Zero Sum Games

I see more and more posts like this on DF's forums

Its too bad your visions will fall to the might of human nature. None of what you want will ever come to light. Consider that the internet is like beer; the more you drink the more your real personality is let loose. Put a young adult behind a keyboard, make him anonymous so that he does not have to 'see' other people, and suddenly everything changes. They become rude, they cause grief for the sheer fun of it, they stop caring about other feelings. In essence, their true nature comes out to play. Oh, there are many who dont fit that role, being that their true nature is not that of an asshat. But the sad reality is that when your immature, you have not yet found who you are, so your more guided by instinct than reason.I know i sound cynical, and maybe I am, but the gist is true. People are simply jerks when they dont have to directly interact with others.

*sigh*, this person obviously does not understand what a stakes game (or human nature) is about.

Imagine someone writing a post like that about poker. Poker is a Zero Sum Game, in order for you to win your opponent HAS TO LOSE. You have absolutely no incentive to cooperate with other players, and will be as much of a 'jerk' to them as you possibly can.

DF (and life) is not zero sum, you can benefit by cooperating with people, however many interactions in DF certainly can be zero sum. This poster fails to realize that people aren't being 'jerks' when they gank him, they are optimizing their own strategy.

And posts likes this:

REALLY TRAV?????? How original. I guess you didn't read the part where I stated that I am not a crafter. I actually am the one looking to gank you crafters and I just wanted to get a bead on how you guys feel about the exploit of being ganked in town.Anyway Trav Warcraft is actually a much better game than this. Ganking people anywhere is largely overated. The novelty wore off after 5 minutes. Maybe if you ever played a "REAL" FPS game then you would understand the concept.I know you think your edgy and cool because this is your first experience with actually being able to kill a real player but your still and MMO geek living in your moms basement jacking off to your daddys porn mags and listening to Radiohead.

In (real money) poker. the only thing to do is gank, thats it, no crafting, no 'pve', no social interaction at all, you JUST GANK. Yet it is popular, the novelty does not wear off after 5 minutes. (the novelty of a no-money game certainly does wear off quickly though).

It is such an invalid argument and I see it constantly, obviously my 'In Defense of Item Loot' post is a more detailed rebuttal to this stuff, but I wanted to post a couple of examples.

Whenver you see these arguments, understand that the poster is just a dumb scrub that doesn't understand human nature nearly as well as he thinks he does.