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This is 1/3 of this month's Q&A. Folks in the 🔵 and 🟣 tiers will get the opportunity to ask new questions in the last week of the month. The first video this month will be free to the public, partly to help market the Patreon, but also because Shen's question felt like a very broadly applicable one rather than something more project-specific.

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October Patreon Q&A 1/3: Counter-Design for Degenerate Strategies

This is 1/3 of this month's Q&A - videos which are usually only available to paid subscribers over on https://www.patreon.com/indiegameclinic. Folks in the 🔵 and 🟣 tiers get the opportunity to ask new questions in the last week of the month, and everyone else sees the response. This is a one-off free video from the Q&A series to promote the IGC Patreon, and because the topic covered is quite general and relevant to a lot of the channel's viewers.

Comments

Ignacy

Where "degenerate strategy" term comes from? I always used "dominant strategy" from game theory, it always read very clear to me because of how the name implies its literal gravity that ends up pulling in every player wether smart or not. Ofc in game theory there is rationality assumption, but in design it's easy to understand in a specific case that "well, maybe the actual dominant strategy is this one, the desired one, but players clearly behave like this other is a dominant one". It's a suprisingly common problem actually, but it makes it easier to solve I guess. Using the term "dominant strategy" also helps me remember that it's not bad to have one, every game has one, it's just my goal to make the dominant strategy one that is the most interesting one, and while being the easiest and most obvious one to follow, it's still challenging.

Electric Llama

I think "degenerate strategy" is just a short hand for an uninteresting dominant strategy, or one that violates the spirit of the game. A "dominant strategy" isn't necessarily bad, as you point out, but a "degenerate strategy" is.