the norm of honesty.
One way to remedy this is to aim to be more explicit about the norms of the game before playing. For example, in your case, asking the other player whether they agree to not trick or target people. If they disagree, the explictness has nonetheless deescalated the dispute from a challenge to personal integrity into a disagreement on how to play games. This disagreement can still be acrimonious, for example leading the two of you not to play games together, but I think it’s an improvement.