Zero-Sum, Cooperative, and Mixed Motives
Flashcards on payoff structures and the social feel each creates at the table.
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Questions Covered in This Set
11 cards to master
Zero-sum (constant-sum) game
Payoffs always add up to the same number — my gain is exactly your loss, so no outcome is better for both players.
Why is negotiation pointless in a zero-sum game?
Any deal that helps the other player must hurt you, so alliances are unstable by definition.
Design upside and downside of zero-sum multiplayer
Upside: 'fair' is unambiguous and easy to balance. Downside: attacking the leader is always correct, causing pile-on and kingmaking.
Purely cooperative (team/coordination) game
All players share an identical payoff; the only challenge is matching expectations, not conflict of interest.
Where must difficulty come from in a purely cooperative game?
From outside the players — a hostile system, timer, hidden information, or communication limits.
Quarterback (alpha-player) problem
One experienced player computes the group's best move and everyone else becomes a spectator; fought with hidden hands, asymmetric abilities, and simultaneous action.
Why is Hanabi a clever cooperative design?
It forbids plain talk ('play your third card'), turning a trivially solvable team problem into a delicate inference puzzle.
Mixed-motive (non-zero-sum / semi-cooperative) game
Payoffs are neither identical nor perfectly opposed: some outcomes are better for everyone, yet there are incentives to defect.
Why isn't the Prisoner's Dilemma zero-sum?
Its cells sum to 6, 5, 5, and 2 — not a constant — even though Defect dominates for both players.
Chicken vs. Stag Hunt
Chicken (Hawk–Dove): the disaster cell is mutual aggression. Stag Hunt: cooperating pays best but is risky.
Social feel of mixed-motive games
Tense, talkative, memorable — promises, face-reading, and remembered betrayals (Diplomacy, Catan, Among Us).
