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So I'm a marketing minor, and as a requirement we have to take this negotiation class. I love it because I can relate the strategy used in computer games (hello starcraft) to the strategy used in negotiation, as it is very similar.
Instead of assignments and homework, we get to 'negotiate' in separate teams something for our grades. Our most recent negotiation went like this:
You have a store. This store can either be open or closed each day. There is a store across the street that also has these options that you are competing with. If both stores are open, both teams lose 20k. If one store is open and the other is closed, the opened store gains 40k while the other loses 40k. If both stores are closed, both stores gain 20k.
This happens for 12 days. On the fourth day, the values are doubled. One the eighth day, the values are tripled. On the twelfth day, the values are quadrupled.
There are also eight other groups paired off doing the same thing. A full 20/20 grade is given to the team who comes out with the most money after twelve days. A 16/20 is given to all the teams in the middle. A 13/20 is given to the team in last place.
Negotiations do not take place for the first day, but do every other day afterwards if both teams agree.
How would you propose to make the most money and get a 20/20 grade? I will explain what my team did if people want. The game is still ongoing and we are on our seventh day right now, but the teacher is messing things up on us. He is now tripling the values every day and randomly deciding when we can negotiate or not.
What should we do? The team we are directly competing against are a bunch of pushovers with no strategical sense at all; I was able to convince them to close on the fourth day while we opened. They hate us now, but our double cross put them in last place. I'm thinking we can use it as bargaining point for us by threatening to tie with them every time (by staying open) and make them lose money.
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United States24779 Posts
Lol isn't that type of 'competition' among stores completely illegal?
Where are you studying?
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17069 Posts
Since the "bonus" for coming out in first place is greater than the "penalty" for coming in last place, if you could negotiate with another group for a long term strategy in which you take turns sabotaging yourself but ensuring the other team's victory and switching off, you'd be better off than if you settle for anything from 2nd to 2nd to last.
For example, you could close every single day and let the partner team open every single day, giving them the highest points and you the lowest points. You'd get 13 and the other team would get twenty. The next time something like this occurs, you'd just do the opposite and both teams would end up with 33/40 points. If you didn't cooperate and ended up in the middle, you'd both get 32/40 points after two rounds.
Of course, this is assuming that the points he grades you and how he assigns them will remain the same. If he changes it to last place gets 11/20 points or something, then obviously this wouldn't be useful.
Also,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit-for-tat
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This sounds like the prisoner's dilemma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma
You could just shut down all negotiations and treat it as such. But if you're already ahead, why not constantly stay open? You can't "lose" by doing so, right?
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I had similar game in "Negotiations" class. We acted as most of the teams do in this game and we felt very competitive. It ended up 20pts for us -20 for "opposing" team, while if we didnt fight the score could have been +360 for both teams. So the result was bad and we fell into "game = competitiveness, one winner, one loser" scheme. Now you guys did similar thing and it will be hard to get positive scores for both teams, trust each other.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
On August 23 2008 05:45 B1nary wrote:This sounds like the prisoner's dilemma. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemmaYou could just shut down all negotiations and treat it as such. But if you're already ahead, why not constantly stay open? You can't "lose" by doing so, right?
Well, mathematically, it's best to stay open every time but the only additional factor is the negotiations. With a good mix of co-operation and deception, you should be able to come out on top.
I once played a similar game where there are about 5-6 groups of people. Each turn, you can choose either green or red. If everyone picks green, then we all get 1 point. If some pick red and some pick green, then those who picked red will get a point. If everyone picks red, you lose a bunch (can't remember) of points. Negotiations were allowed.
I picked red every single turn and won my team the game  (basically, every turn I convinced at least one team to pick green).
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It sounds very much like Prisoner's dilemma, but I think the way you win repeated examples in the end is to just copy what the other person did the last round. I think that's the tit for tat strategy, but I'm not too sure.
But yeah, with negotiations, you are basically given one chance to backstab the other team because when once you do that, they'll backstab you back.
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Calgary26000 Posts
There's a programming competition like this every year. You can either attack or defend, and you have similar situations as you posted in the game. There is no negotiation in this game, you simply press "GO" and it says who wins.
For several years the program that won had I believe three lines of code.
On the first turn it would attack.
On the next turn it would do whatever the opponent did last turn.
It won't work in this situation since teams have logic and a chance to analyze and react to their opponent; just bringing it up for interest's sake.
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Ahh this kind of stuff makes my head explode. It seems the safest best would be that both teams agree to keep stores closed. That's +20 for all and technically every team gets the "highest score" so everyone gets 20/20. It's silly to open your store one day because then the other team is fucked and they'll keep open and you'll never get + again. But now that it's all fucked up... well. LOL! Why did you double cross them so early?
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Basic game theory here:
-20/-20 +40/-40
-40/+40 +20/+20
First column/row is open, second column/row is closed.
The "correct" move every time would be to stay open, as no matter what the opponent does, you will lose less/gain more for being open than being closed.
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On August 23 2008 07:36 Hippopotamus wrote:
Ahh this kind of stuff makes my head explode. It seems the safest best would be that both teams agree to keep stores closed. That's +20 for all and technically every team gets the "highest score" so everyone gets 20/20. It's silly to open your store one day because then the other team is fucked and they'll keep open and you'll never get + again. But now that it's all fucked up... well. LOL! Why did you double cross them so early?
That was my initial response too. Everybody negotiates and and works together and everybody gets an A. Unless the teacher has a mole, who will work to sabotage such an event.
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On August 23 2008 09:00 randombum wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2008 07:36 Hippopotamus wrote:
Ahh this kind of stuff makes my head explode. It seems the safest best would be that both teams agree to keep stores closed. That's +20 for all and technically every team gets the "highest score" so everyone gets 20/20. It's silly to open your store one day because then the other team is fucked and they'll keep open and you'll never get + again. But now that it's all fucked up... well. LOL! Why did you double cross them so early? That was my initial response too. Everybody negotiates and and works together and everybody gets an A. Unless the teacher has a mole, who will work to sabotage such an event.
But then there's the trust factor, and some people may try and cheat out of the deal to get ahead of the pack because they think someone else might do the same.
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The first day there were no negotiations. Everyone stayed open. We crossed them on the double day and took first place because we assumed that the other groups would realize that everyone is going to lose money and the only logical choice would be to stay open every single time and lose the least amount of money for the win, but people are stupid and eventually closed. We had to do something to get to first place. If we didnt cross them before they crossed us, we would be the ones sitting in last place... at least now we are pretty much guaranteed a middle grade with a safe shot at first place if I tell them that we are just going to copy whatever they do from here on out (Except for the last day on which we will obviously stay open).
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EPT
