Do you know what is prisoner’s dilemma? If not read about it here or watch this video or both (why not?).

What about Werewolves? well it’s a social deception game, you can read about it here (and soon I might write a bit about it too) – there’s also this article I wrote about how I created a werewolves meetup in Mountain View, CA.

So what brings me to think that Werewolves is like prisoners’ dilemma? well there’s the benefit of lying while others are honest that leads you to exploiting them, if everyone is lying its a chaos and strategies get very complicated and hardly better than random.

On the other hand honesty and cooperation lead to a somewhat easy win for the village, it hurts you if you’re on the bad team, but you lie while others assuming you’re honest and you got the game in your pocket.

The problem is the likelihood of you playing more games with same people, people start figuring out that you’re a good liar/manipulator, that doesn’t only give you a hard time when you’re lying, but also when you are telling the truth.

Like in the infinite rounds of prisoners’ dilemma game, multiple rounds werewolves game seem to favor players that are cooperative and not good at deception, the ones that actually get a savage win, tend to lose the ability to sustain a win streak without a substantial amount of luck.

With that being said, is it a genius strategy to not give the game your best and to actually play a mediocre lowkey strategy?

And beyond a mere discussion of a party game, is it a life strategy to keep a low profile and be modest? those humble smart people all around us are actually enhancing their chances rather than being naturally humble? 🤨