Sometimes when we fight each other for weapons, we end up shooting ourselves in the foot. What do games like Day Z teach us about ourselves, and how we can strive to be better?

"As long as there are two people left on the planet, someone is gonna want someone dead." - The Sniper

My thoughts when supermarkets started getting raided...

God, this aged perfectly.

8:03 remember PUBG when u need ammo but your friend says he doesn't have any and when he's dead, u loot him and sees that ammo u need like 200x bullets and he doesn't have the gun for that ammo and you unfriend him for good

Have you ever heard the tragedy of -darth plagueis "the wise"- the common?

I was actually on a server for DayZ where all the clan leaders made a pact and divided up the map with the military sites and large cities as neutral. We'd check with each other before going in to make sure there was no friendly fire. We also assisted new comers to the server and earned them not to loot other player bases. If they complied they got help and maybe an invite into a clan. If they stole everyone ganged up on them and drove them off the server. If people got bored clans would arrange skirmishes. If there was an accidental fight clans leaders worked it out. It was slit if fun. The admin added in several NPC factions in large groups and upped the zombies. There was a trade post eith NPC sellers and where players coyld make trade deals and trade in a protected space and the admins played as UN peacekeepers. It was awesome. Then a KZfaq got wind of the server and came in with his fan boys and wrecked the community. He ran amok until the community figured him out and then when he got his add kicked so bad he couldn't get good footage he accused the community of cheating. So the community combined to run him off. He pulled his support of the server and defamed it online. The admin shut if down. This was of course the DayZ mod with Epoch not the crappy stand alone.

Weird unrelated side-note to the artists here, but I love how whenever you say "heck" a snake shows up. It's a nice easter egg in these videos.

7:30 I understand its supposed to be a spiral of "Me" but my dumb internet brain can only see a ton of Meme's

I just wanted a can of beans - instead I got 8mm chunk of lead implanted in the skull. Did not taste the same.

DayZ is a bad example to use to make this point, because there's very little reward or impetus for cooperation in that specific game. The zombies in DayZ never "end", they will always respawn. They reward very little if anything for killing them, and consume your resources for the attempt. They've always been a janky, badly-programmed mess that are not fun to fight, which is why most players avoid fighting them except in self-defense. Nobody "hunts" zombies in DayZ as an active effort because it's a pointless thing to do. You will never "clear out" a town, you will never retake a settlement, there's no incentive to cooperation in DayZ beyond your clan or your best mates versus other people doing the same. Loot respawns on every server reload, so there isn't actually dwindling resources, and the resources that do exist in the game only really exist for the purpose of killing other players because there isn't really anything else to DO in that game besides kill people, farm pumpkins or read Moby Dick.

7:28 Uhm,, small correction: Germany has some of the highest electricity prices in all of Europe, They are nearly twice as high as those in France, for example.

Greetings from Germany: We shut down our nuclear reactors in reaction to the disaster in Japan. We do produce a lot of wind and solar energy. But we are burning a lot of dirty (brown) coal to make up the rest. So at the moment we put out way to much CO2.

Props to the artists on this one. Once again, I was immensely amused by some of the visuals. I love that EC now has its own stash of memes to draw upon. And that Stardew Valley reference? Noice.

Simple solution : in games with survival make the zombie threat big enough to actually make people feel like thier is a Choice to make. Zombies in day are no threat therefore no choice. I guarantee if you spawn people in groups in a house together with zombies pouring in people will work together. The threat has to be big enough that even ONE IDIOT knows he won't survive by himself. And maybe not even with a group......

Players don't just suddenly not trust anybody, there is actually reason behind this (you guys even made a video on this called bartle's taxonomy I think). It is because of the killers that the players are forced to not trust anybody because killers are known to betray and kill for their amusement and anybody could be killers so in the end you could say that the creators of this game knew that people were going to betray and kill each other (and that is the only thing we were going to do) in making this huge landmark of a game. It's not that people don't want to work with each other it is actually the complete opposite of that. People really do want to work with each other. Its just this idea that the killer will come out and stab you in the back.

The renewable energy part is not quite correct. Greetings from germany. Nice videos tho

Does this means the solution to the Tragedy of the Commons will sit in early access for 4+ years?

DayZ has zombies?

