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Comment by 0xRCA | Hacker News Reader

I hate hate HATE that behavior. Games are games. Obviously you can be unnecessarily rude or cruel in a way that will sour someone's taste for playing with you or playing the game again. But the point of games is to win. When people refuse to act in their best interest or are "nice" its so frustrating because it makes the entire game pointless.

edit: In a way, it feels like people who wave you on when they have the right of way at a stop sign. It's not nice, just follow the rules and drive predictably. /rant

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Wait, I must be missing something here. If people are nice to each other and that's a bad strategy, surely you get to wipe the floor win them (i.e. fulfill your objective of winning) and if people are nice to each other in a way that makes them hard for you to beat, surely it is you who are playing the worse strategy by not doing the same?

In my group of friends, whether it is Risk or Monopoly, being nice makes it much easier to win. People are happier to enter into mutually beneficial agreements with nice people who they know are honest and keep their word.

> If people are nice to each other in a way that makes them hard for you to beat, surely it is you who are playing the worse strategy by not doing the same?

If the arguments that underly the strategy decisions taken during the game purely happen during the game, that's perfectly fine. The issue arises when you absolutely cannot do anything to influence those. Rules of games are designed not designed to account for external behaviours that might favour

Eg: If Alice, Bobo and Charlie are playing a game of Risk and Alice is in love with Bob in real life and won't do anything in the game to hurt him. What can Charlie really do ? The rules of Risk have been designed to give each player with equal skill roughly 33% chance of winning - as they should. But in this case, Bob is almost sure to win and Charlie has very little things he can do to change that. How is that fun for Charlie ?

In this example Charlie has failed to consider the metagame of "don't be a third wheel"

I like the ones who stop to wave you out into traffic, not realizing they're only one lane on a 4-lane road, so you can't go without getting hit by at least one of three other cars, and the backup they've now caused behind themselves has closed the entry window you were about to have if they'd just picked "smart" over "nice."

I'm as skeptical about the appropriateness of rules as it comes, but a surprising number of the ones around driving actually do work to make the traffic flow efficiently!

What some people don't understand is that the main factor in having traffic flow nicely is being able to accurately predict what other vehicles are going to do

Nobody wants to ally with the guy who always wins. The game group I’m in has one of those, and so for some games I’m the one who wins the most. They expect him to win, so they drag him down, and I win by default.

It’s important in this dynamic that you pick games with a high wildcard factor, so that other people win occasionally, otherwise nobody wants to play after a while.

> But the point of games is to win

games in themselves have no point. The act of playing games may have a point: it is generally to have fun, not to win.

> edit: In a way, it feels like people who wave you on when they have the right of way at a stop sign. It's not nice, just follow the rules and drive predictably. /rant

you're not nice.

It's not a question of being nice or mean but a question of being competent and predictable to other drivers.

We have roundabouts where I live, and some people will always stop before entering. This is done even to the point of waiting for people to arrive and enter from the other roads, despite the law being to yield. This causes more problems than it solves.

True, people find different things fun. I sympathize with the idea that playing a game not following the rules and not making the best logic choices make the game less fun, because it becomes more about luck than skill. I, for one, have no joy winning or playing something entirely random, whereas beating other people on a skill based game is fun.

I wouldn't have said anything if you concluded "you're not nice" from the first part. But you conclude it because they don't like when someone messes up traffic? That's wrong.

how is waving to the other drivers messing up traffic ?

Because it's their turn to move and they're not moving.

... waving just mean thanking by a move of the hand no ? How is that related to moving or not.

Hell, doing it is even an official recommendation in my country: https://mobile.interieur.gouv.fr/Archives/Archives-publicati... ("faites un petit signe de la main" = to wave)

Are you familiar with the term "right of way"?

The complaint isn't about a friendly wave. The complaint is that it's someone's turn to go, and instead of going they wave at someone else to insist the other person go out of turn.

The wave is an insistence of "you go first", not a greeting or a thanks.

I do this quite frequently with bicycles caught between lanes. Yes, it annoys the people behind me. But it still improves the situation considerably.

Traffic isn't just 'other cars'.

Do you stop on the roundabout to let cyclists enter the roundabout?

