Game Theory in its Simplest Form: Agar.io
The Game
One of the hottest games for mobile, tablet, and desktop platforms is serving as a cluster-free, pure example of how game theory and competition come together in the form of one “Microsoft paint”-like blob. Agar.io has been in the top fifty apps on the Apple App store for several months, perhaps even as long as half a year due to its ties to some of our basic, unbridled urges to compete, consume, and conquer. As Will Nicol describes, “[t]he game is comprised of colored blobs on what is essentially a sheet of graph paper,” which seems like a rudimentary idea. In essence however, the games simplicity makes it easy to learn, easy to play, and, hence, easy to become addicted to. One of the game’s main concepts in growth and conquer, as the player, a particular dot among many others, strives to amass smaller “food” dots and other players. The divide and conquer motif also runs through the game as your “cell” is able to envelop other mass by simple collision or by dividing in half by a strange sort of forced mitosis allowing the cell to grow in length to attack other players. The final bit of information needed to play the game is the ability to eject mass in the form of tiny buds that can then be consumed by any cell. And that’s it. Its no wonder the game has become so popular with such a simple mode of game play.
The Concepts
“In the beginning, you are a tiny cell sitting in a vast expanse.” This is the premise of the game, as a player strives to build an empire by simply consuming other sources of mass about the server. By eating the small pellets spaced randomly about the board, a cell will grow in size, yet will get significantly slower the more mass that is consumed. Aside from the pellets, eating small cells can be a great source of quick and dense assumption of mass. As Nicol puts it elegantly, “Other players come in only two forms, either threats or food.” Here, however, is how this simple game relates to relevant concepts, namely game theory. While going through the game the player is forced to make quick, and sometimes sporadic, decisions concerning whether to consume a cell, divide to reach another cell, divide to escape, eject mass to become faster, among many others. These decisions will form the basis for the game theory tactics in Agar.io. If a smaller cell encounters a larger one, the small cell must make a choice of whether to split to get away faster or to try an outrun the cell as is. The large cell is faced with a similar decision, but with different motives, of whether to split to chase down the small cell or to remain intact to avoid being consumed by slightly larger cells. This core decision is what drives the game, as the larger cell in our scenario could become the smaller cell in relation to another larger cell. Thus, all of the collective decisions of the players all converge to a larger strategy: avoid being eaten.
The competitive nature of the game breeds the game theory concepts in Agar.io as each cell tries to determine its best response given the constantly changing game scape. This dynamic nature fosters the development of other decisions involving game theory. Among the constantly arising decisions presented above, a cell can decide whether to collude with another for total game domination. Taking advantage of the fact that cells can eject mass and split, two cells may work together as one splits to consume more mass and the other remains large to eat the other cells lost pieces after its splits. The popularity of collusion is evident soon after joining a game where cells nearly 10,000 times the size of you may be already playing. Put simply, “Agar.io taps into the most basic elements of competition. Eating another player evokes a primal glee…Death comes quickly.” Quick and dominant strategy decisions can, however, allow one to survive.
Sources:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/agario-game-guide/
(And since its so addicting, to play go to): agar.io