I feel like the tragedy of the commons doesn't work in the context of Day-Z. In Day-Z alot of the fun comes from messing with other people.

I love that you actually used and explained the term "tragedy of the commons" correctly.

I like the snek that appears every time you say "heck"

The problem with this example is that almost nobody plays dayzto surivive for as long as possible. They play it to kill other players, build bases and get cool loot. Killing other players is the end not the means.

I am constantly impressed at how deep this channel is in terms of encouraging viewers to engage in the big picture, in the community of our world. So so good!

You see I always fall for this trap, because I know someone will always fall for the trap, I just want a head start.

As a Sociology student who has studied the Tragedy of the Commons, I'm impressed. Usually when people talk about it they just go to "and that's why everything should be privatized", despite the fact that this just creates the problem on a larger scale as the owners do things that are beneficial for themselves short-term and do not benefit either the long-term viability of the Earth or the people who pay to use that resource. The options you mentioned at the end- smaller, democratic agreements and incentives for good behavior- are much more plausible long-term options.

So... what you are saying is... the means of production... should belong to the citizenry who generate and operate it for the collective good...... Extra Credits confirmed comrades

very applicable right now.

I think you're forgetting one absolute flaw in this: I WANT the tragedy of commons, I WANT to have "dwindle down to the last man" scenario. This to me, is immensely fun.

Recently played Nicky Case's game "The Evolution of Trust": ncase.me/trust/ Seems relevant to the topic.

I'm sorry to disapoint you, but we germans actually buy nuclear energy from France.. (and they don't have nearly as many regulations as we do! Politics....)

Co-op is just sooo important in so many situations! Just think about how ants work

This hits different in the Corona era

Nuclear energy isn't the boogeyman everyone makes it out to be, though. As long as you build the plant on a geologically stable area (e.g. NOT JAPAN), and make sure the operation staff are reasonably competent (e.g. NOT CHERNOBYL), it's a fantastic low-polluting, long-lasting alternative to fossil fuels, AND provides much more energy output for much less space and cost than green energy production.

Another tragedy of the commons example: The houses that leave a bowl of candy out on Halloween. Those giant bowls are usually empty in less than an hour 😩

Ooooh, I can see this problem on KZfaq hehe Great video as aways guys :D

“Remember the tragedy of the commons, Remember DayZ” It sounds like the beginning of a poem.

I love the cows, I love how EC draws animals. The silly houses from EH are the best part of EH.

I’d like to point out that the original tragedy of the commons example was almost entirely fabricated by Britain’s nobility to seize common land for themselves. In almost every community the common land worked out great because there was trust and community within the villages. Trashed of the Commons only comes into effect when there isn’t trust and where maximizing personal profit is the biggest goal.

3:31 Is that? No it can't be shane from star dew valley. I didn't think you would use those characters thx

6:37 Cheeky Easter egg you got there

The mod (now standalone release on Steam) "No more room in hell" is a pretty fantastic example of this concept, your character can just grab EVERYTHING he sees and try to solo it all but that never EVER works, meanwhile if you are considerate of the needs of the group and share the gear fairly your group (with You in it) is almost guaranteed to survive.

Nuclear in Germany is being phased out, despite energy shortages, which have to be compensated for with expensive foreign electricity. You can't just turn off all the power plants that produce power consistently, and rely on renewable energy sources which are unpredictable, or only work during daytime. We are indirectly incentivizing nuclear power plants in neighboring countries with potentially way less stringent safety regulations. Not to mention we still have nuclear waste deposits in Germany that are still being delivered to, from France for example, if I remember correctly. Tl;dr: We just buy nuclear power from elsewhere.

I totally disagree, but you will prob not read this: DayZ had/has absolutely no reason to co-op. None at all. Resources respawn, so it is not like loot become that scarce because of player, the loot is just scarce in general promoting/forcing to kill strangers. There are nothing else to do in DayZ than eat, walk and find guns. So the only gameplay possible is gunfights, which is why people KoS not due to T of Commons. Loot becomes even more vital with the fact that you can build absolutely ZERO objects; No base, no crate, no locker or anything to store. There is no reason to coop in DayZ, besides with your friends. Strangers are useless and the only coop you can have is a chat over the mic. People does not just share equally in real life due to friendship. We are group animals and cooperation makes survivability easier, than if you ate all yourself and let the colony starve. Nature at its finest. This is not the case in DayZ. Sharing makes YOUR chances to survive lower, while hoarding increases it. Nice idea, but you should have picked another game to relate to. DayZ simply does not have the content to promote anything else than KoS.

