# Intro to Coordination Game Design
> UI369

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**What is the formal definition of a Game?**

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"a game is a problem-solving activity"

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"a game is a problem-solving activity *approached with a playful attitude*"

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"a game is an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle toward a goal." - Greg Costikyan

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“She got game”
“They got gamed”
“Bring your A game”
"Game recognize game"
“You think this is a game?”.

*Does your DAO got game?*

* Are we playing a Coordination Game now?
* Is everyone here willfully?
* What is our goal?
* Distribute 100 HAUS to "winners"
* Distribute DAOhaus BirthDay POAP & DAOcember NFTs to top participants
* Produce a Miro board that conveys this workshop's Coordination Game output.
* What kind of conflict will there be?
* Competition for the 100 HAUS?
* Competition for the NFTs
* Moloch! Inattention? Sabotage?
* What are the rules?
* For each of 10 questions, plus 2 bonus rounds:
* Introduce the topic, ask the Question
* Invite players to produce an insightful note
* Reward if yours matches another player's -or-
* Reward if it is different from anybody else
* How do we win, how do we lose?
* Winner has the most Reward tokens at the end
* Winner decides how much of their reward they will give to the other players
* That much is distroed to others proportionally according to reward tokens
* Allow players to signal how much they will distro if they win.
* What is the interaction?
* Questions are asked
* Questions are answered
* Reward Tokens are distributed
* What is the challenge?
* Paying attention
* Answering well in a way that is peer-approved
* Time limit
* What has endogynous value?
* Reward Tokens
* How are players engaged?
* Invited to answer questions
* Is it a closed, formal system?
* Rules of the game make it "Formal"
* It is closed in that it has a start and an end time
* The Reward NFTs extend outside of the container, revealing an entrypoint to the meta-container that is DAOhaus.

Questions:

* What is a Coordination Game?
* What is Coordination?
* What is a Game?
* What’s the difference between a System and a Game?
* All Games are Systems, but not all Systems are Games
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* What about that 100 HAUS you could win? Does that make this a game?

Greg Costykan and his 10 properties of games.
1) Games are entered willfully
* What’s an example of a real-world coordination game?
* What would you call a game that is not entered willfully?
*
1) Games have goals
* What's an example of an explicit goal?
* e.g. Monetary goal: We have given 1 million dollars to each of our 10 founders and an additional $10,000,000 distributed to our stakeholders, proportional to share.
* e.g. We’ve installed 5000 clean water sources in the top 5000 regions of the world that have water scarcity.
* What's an example of an implicit goal?

1) Games have conflict
* “In order to be able to think, you have to risk being offensive.” - Jordan Peterson
* Even in a collaborative game conflict can arise between a team and the challenge at hand

1) Games have rules
* Are the rules written or unwritten? Explicit or Implict?
* Concept of the “Container”
* Contracts that define containers w/clear rules
* Escrow services
* Retainers
* Smart Contracts

1) Games can be won or lost
* What are the win conditions of our current coordination game?
* If your business, DAO, club etc were a Coordination Game, what is your win condition?
* Reaching your goal(s)? (clear wins)
* Keeping up with expenses for 1 full year? (winning, but not won)
* What are the lose conditions?
* Running out of money?
* Everybody quits? Shut down by Authorities?
* Time is up?

1) Games are interactive
* How do we interact?
* Voice chat, video chat, discord, project management software
* DAO systems, voting mechanisms, treasury proposals
* Power & Tech Systems
* who has the keys to the kingdom?
* could you be captured?
* What systems protect your “keys to the kingdom”
* examples: Twitter password, website admin, bank account or LLC registrant, key contacts w/external organization

1) Games have challenge

1) Games can create their own internal (endogynous) value

1) Games engage players

1) Games are closed, formal systems
* Formal: the rules are ‘clearly’ defined - according to some standard that is up to us to consider.
* Closed: There are (formally defined) boundaries to the system.
* What is the boundary at the edge of your coordination game?
* How do you know when you are playing it and when you are not playing it?
* Thought exercise? Could there be a coordination game with boundaries so wide, you could be playing it all the time?
* Consider a few examples of existing large-scale coordi-nation ‘games’. What is an example of an existing "System" that might be a coordination game? The US Government? NATO? World Economic Forum?
* Assess a few existing real-world coordination ‘games’ against the 10 points of the definition
* Closed formal system - asks you what the rules are exactly?

Infinite vs Finite Games

Cover the theme of that book briefly. Infinite Game is composed of Finite Games. The goal of the Infinite Game is to continue to play.
Exercise: Go Meta: Posit that we, right now, are playing a coordination game.

What we know: We arrived at a certain time, we have a reasonable expectation of how each of us will participate in this endeavor, we have an idea of how long it will take. We are opted in. Does our current “coordination game” fit the definition of a game?
Conclusions from Coordination Games - Christopher Coyne:

What is a Coordination game? - Coordination games are a type of game that allows groups of individuals to work together toward a shared goal or desired outcome.
Important Properties of a Successful Coordination Game:

Formal standards: Rules that are codified by certain parties/rules about how parties are supposed to act, and/or
Social conventions: A regularity followed by people belonging to a group/a shared expectation of the correct way to behave
Who is Moloch?

Anti-coordination games
- El Farol Bar problem

Discoordination games
- hybrid of coordination/anti-coordination

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“Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!” - from Howl by Alan Ginsburg

"Earth could be fair, and all men glad and wise. Instead we have prisons, smokestacks, asylums. What sphinx of cement and aluminum breaks open their skulls and eats up their imagination?

And Ginsberg answers (in his poem Howl): Moloch does it." - Scott Alexander from Meditations on Moloch

Moloch. The God of Coordination Failure.

The invisible force that often prevents us from working together toward meaningful aims. That prevents us from coordinating a circumstance of prosperity & sovereignty for all.

Welcome to The Art of Coordination Game Design - When you design a game that gets results and people want to play (entered willfully) - you have defeated Moloch. For now.