When it comes to continued success in gaming, having an effective strategy is paramount. Whether you’re navigating complex battlefields in a real-time strategy game, making critical decisions in a role-playing game, or outwitting opponents in a competitive eSports match, your ability to plan, predict, and adapt can play just as heavily a role as your game-specific skills.
Developing an airtight strategy can sometimes take years of experience to achieve, but what if you could approach your gameplay with a more scientific mindset? Enter game theory—a field of study that examines strategic decision-making, offering insights that can help you develop more effective strategies across a wide range of digital games.
In this article, we’ll explore how it’s possible to use game theory to build a winning strategy, regardless of your chosen genre. We’ll break down the basics, providing examples from popular games, and even touch on how these principles are used in more niche games. Read on to find out more!
What is Game Theory?
At its core, game theory is a branch of mathematics that analyzes the interactions between a group of decision-makers. It’s often used in economics, political science, and psychology, but—in keeping with its name— it also has powerful utility in gaming scenarios. Essentially, game theory helps you to predict the actions of in-title opponents and make decisions that maximize your chances of success, even when you don’t have all the information.
When applied to playing video games, this means analyzing your own actions as well as the potential moves of your opponents. Crucially, game theory isn’t just about reacting to what happens; it’s about anticipating what will happen and positioning yourself for the best possible outcome, whoever or whatever you’re playing against, understanding the motivations of your opponents, and then formulating possible outcomes and your likely responses can give you a significant advantage.
The Basics: Nash Equilibrium and Dominant Strategies
There are two fundamental concepts that underpin game theory: Nash equilibrium and dominant strategies. These concepts might sound complex, but they’re surprisingly simple to grasp and can be especially beneficial when applied to competitive gaming situations.
Nash Equilibrium occurs when no player in a competitive or challenging game can gain by changing their strategy online. What this boils down to is that each player’s strategy is their best response to the strategies of their opponents. Understanding this concept can help you identify effective ways to play even when your opponents are playing at optimal levels.
A Dominant Strategy, meanwhile, is one that can deliver the best possible outcome for a player, regardless of the actions and strategies of their opponents. A dominant strategy effectively simplifies your decision-making process, enabling you to focus on execution rather than having to re-evaluate your options.
Of course, not all games align with Nash equilibriums or dominant strategies, but they’re still useful as guiding strategies. In a competitive shooter, for instance, you might come up with a dominant strategy that involves map control and positioning. Alternatively, when playing an RTS game, recognizing when you and your opponent have reached a Nash equilibrium can help you determine when to switch tactics.
Applying Game Theory to Different Genres
If you’ve read this far, you should have a pretty good understanding of the basics of game theory by now. So, let’s take things up a notch and explore how these concepts can be applied to some of the more popular online gaming genres.
Real-Time Strategy Games
Let’s start with the most obvious application of game theory-inspired strategies, the RTS genre. A solid RTS game like StarCraft II asks you to manage multiple tasks and responsibilities at any given time. When you’re managing resources, building civilizations or units, and trying to outmaneuver your opponents in real time, game theory can help you calculate your opponent’s moves and decide on the best course of action.
For instance, if you’re playing against an aggressive opponent who likes to rush early in the game, you can use game theory to decide whether to invest in defense or counter their strategy with an early attack of your own. Analyzing the predictable behavior of your opponents means you can create a strategy that maximizes your chances of success in response.
Board and Card Games
Game theory isn’t just for video games; it also has powerful applications in digital board games and card games like online poker. Whether you’re playing Catan, chess, or the Texas Hold’em poker variant in the digital realm, understanding the principles of game theory can help you outmaneuver your opponents. Take the latter, for example…
In Texas Hold’em, bluffing is a crucial part of the game, and you can use game theory to help you decide when to bluff and when to play it straight. By analyzing the probabilities of different hands and considering your opponents’ likely reactions, you can increase your chances of making a successful bluff, even in digital poker. Game theory can also help you recognize when an opponent might be bluffing, giving you the confidence to make bolder moves like calling or folding.
Competitive Multiplayer Games
Whether it’s a battle royale game or an MMORPG, today’s competitive multiplayer demands a lot from gamers across the board; from LoL to Overwatch 2, game theory can help you anticipate your opponent’s moves and decide whether to engage or avoid team fights or skirmishes.
Sticking with Overwatch 2 as an example, if you notice the opposing team consistently using the same tactics, like grouping up for coordinated attacks, you can apply game theory to decide how best to counter their approach. This might take the form of mirroring their strategy to outplay them head-on or to divide your team to flank them. Thinking through potential outcomes helps you make more informed decisions.