The issue with "the tragedy of the common" is that it became an example without it ever having happened(literally- as in we have no written record of it ever having happened in England) the needs of the community check the forces of individuals fairly effectively.

Dear extra credits, I understand that the use of DayZ in this scenario of PvP shooting-yourself-in-the-foot. That being said, many survival games revolve around PvP as a central mechanic, to put humans against each other. If a game is purely focused around the common enemy, the undead, there would be no PvP, as it would be useless. But it is not, and having PvP can actually entise players to work together against a bigger threat of other humans(in a perfect scenario that is, which I have actually been apart of myself) If you ever get around to seeing my comment, take a look at what else we can learn learn from survival games like DayZ 1) The self vs. The group vs. The everyone 2) How humans interact when truly given the choice to kill everyone 3) PvP vs. PvE, pros and cons 4) Primal instinct vs. Methodical thought, which will get you further 5) How realistic is too realistic in survival game scenarios That's all I got for now, but I'll be back. Cya!

but.. why do we want to stop this in games? Part of what makes DayZ so great is the fact that this phenomena exists at all. If it didn't, the game would be outright much less fun. If anything, having a platform to indulge in this kind of behaviour is pretty cathartic, because we know we can't be that selfish in real life, and it serves to highlight how terrible that kind of action is.

Extra Credits: everyone share! Hungry Games:

In 2020, replace every reference to guns and ammo with toilet paper.

A major problem with bringing the long term goal to these games is it’s kinda boring. With games like DayZ and Rust, getting resources is kinda boring, and it doesn’t have the same creative liberty as Minecraft or Terraria. Yeah, it’s safer to have the server work together, but it gets kinda boring. It’s fun when niceness is the exception, not the rule.

If we want to talk about systems of trust, we've GOT to talk about EVE Online. Nothing else demands cooperation and yet promotes betrayal like EVE.

The Klingons have a perfect saying for this "only a fool fights in a burning building" if you're fighting each other despite the encroaching death no one will win

Nuclear power is the answer especially a thorium reactor

The Hecknomancer Snake returns! Did you see it?

All you say is true. For I have experienced everything from Cannibal Cults, to bandit groups, to The Brotherhood of Steel, To The Drifters, to militaristic groups, and dictators, to safehouseses and taxi services. Such is the joy of DayZ -John TAN (Captain of The TAN Army stationed in Zub Castle)

Extra Credits has to be one of my favorite educational-gaming channels. :D

Hahahaha "private companies using resources sustainably" hahahaha

gotta say dayz is a bad example, the goal of dayz is not to beat the zombie apocalypse. in fact there is no goal to the game. so why should players work together if there is nothing to achieve or to be gained form cooperation. the only reason players work together is because they can overpower other players, and thats what they did. in games where there is a global goal for players to achieve, players usually work together remarkably well. even in games like rust or age of conan players dont fight other players because they couldn't achieve a goal on their own, they just want to achieve it faster plus fighting other players is also a lot more exciting then fighting an AI for hours. i understand your theory and what you are trying to say, but the examples you used where very poorly chosen/analysed. it feels like you just wanted something to confirm your theory and didn't bother looking into why players behave as they do in those games.

When I played borderlands 2 with my cousin, this happened to me more or less. He always rushed through every area to get all the gear he could get his hands on. So, in order to keep from missing out on all the loot, I started doing the same. I would rush through and take as much as my inventory would allow because I had this mindset of "if I don't take it all, hell take it all." So in the end we kept reinforcing each others reasoning for running in and taking all we could carry.

