Talk:Coordination game

Removed redirect/Started entry
Prior to my edit this entry redirected to Nash equilibrium. Although the entry had imporant things about coordination games, given their substantial discussion in the literature, I thought it appropriate to have a seperate entry. I posted a note on the Nash equilibrium talk page and received no objections. For the time being I have just copied the content from Nash equilibrium, but I intend to improve it, and I hope others will too. best, --Kzollman 00:43, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

Merge Coordination game and Battle of the sexes (game theory)
The general definition of coordination games is that all cells in the first diagonal are Nash equilibria. The game described here is strictly speaking a common interest coordination game. A number of other names exist, but they all define a c.i. game as the type where one NE Pareto-dominates the others. The battle of the sexes is a conflicting interest coordination game, and it would be more parsimonious to discuss the two in context. ~ trialsanderrors 00:00, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I object to the merge. My hope would be that eventually enough information is included regarding Battle of the sexes to warrant its own article.  This is consistent with other games for instance Stag hunt and the El Farol bar problem are a coordination games, but each has its own article.  --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 04:21, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, Stag hunt has a fairly strong independent literature in strategy revision to draw from. El Farol is a multiplayer mixed coord/crowding game, so there are stronger cases to be made that those should get their independent entries. The features of CI & BotS largely overlap, and it might be better to discuss their differences in context. ~ trialsanderrors 05:05, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm (weakly) in favour of merging. At the very least these two articles could do with some work, BoS to include some mention that it is a coordination game.  I'd say BoS 1 is the canonical example of a coordination game, and yet coorrdination games don't even get mentioned in the article.  Coordination game would really benefit from a comparision and contrast of the different examples of it's class.  Ok, now I'm happy with not merging, but I'm unhappy with the way that the members of this set of games are not compared in the Coordination game article.  I kind of doubt that BoS will acumulate much more as an article, because it only ever really serves as an example of coordination game solution and has little identity beyond that.  It's a short article, but I think it stands pretty much as it is now. Pete.Hurd 15:47, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, I have no problems if we do Coord games, with a general discussion of definition, then discuss common interest, Stag hunt and BotS briefly with a link to the main entries of SH and BotS. I agree that this needs a lot of cleanup, so I'm changing the tags. ~ trialsanderrors 19:14, 29 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with everything pete mentioned above. I noticed that I made this article a year ago and intended to do something with it.  The best laid plans...  Anyway, maybe I'll try to add a few things to it when I get some time. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 21:26, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Coordination dilemma

 * On Social sciences and modern economics it is knowed also as "coordination dilemma", that have social solutions (to realize mutual gains), like the institutionalization of standards. -- from 11 January 2007

I removed this passage because 1. It is poorly written, and 2. I don't quite understand what the point is here. For one, "modern economics" comprises more than "new institutional economics", for two NIE tends to operate from a Prisoners Dilemma setup (that's cooperation, not coordination). Adoption of technology standards is certainly a concern modeled by coordination games, but they're usually not called coordination dilemmas, and also only a tangential concern of NIE. I also can't find any sources that equate coordination dilemma with coordination game. Care to elaborate? ~ trialsanderrors 22:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Hello... sorry, is (~ 1 year!) late to review?
 * Correcting to On Social sciences and New institutional economics it is known also as "coordination problem", that have social solutions (to realize mutual gains), like the use of standards. Please, sorry my english, you can elaborate better?
 * For sources see the "seminal" one (others citate),
 * Edna Ullmann-Margalit, "The Emergence of Norms", Oxford Un. Press, 1977. Second press: Clarendon Press 1978.
 * Links on (ramdomic) citations examples:
 * http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0031-8108(198801)97%3A1%3C99%3ATEON%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0
 * http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9337.1989.tb00029.x?cookieSet=1&journalCode=raju
 * http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/cite.php?10+Duke+J.+Comp.+&+Int'l+L.+43#B275

I've done some cleanup and moved it closer to the introduction. This page needs more discussion of the types of social situations which coordination games are designed to model. --Rinconsoleao (talk) 08:32, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Dear Rinconsoleao, very good! PS: I adapted your contribution for Standardization... the coordination model play a central rule on "formulating standards" and explaining it. --Krauss (talk) 12:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Why are cell values in sample payoff matrix given as letters with A > B, D > C, a > c, d > b condition and not as numbers?
this seems like a pointlessly obscuring abstraction to me. This is a sample game, so why not give it some obvious sample numeric values? E.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_sexes_(game_theory) article uses sample numbers for explanation, it does not engage in this sort of obfuscation. 64.9.237.136 (talk) 17:06, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Because this is a class of games, of which Battle of the sexes is just an example. Tijfo098 (talk) 11:02, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Discoordination game
This def doesn't seem too standard; see. No many gb hits on it. Tijfo098 (talk) 10:48, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Searching for analyses / solutions of an instance of type coordination problem
Problem: is mostly taken from reddit.com/r/thebutton. There is a button and a countdown timer with 60 seconds left, at a given time there are a certain number of participants while the timer is not yet expired. Every participant can press the button once and the effect is resetting the timer to 60 seconds left. A press is 'registered' as a whole number, so only after 0 seconds, 1 second, 2 seconds, ...., 59 seconds. Assuming that all the participants read the same strategy but then does not communicate with each other, what are possible strategies to maximize the time period in which the timer is not expired (given a finite number of participants)?

I'm interested in possible solutions of this problem or similar problems, thanks to everyone. --Pier4r (talk) 13:24, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Ortmann's comment on this article
Dr. Ortmann has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Part of it is good, part of it is not so good. The latter pertains to the complete lack of discussion of empirical and experimental evidence (e.g., Devetag & Ortmann EE 2007 for a survey.)"

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Ortmann has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference 1: Bortolotti, Stefania, Giovanna Devetag, and Andreas Ortmann. "Group Incentives or Individual Incentives? A Real-Effort Weak-Link Experiment." (2012).


 * Reference 2: “Experiments in Solving Coordination Problems,” (with Giovanna Devetag), pp. 357 - 84 in J. Sell and M. Webster (eds.), Laboratory Experiments in the Social Sciences, Second Edition. Elsevier, 2014.


 * Reference 3: Devetag, Giovanna, and Andreas Ortmann. "When and why? A critical survey on coordination failure in the laboratory." Experimental economics 10.3 (2007): 331-344.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 14:37, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

This article need citations
A citation by tag  have origin (point where the reference was cited), but this article not show any one... The list of references not make sense without citations (and is near to mere advertising in a Wiki). --Krauss (talk) 21:44, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Row/Column player numbering
Is the consensus that the column player is generally understood to be player 1? I have seen opposite examples.

The visual cues on the 2x2 grid would actually favour the latter, because visualizing diagonal separations puts column player, with option labels on top, on the right side, i.e. as receiving the second payoff, and, more importantly, the row player with option labels on the left on the left side, i.e. as receiving the first payoff. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.248.218.89 (talk) 11:31, 11 March 2019 (UTC)