Bungie Unwittingly Creates a Prisoners Dilemma by Telling Gamers Not To Trust Day One Reviews

[Op-Ed] The industry has evolved over the years to the point where getting reviews out the second the NDA lifts, or the product launches, is not only common place but required past publications. While this practise is all well and good for hardware, gadgets and fifty-fifty games with single actor focus, it shouldn't be applicable to online games. Bungie is now actively trying to discourage this norm via PR. However, even though I agree with the sentiments the developer has unwittingly created a Prisoners Dilemma of sorts. Bungie - Destiny Day One Review Featured

The Prisoners Dilemma - To Publish Destiny Review on Twenty-four hour period One or Not

Calling this interesting development a Prisoner's Dilemma might be an over simplification or an over complication depending on your viewpoint, but one that stands to logic. Before I delve further into this opinion editorial, allow me first elaborate a little on what a Prisoner's Dilemma is. This item situation is a subset of the wider 'Game Theory' (this has very little to do with games) and ane of the more than rampant corporate scenarios, usually between 2 rival companies. It goes similar this, say at that place are two prisoners who got caught without evidence. Prisoner 1 is offered 2 options. He can either stay placidity and get to jail for 4 or he can snitch on his partner and get merely 1 yr of jail fourth dimension. Prisoner ii is offered the same deal. The possible combinations of what can happen are as follows: 1) if both Prisoner'south stay quiet they will go iv years each. 2) If one of them snitches on the other while the other remains quiet, the snitch will go i years while his partner 7 years. iii) If both of them snitch, both of them will get 7 years.

This is where the dilemma arises, because the Prisoners cannot talk to each other and take no idea how the other volition answer. The logical 'colluded' solution is ofcourse for both of them to stay quiet, but since they realize what volition happen if he/she stays quiet and the other gives in to the police, the incentives for this class are not overwhelming. At present that Bungie has stated that any 24-hour interval 1 Review is not to be trusted, it has effectively created a situation very similar to the higher up mentioned dilemma. This is how the prongs of the 'Game' branch: ane) No publication publishes a review on Solar day One, everyone goes habitation happy. 2) A single pub launches the day one review while others remain quiet. The unmarried pub will effectively go a complete monopoly on SEO and rake in 10x-100x the views it would normally become. iii) If all the pubs publish, they will not get any SEO advantage and also become bad PR as a cherry on top.

By definition, the actions of the publications cannot be predicted since there is no logical solution to this. Now the more observant of you lot would already have noticed a flaw that distances this slightly from a true dilemma: the Pubs in question here can communicate with each other and 'collude' to achieve maximum optimization of the organisation. Ofcourse, a collusion this big is quite improbable not to mention impractical. This is what I think will probably happen: almost of the renown gaming pubs will have the Destiny review prepare on Twenty-four hours One, only volition not launch unless others launch. This will brand them ready for the worst case scenario. It will of course, defy the whole purpose of Destiny's warning, since you have substantially finished the review on Mean solar day Ane and not taken your merry time simply it is something that can't exist helped. So while Bungie's warning is a good sign for the gaming industry it is in my opinion, sadly irrelevant. Oh, and let the Games Begin.

#Bungie says twenty-four hours one reviews are non to be trusted. Game Theory, you are up. http://t.co/jJZP8lqcM0

— Usman Pirzada (@usmanpirzada) September viii, 2022