Elinor Ostrom actually proved that the tragedy of the commons can be avoided without requiring top-down regulation. For this she became the first woman to win the Nobel prize in Economics. Granted, she proved the tragedy of the commons as avoidable only if eight conditions were met, such as fast and fair conflict resolution and effective monitoring, which is probably why the adage appears true in most player groups in DayZ (although on that note I'd love to see a metagame evolve attempting to utilise her methods within a DayZ server), but her work provides a fascinating insight on how these sorts of widely held truisms on the nature of human behaviour can be dispelled by implementing systems and evaluating the factors in place when such a system does fail or succeed. I'd recommend anyone who enjoyed this video to research Ostrom and her principles for common-pool research as it makes for a really valuable addendum to the outlining of the tragedy of the commons as explained here. Hopefully one day we'll see a part two covering Ostrom's work and how it can be or has been applied in games.

oh man, this is definitely one of the best educational channels out there! I learn sooo much from watching all of the videos and a lot of them are applicable in real life, keep up the good work EC team!

Sorry, but this time you guys have over-thought the topic so much that you're creating issues that don't exist. The *real* problem with DayZ is that the "threat" of the zeds is non-existent. There's just so few zeds, and they're so incredibly easy to deal with in so many different ways. This makes PvE gameplay incredibly dull and tedious, which naturally incentivizes investment in the PvP gameplay.

In single players you tend to fight the NPC so they are predictable but in online games you play against other experts or thats what youll think so youll use everything because they can also use their everything

My roommate did this beautifully in Breath of the Wild. The legendary weapons from the champions, the master sword and the hylian shield were all mounted on the walls of his homestead until he was going against Ganon. He also knew that while they broke easily, oftentimes the baddies had really decent gear lying around. I even recall him losing a torch during a temple, so he used a Bokoblin club to finish it. I imagine a multiplayer mode in BotW would do this same thing.

Thought this was going to be a video on the tragedy of DayZ's development. :P

Ironically, the best example of "the commons" being protected by community cooperation is... the commons. English commons were highly effective at being sustainable, but was destroyed when landowners gained control over the commons. As some others here have stated, corporations have regularly employed "tragedy of the commons" arguments to privatize land use and, caring very little for an individual scrap of land in a large landholding structure, have no problem being unsustainable. Privatization is therefore generally a threat to the long-term future of common resources. In short, small communal land use control is generally quite effective and sustainable. Those social controls work well in a community where the impact of irresponsible land use is easily seen, and where the loss of common resources would be a major loss to all who use it (true from pasture lands to fishing grounds). In small environments, extensive regulation and control (such as dedicated policing or laws) are replaced by the local social pressures to conform to standards of behavior, and the recognition of (and concern for) consequences to neighbors and family if the resources are squandered. But, as Extra Credits rightly points out, humans are rather bad at taking long-term and large-scale perspectives, and the larger the system gets, the more just taking that little bit extra sounds reasonable and "harmless." This is reflected in the modern world in lots of ways, such as people groaning about or shirking paying taxes (not seeing that these resources maintain roads and services that we all depend on and benefit from), or such as global climate change (one person won't change the climate at all appreciably, but there's 7.6 billion of us, so...). One of the problems I see games suffering from is that there are no consequences for bad behavior. In most survival games, anything can be built or destroyed in moments, so breaking rules (and things) costs you little to actually do, and often can be easily repaired (so the cost of it happening in return is minimal). Additionally, the cost to the player to misbehave also remains minimal. Social ostracism works great when you are trapped in a community, but a player can often shift from game to game with minimal consequences, so there is often little need to play nice. Games seem to need some mechanism to enforce rules and restrictions - costs to make cooperation more valuable than competition. For instance, making multiplayer survival games require more cooperation to progress or to destroy said works (so even playing destructive PVP requires cooperation to function), or in general focusing on making the PVE experience the most rewarding part of gameplay. Finally, I feel that a non-insignificant number of people get on games to play out their worst instincts safely and without consequence (and I'm glad that they do it on-screen rather than in-person), but this means that people often do not come to the game looking to play as their better selves.

dayz is basically a walking simulator that teaches you cyrillic. that being said, even in dayz people cooperate trough the chat. "heard shooting in elektro" "found mosin in pusta" "hostile heli in gorka" etc.

