Betrayal

In this post I will take a closer look at betrayal and when it works. I apologize in advance for the length of it.

The prisoners dilemma is a good way to look at a lot of game situations when determining what strategy you should use, however in games like mmo's (and life) there are many factors that the prisoners dilemma simply does not cover or allow for, so it is really just a simple framework for understanding these issues.

For example, it doesn't in any way cover what I will call 'varying rewards'. Which I think is the basis of a lot of betrayal and scamming in games (and life). In an iterated prisoners dilemma, the payout terms are exactly the same on every turn, this is obviously not true in real life/more advanced situations. In many situations a player will cooperate until they see a 'payoff', and then will betray at that point, obviously trying to maximise their gains. Usually this effectively ends the game going on between that player and the player he betrayed. Which is another thing the basic concept does not cover, early termination of the game/interaction by one of the players.

The best example I can think of are the famous Eve Online scams

http://www.wirm.net/nightfreeze/part1.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Eve-Online-Economy-Suffers-700-billion-ISK-Scam-33737.shtml

These are what I consider fairly classic examples of iterated prisoners dilemma situations bought to an abrupt end by a betrayal of one of the players. Arguments can be made on whether these actions are right or wrong, but these players 'won' their interactions. In both cases they were on the level (cooperating) until they saw an opportunity to make a large profit through betrayal.

Here is a (rather long) thread from the darkfall forums called 'Scamming Stories'.
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=104818

And this is an except from that post, I have edited it slightly to make it shorter

I think I'll begin, of all places, at the beginning.

Lineage 2 was my very first MMO, so I got my feet wet late, although I had been a fan of RPG games since Dragon Warrior back on the NES in '89. I remember being blown away while playing in the open beta. "Whoa...its...an RPG with a persistant world and thousands of other people! The possibilities are endless!" Of course, I was a complete MMO noob and found out a couple months later that the possibilties really weren't all that endless, and in fact at the time there wasn't a whole lot to do in L2 except slowly, SLOWLY, grind levels.

I had been doing some trade on the side and had a decent bit of adena (L2 money), and I was fascinated by the PvP possibilities, so I decided to try to host a little PvP tournament of my own. There wasn't much interest, but I managed to get a handful of people together and had a little event and gave out some small prizes. The next day, I decided to try to get a bigger event going, but we had had problems with people "signing up" and then not showing, messing up the fight Roster, so I decided to charge a sign up fee. As chance would have it, alot of people happened to be around the human starting area at the time, as there had just been an in-game event run by the devs, so there was alot of interest in my little PvP tournament.

When I said there was a signup fee, of course there were people who thought I was just going to run off with the money, especially since I was on a level 1 alt at the time, but the people who had participated the day before spoke up and let everyone know I was legit. In the end, I had about 40 people sign up, and collected about 250k adena in sign-ups, which was quite a bit of cash at the time. I started the event, and immediately it degenerated into bickering over the rules and chaos ensued, as 40 people tried to lead an event they weren't even in charge of. Everyone was demanding their sign ups back, when that first little evil thought came into my head.... "I have about a week's worth of solo grinding money here... And, these people are being idiots... And...and...I'm on an alt and no one knows its connected to my main, reputable and respected character!"

And with the simple clicking of the logout button, that's how a career scammer was born.

This player executes a betrayal strategy without even intending to at the time, it evolves naturally from his actions and reactions to events. His first small tournament, builds trust with a few players, who vouch for him the next day (second iteration), at that point more people show interest, he winds up holding enough money that it occurs to him that (duh) he could make off with it, so he does.

The above paragraph is pretty much the main point I would like to make with this article, that many players who view themselves as 'good' will actually betray under the right circumstances, if you read the scamming stories listed here and view them with disdain thinking "I would never do something that low" you might want to reconsider that as there is a fairly good chance that you actually could sink to 'something that low' under the right circumstances. Of course you may be legitimately virtuous too but don't take it for granted :)

The last part of the story is also telling, he was on an alt and knew that the betrayal would have no repercussions on his main character. Most (but not all) game betrayals that I have seen follow this pattern, it is much much easier to be a ganker/scammer/noob killer/etc on an alt of some form, that is either a 'throwaway' character or secretly supported by a 'main'.

Darkfall is a game that only allows one character per server, which makes things a bit more interesting as its a little harder to have a throwaway or alt character. It isn't impossible though (2 boxing).

This post shows the first 'scam' in Darkfall, the basic idea being to setup a trade with someone, and then once it has started to proceed to gank him with several naked characters.
http://forums.darkfallonline.com/showthread.php?t=165759

Here is the OP (again slightly edited)

I was buying timber in dwarf land and a seller messages me saying he has bulk 1k at 3g each. We come to an agreement for 1k gold, 2 mounts, 120 Iron Ingots. I head out and ride to Idawoll. Arriving at vault, everything is normal, people macroing magic, going about their business, etc. It's not even crowded. The seller comes up to me and opens trade. In literally one second after trade is opened, I start getting hit. I reactively close trade and turn around, unsheathing my sword and shield and mashing Parry. Hitting me are about 8 people, all naked, all with starter weapons. I die in approximately 5 seconds and am instantly ganked. I was boxed in from all directions and the bank itself was blocked from banking anything, leaving me from literally having a chance to do anything at all other than to die.

Total lost:
1k Gold
2x Mounts
120 Ingots
Scale Suit, arrows, r40 weapons, etc. (stuff i was wearing)

The name of the person who orchestrated this is GORMAGON HATE. Please remember this name and see to it that his rep is ruined forever on this server and that no one has business with him. The name of the guild he was"Les Vaindards"

This is an example of a single run of the prisoners dilemma (at least, gormagon hopes it is), which if you've done the required reading. you'll know that betrayal is always the best option for a single iteration. Whether this will actually be a single iteration game is yet to be seen.

Notice that the name of the character and guild are named (and they show up later in the thread to flaunt a little), I will be interested to know their eventual fate. They are getting great payoffs right now, but I hope to see how things unfold for them in the long run.

Right now the risk vs reward factor is heavily skewed in their favor, they risk literally nothing (they are all naked) and reap massive rewards. But are all of these characters throwaways? will gormagon quit after he's had his fun (very possible) or go on to try to have a 'darkfall life'? what will happen if he does? how will other clans view Les Vaindards? (my guess is they will have problems if they ever try to own a city). Since only gormagon is named their best strategy may be to simply change the name of their guild when they are done with their current prank and ready to move on to bigger things.

In this example the 'scammers' are also actively betraying from the start of their interactions, there is no period of building trust, a lot of 'trust' scams are unintentional at first (the player is cooperating until he sees an opportunity, and may not even be aware at first that he's going to eventually betray), where on the other hand this scam is planned in advance, which is a hallmark of a throwaway character scam. gormagon has revealed himself to be untrustworthy in the first few weeks of the game, which probably isn't healthy for his characters future (though I may be wrong, apathy lets people get away with a lot of stuff too).

One last thing I haven't touched so far, if it hasn't come through so far in these stories, is that betrayal is FUN, (it's been a very long time since I participated in any activities like noob killing or scamming, I usually use 'tit for tat' as my basis now, but I can attest that my memories of scamming, getting scammed, and item looting people are some of my fondest).

I'm not sure why it is fun, but I think that it has to do with being able to try strategies that you would not normally employ in your real life (because of the obvious consequences), and that executing those strategies in a game environment allows people to explore their 'evil' side with less repercussions.