Microsoft’s game theory study on Facebook
Forbes recently published an article called “Microsoft Uses Facebook As Giant ‘Lab’ To Study Game Theory,” written by Parmy Olson (http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2011/10/12/microsoft-uses-facebook-as-giant-lab-to-study-game-theory/). In her article, Ms. Olson explain that Microsoft’s research is being done using a new online game called Project Waterloo. Project Waterloo is a strategic battle game involving 2 players, where each player needs to allocate 100 troops over 5 battlefields. The player to win the most battles wins the game. Microsoft is interested in a seeing how people generally make decisions in these games. It will be interesting to see, once Microsoft publishes its data, whether or not the players generally made the reasonable decision. Seeing the mistakes players make might shed light on the unpractical decisions people make in real life. Ms. Olson suggests that this research might benefit Microsoft’s marketing department or its Bing search engine.
This game relates to the game situations in this class where players need to make the best decision based on what the other player is most likely to choose. However, instead of a 2×2 matrix, players in this game have many more options. In addition, the assumption that players act in a reasonable manner is not guaranteed. This game can test if players generally make the most rational decisions.