I wouldn’t be surprised if the name ‘the game’ was inspired by Game Theory and it’s classically referred to game The Prisoner’s Dilemma.
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GAME THEORY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory ‘Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences, most notably in economics, as well as in biology (particularly evolutionary biology and ecology), engineering, political science, international relations, computer science, social psychology, and philosophy. Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, or games, in which an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others (Myerson, 1991).’
‘Von Neumann's work in game theory culminated in the 1944 book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior by von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern. This foundational work contains the method for finding mutually consistent solutions for two-person zero-sum games. During this time period, work on game theory was primarily focused on cooperative game theory, which analyzes optimal strategies for groups of individuals, presuming that they can enforce agreements between them about proper strategies.’
‘In 1950, the first discussion of the prisoner's dilemma appeared, and an experiment was undertaken on this game at the RAND corporation.’
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THE PRISONER’S DILEMMA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma ‘The prisoner's dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory that demonstrates why two people might not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence payoffs and gave it the "prisoner's dilemma" name (Poundstone, 1992).
A classic example of the prisoner's dilemma (PD) is presented as follows:
“Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?”
If we assume that each player cares only about minimizing his or her own time in jail, then the prisoner's dilemma forms a non-zero-sum game in which two players may each either cooperate with or defect from (betray) the other player. In this game, as in most game theory, the only concern of each individual player (prisoner) is maximizing his or her own payoff, without any concern for the other player's payoff.’…
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Anyways there’s quite a lot on the subject, but that’s my hunch, as far as where the name derived from. As far as the application of this setting goes I believe that many influences had been developing for some time previously, and I doubt Deiderich himself played much part in the overall creation of ‘the game’. I think he was important simply because he was running the perfect model of the type of organization, Synanon, in which to experiment with group dynamics in ways unfeasible in other areas of society. Synanon was relatively miniscule when compared to many larger interests concerned with sociology, social psychology, which were developing exponentially prior to Synanon. My guess is Deiderich did not find inspiration, inspiration found him.