No. That is a net negative. But a cyclist in an unsafe position should be given a path to safety regardless of what happens to other traffic. A cyclist that is not on a roundabout yet is perfectly safe, and stopping traffic on a roundabout to yield to traffic that does not have right of way is not ok.

Ah, OK – that makes sense. In my country, it's not a question of being nice but a part of the road rules. Loosely translated excerpt:

> The driver has the following responsibilities: (...) to do his utmost to ensure that other road users are not endangered, especially the most vulnerable (pedestrians, cyclists and electric scooter riders)

If a cyclist ignored the law and entered a roundabout anyway then I would definitely stop. But if they're waiting in front of a yield sign then obviously not.

I'm not, and after checking the website of multiple driving schools in my country, I guess this is a fairly deep cultural difference - they all mention that you can always let the other driver go first by courtesy, and that adaptation to the situation overrides the base ruleset.

The issue is that very often it would only take you a couple seconds to go through anyway, so you end up forcing the other person to adapt in a way that leaves everyone either the same or delayed.

There are definitely places where letting someone go is appropriate, especially if it's leaving a gap so they can make a turn. But if you're on a road and you have to wave them through then most of the time you're not actually helping, and fake-helping is an annoying thing.

If someone waves me on that goes against the right of way, I'll sit there till their arm gets tired.

Unpredictable traffic is dangerous, that's like, driving 101. It's nicer to let everyone follow the rules and stay safer.

The kind of "nice" in board games that is bad is when a player is willing to lose in order for another player to win. When you play a game, everyone has to play to win for the rules to make sense (I'd argue almost definitionally for a competitive game.) Playing a board game with someone who is not playing to win is like playing tag with somebody who refuses to run away and won't chase you. You should be working on a puzzle together or writing a song instead. Maybe make up new rules every turn and pantomime playing the game, that's fun.

The kind of "nice" that is good in multiplayer board games is strategic. Being "nice" isn't necessarily being nice. If a subset of players collaborate, they eliminate the other players from the game. It's one of the ways most multiplayer games naturally handicap based on the reputations of good players - other players assume that they will get the short end of any deal with a good player, so refuse to collaborate with them.

> But the point of games is to win

Different people, or groups, play games for different reasons:

* Sublimate conflicts (it's probably better than physical fighting)

* Learn / hone skills

* Feel personal challenge, tension, suspense

* Passing the time.

* Experience other players' "game-table-side banter"

* Attention diverter from munching snacks.

* Making a romantic pass at another player (it's been known to happen!)

etc. For some of these, winning is part of how you achieve your objective; for others it doesn't matter; and for others still it's detrimental!

See also the investigation of So Long Sucker in The Trap. Quoting Wikipedia:

>The programme traces the development of game theory, with particular reference to the work of John Nash [...] He invented system games that reflected his beliefs about human behaviour, including one he called 'Fuck You Buddy' (later published as "So Long Sucker"), in which the only way to win was to betray your playing partner, and it is from this game that the episode's title is taken. These games were internally coherent and worked correctly as long as the players obeyed the ground rules that they should behave selfishly and try to outwit their opponents, but when RAND's analysts tried the games on their own secretaries, they were surprised to find that instead of betraying each other, the secretaries cooperated every time.

> He invented system games that reflected his beliefs about human behaviour, including one he called 'Fuck You Buddy'

Such a beautiful mind :-(

If you can't beat people who are "nice", doesn't that mean your strategy is bad?

Whoever wins the game is the person who played the right strategy.... you have to account for other people not playing optimally when designing your strategy, whatever the reason for their suboptimal strategy (whether it is them trying to be nice or just not knowing the best strategy)

If you know a player is always nice during a game and won't attack anyone, incorporate that info into your strategy. Part of game strategy is knowing your opponents.

Your playing the wrong game. The husband is winning points or at least not losing points with the wife by working with her. The game becomes a proxy for your social relationships.

If you want a fair game, play strangers or a computer

You must be fun at parties.

Games never exist in a vacuum of their own mechanics. That's what makes them interesting. Learn the meta of your opponents, not just the game's if you're focused on winning.

Please don't cross into personal attacks on HN. Your comment would be fine without the swipe at the beginning.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful.

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