Game Theory Behind Video Games
Starcraft: Brood War was a popular computer game that gained worldwide attention in the early 2000s as a highly competitive game, categorized as “real-time strategy” or RTS. In fact, this game was so popular in South Korea that many players competed professionally, landing endorsements, popularity, and monetary rewards, almost to the point that Starcraft was its own sport. Very similar to sports, the strategy behind Starcraft can be seen to be the perfect application of Game Theory and the idea of the prisoner’s dilemma.
To give a short, simple background behind the game, Starcraft consists of choosing a race among three options (Terran – advanced humans, Protoss – advanced aliens, and Zerg – insect aliens). In a standard 1v1 match, each player is given a base and 4 workers to start harvesting resources in order to build up an army to combat the other player and ultimately win the game by undertaking a strategic choice from an array of different options.
For the sake of simplicity, let us imagine a basic scenario within Starcraft that will convey the idea of game theory. Assume two players are competing against one another in a 1v1, where one player is playing the Zerg race whereas the other is playing the Terran race. Early in the game, a player can decide whether to rush (meaning to surprise attack early with a small force of units) or gather resources to build up units for a late game attack. Refer to the table below which lists random point values corresponding to a strategic choice made by each player. In this imaginary scenario between two beginners, the dominant strategy would be for the Zerg player to rush attack since it would be the best strategy against any of the moves made by the Terran player. Nash equilibrium will be reached if both players decide to rush since those will be mutual best responses.
| Zerg | |||
| Rush | Gather | ||
| Terran | Rush | 1,2 | 2,0 |
| Gather | -1,3 | 3,2 |
This article described game theory within video games, or more specifically within Starcraft: Brood War, quite interestingly. Reading into the research of the game theory behind Starcraft definitely gave a vastly different perspective of the game I remember. What I did not realize while playing Starcraft before was that I was unknowingly applying the idea of game theory into my strategic moves in-game.
http://gamestudies.org/1401/articles/dor