I can't believe this actually happened irl with toilet paper

And then, when there is a lull in energy consumption in Germany, they just dump all of it on neighboring countries with little regard for their power grids, often causing localized blackouts. Well, what a system! It's just large scale enough that you failed to see all the resources required to keep it working, which disappoints me.

one week later *Extra Credits advocates communist revolution*

Germany isn’t a good example when their carbon footprint is higher now due to the energy sources being extremely inefficient and requiring coal plants to be turned back on (the dirtiest moment in time) to make up for shortages, and pay other countries to take their power when too much is produced and threatens to destroy the power grid

What an awesome channel. I love you guys. Not only is the content informative, you guys are trying to implement it on a real-world scale. I admire that. Plus, your artist kicks ass. 7:26 got me lol

Not exploiting all for short-term personal gain? Get out of my yard pinko!

I'm usually 100% in agreement with this channel but they got it completely wrong here in at least one aspect. Dayz isn't about Us vs. The Zombies, it's about everyone vs. everyone else and the zombies/survival is a secondary thing. It's a pvp game and that's what drives the gameplay to be so enjoyable and fun. If everyone worked together there would be NOTHING to do except shoot zombies that respawn infinitely, which are not a real threat to the player.

One way of making things easier for teamwork and a real sensitive toward survival as a group is to implement an idea that the others are required to survive. For example, in Dayz, having some kind of classes like jobs which involves the ability to use items that those who don't have that level of skills either can use or simply doesn't have any beneficial effects. Make it so that the players can't find ways to counter the requirement of those precious skills. For example, in Dayz, if you were to add a skill system like this: • Soldier: Gain high accuracy rate. Can use explosives. Then make the guns relatively bad in accuracy over more than 50m when not a soldier. • Doctor: Able to fully heal. Double the healing effect when using healing items. Faster use of healing items. Then make it so that it's impossible for anyone except those to fully heal anybody and make it so that self-healing is slow as hell. • Cook: Able to fully cook food. Double the restoration values of cooked food. Can turn low quality food into higher quality food. Then make the food found around as really last resort to be eaten as is. This make other classes wishing they have a cook to raise the "value" of their stuff. Make it so that cooked food spoil after a short while. • Construction Worker: Able to set traps and build higher quality walls and fortifications. Basically, a car could destroy most of the stuff build by other classes. This one make it possible to resist even a tank, with enough resources. • Engineer: Only one able to fix vehicles pass the the 50% durability. Fix vehicle a lot faster. Can "upgrade" vehicle with maintenance which reduce the usage of fuel and raise the speed capacity (or whatever mobile stats) of the vehicles. • Teacher: Can do many things, but cannot do high skills actions. When close to another player who does the action, the action is done faster by up to 25%. I could go on and on with more job/skills like stuff, but that gives an idea. While one player could use something like the Soldier and kill lots of players who wouldn't be soldier, the fact remains that the said soldier would end up unable to survive due to the aspect of the game that doesn't involve using guns or explosive. To avoid the Tragedy of the Commons, you got to give a meaning to people to group together and enhance that meaning with benefits. There's the saying "You're never better served than by yourself." which is basically what is promoted in DayZ. There's a counter argument which is "Then what would you do if you can't be served by yourself?" The PVP games that has survived the most involves this principle where each players can't do everything, but has to work together to overcomes the stuff thrown at them. Take Overwatch for example. It's a pure PvP game, but Teamwork is crucial because each player can't take the same character and each characters can't fill every roles.

Corona virus: hello world World: HOARD THE TOILET PAPER!!

I live in Germany, we actually built solar panels on our roof and are selling the power for a higher price than the power we buy for normal usage. But the incentives and therefore the prices dropped quite a bit, so if you build solar panels now you're selling for less, so you have to try to use the energy yourself and probably even storing it

Ok, now do one about the megalixer effect. Where an item is so good it never gets used.

Great video! Really inspiring! Now please excuse me, I've to buy stockpiles of noodles and toilet paper in the grocery store, before my neighbours do. (Written in France in march 2020)

That Earthbound remix in the credits is fire. Also, this video really hits the nail on the head and puts to words an unspeakable something that I've been noticing a lot in the zombie genre. Thanks for posting.

Managing resources? You mean hoarding every item/potion and like never ever using it up in case a really tough battle comes?

Anyone who has played D&D already knows about sharing incentives when it's time to divide up the treasure... assuming your paladin could keep the thief from being selfish.

