I took a break from the research right after running the batch of experiments that I talked about in the previous blog. With a couple of friends visiting from the Netherlands, we went on a road trip through California, Nevada and Arizona. You can read all about it in my upcoming (Dutch) blog post on my other blog: la-pruik.blogspot.com
When I came back from this trip I noticed a couple of emails in my inbox that talked about a British game show, called Golden Balls. At the end of this game, the two remaining participants 'fight' for a rather large sum of money, usually worth over $50,000 USD. Each of the participants receives a ball with the word STEAL written in it, and another ball with the word SPLIT written inside. The players can have a little discussion with each other to help them decide which ball to pick, and as soon as they have both picked their desired ball, their choice is revealed to the other (and to the audience).
The rules are as follows: If both players choose to SPLIT, the large sum of money is evenly divided among both players. If one of the players chooses to SPLIT, but the other chooses the STEAL ball, the player who chose STEAL will steal all the money, and the player who picked SPLIT will go home with nothing. However, if both players are greedy and choose to STEAL, both players will receive nothing.
My supervisor thought this would be a more interesting game than the previously implemented investment game. The possible choices are a lot clearer, and STEALing has a more negative connotation, so players are less likely to STEAL, even though it can give you the largest profit. The rules as stated above do not completely fit the definition of a Prisoner's Dilemma, however, so we changed it slightly so that when both participants choose to STEAL, they will still receive a very small reward - satisfying the Prisoner's Dilemma requirements.
After performing some JavaScript and CSS magic, I managed to simulate some balls that looked like they could open and close and the game looked like the example image shown below.
More experiments were set up, and I ran about 50 more people through this new experiment, which means I have a LOT more data to look through and analyse... I've been working on a custom tool to help me with that, since all of the game events are stored in a database, and the only way to display those events in a clear manner is with a custom-made application.
The goal of this video analyzing tool is to display the two participants playing with/against each other, with a slider below the videos to indicate the current time. Underneath that slider are some markers for the different events that occur during play. One of the earliest prototypes of this tool can be seen below, this did not yet have video for the opponent, but this expression occurred right after losing an attempted bluff.
I expected that synchronizing the video of both participants would be relatively easy, since every recorded frame and every game event is timestamped. However, this timestamp is created by using the client's local time, since this is the time the video frame is created and this makes sure that any lag from sending the frame to the server can be ignored, so simply comparing these timestamps should give me the precise time each frame and event occurred.
I was wrong. I was very wrong...
