Experience the Prisoner's Dilemma: a game-based learning tool

Abstract

New times require higher education to adapt and seek new ways of teaching and transmitting knowledge. The study of human cooperation is a scientific field that continues to intrigue scientists from many disciplines, including scientists working in Operations Research. Game theory is then a discipline that appears as part of the curriculum of engineering degrees. This paper introduces a tool designed for studying and teaching the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game, allowing students to learn through hands-on gameplay. This tool not only presents a simulator, but also allows the student to participate in a behavioural economics experiment as if they were taking part in reality. Together with the tool we present a set of experiments that can be used in the class to show different phenomena and cooperation outcomes as a function of the population strategies during the game. The tool is available for download online at the link that accompanies this paper.