An observation and a few solutions: Observation: DayZ Stranger is essentially a game of Prisoner's Dilemma. Cooperation yields best results (in terms of zombie survival, not fun). Being first to betray is the second best. Mutual attack is third. The worst possible option is choosing to trust when the other person chooses betrayal. So we get the same sorts of solutions. Iterative trust rating being the traditional option. Reputation scores and the like are also options. A more interesting option would be the "pie is not finite" option. It radically changes all the assumptions. However, this might not be in keeping with a survival game, where the assumptions of creation and growth are that such things don't happen.

Admittedly, the Germany thing didn't age well (phasing out nuclear was a terrible mistake), but everything else still checks out in 2023.

Long story short, people who kill on sight in survival games are always the problem.

About Germany : They may be phasing their Nuclear out, but they are importing Nuclear-produced electricity from France in mass to compensate. Being the leader of green energy is very easy when all your "dirty" energy is produced in another country and thus "doesn't count".

For anyone interested, Common Land still exists in the UK. If you live in a rural (or even semi-rural) location, it's not too uncommon to see sheep grazing on the green spaces on the edges of town. Special gates need to sometimes be installed across roads to stop herds from wandering into residential areas and eating out of flowerbeds. Cows tend not to be so common. I guess someone decided that cattle and modern traffic just don't get along very well.

The Prisoner's Dilemma is like a mini simplified version of the Tragedy of the Commons.

Just a heads up: You state that paying law enforcement is a disadvantage of introducing laws to prevent the tragedy of the commons. While this is true, it's also a disadvantage of privatising land: this time, the private landowner must pay their own security guards to do the same job (or - as in modern western economies - the state pays law enforcement through taxation). Since the landowner invariably wants to make money (why else would one bother administrating such a project?), this cost just gets placed upon everybody else as a component of the land lease - meaning the overall cost of privatising land is generally higher than socialising it. Whichever perspective you take, preventing tragedy of the commons amongst an arbitrarily large population (anarchism doesn't work in a community of any substantial number of individuals due to lack of trust) NECESSARILY requires the paying of law enforcement in one way or another.

7:00 I....don't think Germany is a good example here. Do some mild googling and you'll see that they're having awful problems with brown outs and lack of baseload power

The best example of people embracing this lesson is Don't Starve Together where even total strangers just gravitate to cooperation organically. It barely even has to be asked and people get resources shared to start building bases and work on gathering resources to survive winter on new seeds.

If I recall correctly, this was one of the principles the American Constitution was written around: "if all men were angels, no government would be necessary," to quote Madison in the Federalist Papers. The systems were shaped to make individuals' self-interest align with the common interest.

Who took the commons in Britain? The wealthy landowners. Some forests also used to be in the commons, and it was where people gathered their firewood. So, once the common people were thrown off the commons and the land ended up in the hands of the elite, the common people were squeezed for every last necessary of life and many people actually died for lack of basic resources that were at least partly provided by the commons before they were privatized. So maybe Neoliberal privatization of modern common resources might just end up in a capitalist squeeze, just like it always has.

There's one big problem with getting this to work. People in online games don't view other players as human. Makes it really hard to get people to care about other players

the 'tragedy of the commons' only occurs because of rentiers, the local lords. The villages all had careful rules on who used that land and how. The rentiers shut down the rules, dooming the land and its users.

I feel like this situation also has Prisoner's Dilemma vibes, where the logical best individual solution clashes with the logical best total solution, resulting in all involved getting stuck with either the worst individual or the worst total solution

Earthbound outro music YESSSSSSSS :D

5:05 *NO!* That is what *caused* the Tragedy of the Commons in the first place! Originally most land in England was common land. Over grazing became a serious problem when the very wealthy started to privatize land, they would still graze on common land and use their land for crops (or not at all even just to show off how wealthy they were).

I seem to remember the Tragedy of the Commons was the basis of one of the Saw movies- five people wake up in one of Jigsaw III's traps, and have to go through a series of traps to get through the exit, the only clue to victory is that they need to ignore their basic instincts. They sacrifice each other to the traps until there's only two guys left, but they're stuck in the final trap because the trap can't successfully be circumvented unless all five people worked together through the first four traps, which could easily have happened if they weren't so preoccupied with their own survival.

This came up when I was watching your Christmas Truce video, maybe the KZfaq recommendation algorithm is onto something.