The social experiment

As anyone who's played this game over the last week will be aware, the player experience as a solo versus playing with threes has a crucial difference. Something about the design is leading players in solos to have moments, many and often, where they often sacrifice optimising their run to help another person, in one way or another. (Threes is cracked and so fun too).

Two spaces seem to have evolved, where people can play no holds barred pvp in one, and then antithetical to the usual extraction game method, players are - against their self interest - trusting and supporting themselves in another.

We all know this is a silly virtual space but it should be remarked on that so many people are getting this much joy from the experience of helping out a fellow person when it might be in their self interest not to.

So we should look at why we don't when we're in a group setting. Maybe groups struggle to trust one another bc everyone has to weigh up a scaling chance of betrayal, going higher with each person? I don't know I'm not smart. But I reckon this is worth remembering in real life situations - I probably would help the raider I just met get the next train to spain, so why am I getting told by The Daily Arc that they're all out to get me.