The Tank Game

 

The Story

I love experiments that showcase how humans act in certain situations. There are two I’d like to mention here: the Zimmerman and the Milgram experiments. In the Zimmerman experiments, a group of people were split into two: prisoners and wardens. Then they were supposed to spend a week in a fake jail under observation to see what happened. You can look up the details, but the end result is that the experiment had to be stopped prematurely since the wardens treated the prisoners so badly. The conclusion is that humans are very influenced in their empathy based on their positions relative to each other. In the Milgram experiment, normal subjects were told to administer shocks to an actor—who they didn’t know was an actor—in increasing voltage while the actor pretended to be in pain and finally die. Most of the subjects—who did not know it was an act—actually went ahead and killed the actor under the pressure from the experimenter. The experiment must go on. This explains why people are so susceptible to doing bad things when told to by an authority figure.

Now I’d like to insert another experiment that I think is on par with these, but around which there is very little literature. The HalfBrick Studios Tank Game. Let me set the stage. The studio is a game that develops mobile apps. They are always on the lookout for good, simple games that can be played with friends. One of the developers comes up with a game where a number of players are on a grid, represented by squares. Each day, they receive one action point. They can do three things with their action point: move, shoot, and give. Movement is easy. One point to move one square. Shooting is also easy. Each tank has three hit points. When a player is knocked out, they join a jury that can vote to assist players still in the game with extra action points—so no being nasty to others, as you can lose your chance to gain extra points. Giving is just what it says—giving your point to another player. You can only do this within a certain range.

Note here that every player is receiving the same amount of points a day to start with, and that there is a fair judgement system to award extra points. Imagine that this is a perfect society with a UBI (Universal basic income) and a fair, supportive government. The basic goal of the term “equity.” This will fall apart later, so keep that idea in your mind.

What the developer thought would happen is that, due to the range restriction on trading points, little groups would form and they would fight each other. Simple enough, right?

Wrong. What really happened had such an impact on the workers in the studio that they had to cancel the game a week later.

The creator of the game set the rules up, handed out the points, and sat down to do some work. Three hours later he hears a commotion across the room. He wondered; how long before someone dies?

Well, in his words, when he arrived in the room where the board was, it was a graveyard. What had happened was as such. The players had executed a series of trades that concentrated all the points in one single player. This was despite the rage restrictions on giving—which was sizable. What this single player had done was to instantly kill three tanks nearby. But besides that, the game was compelling. So compelling that, according to the developer, a man in crutches went down the stairs several times a day simply to see the game play out.

The game was a strikeout hit in terms of engagement, but the majority of players said that the game made them feel paranoid and upset.

Let’s take this “experiment” and apply it to an economy. In this situation, there is actual equality to start with and a system for rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior (the jury system.) This jury system is not too powerful and will never create a large wealth gap.

What I believe this “experiment” shows is that the accumulation of wealth and power is an inevitable extension of the human psyche. It cannot be stopped and it cannot be mitigated. This game is as simple as it gets, and even here humans show their spirit. If you want to watch the whole GDC conference video, here is the link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9WMNuyjm4w&ab_channel=GDC

This is why I believe that all attempts at equity and redistribution of wealth will fail. This is why I believe that wealth inequality is a fundamental part of human nature, and that attempting to mitigate it will inevitably result in disaster. I do not know of any actual academic papers on this subject, but I believe that his experiment is as valid as any other performed in the history of psychology.

Experimental evidence always trumps intuition and feelings about a subject. If this is how people behave in a clinical environment (as close as can be simulated) then it is how they will behave in the real world.

Inequality cannot be mitigated. It can only be managed. It is a fundamental outgrowth of the human psyche. While I believe this to be the conclusion from this experiment, I do also think that more academic study should be performed. My conclusion could be misguided, but only an actual psychological study will draw out the answer. Thus my conclusion: equity cannot be maintained under the current psychological hardware of the human race.