Cooperative vs. Non-Cooperative Games
Game theory divides interactions into two fundamental types based on whether players share goals and can make binding agreements.
Cooperative Games
Players on the same side: shared goals, freely exchanged resources and information, mutual benefit actively pursued. Examples: teammates in a sport, business partners, roommates (in theory), international alliances.
Strategy in cooperative games is about coordination — how to divide effort, share information, and allocate gains fairly. Conflict exists but it's internal (how to split the pie) rather than external (whether to fight over it).
Non-Cooperative Games
Players act independently in their own interest, potentially at the expense of others. There are winners and losers. Examples: competing businesses, political rivals, arms races, split-or-steal game shows.
Non-cooperative games are far more prevalent in the world and generate the more interesting strategic problems — because each player must model what others will do without knowing their choices in advance.
The prisoners-dilemma is a non-cooperative game. So is most of market competition, negotiation, and geopolitics.
The Important Subtlety
The same people can be in both types simultaneously. Teammates cooperate internally but compete non-cooperatively against other teams. Business partners cooperate on their shared venture but compete with each other's personal interests. Real situations layer both structures.
And non-cooperative games can produce cooperative outcomes — through iterated-games, reputation, and strategies like tit-for-tat. The game type describes the structure, not the inevitable outcome.
Connections
- prisoners-dilemma — the canonical non-cooperative game
- iterated-games — how repeated non-cooperative interactions can produce cooperative behavior
- tit-for-tat — the strategy that extracts cooperative outcomes from a non-cooperative structure