Classroom · Game Theory
Two cars, one lane, and no good way to win.
Two drivers close on a single-track lane. Pull into the verge and the whole depot hears about it; hold the middle and hope the other one doesn't. Your class plays it in pairs, twice — the second time with somebody in the passenger seat.
- In pairs
- About 30 min
- 2 acts
A practice run with fictional students. No real classroom or join code is created.
Try an answer on the phone. Lead the lesson from the screen.
On their phone
You are presenting
Setting up the room…
Lesson deck
Teach it as a ready-made lesson
Hook, how it works, the live game and takeaways. Edit anything.
Who blinks first?
A ready-to-teach lesson deck: a hook, how it works, the live game and takeaways for the debrief.
6 slides · 1 activity
What it teaches
Chicken is the anti-coordination game: the one thing the pair must not do is the same thing. There is no dominant strategy — the best answer to aggression is to yield and the best answer to yielding is aggression — so the game has two equilibria, each of them lopsided, and no principled way to pick between them. Students feel the difference from the prisoner's dilemma immediately: there, mutual defection was merely bad; here, it is the worst cell on the board.
- Anti-coordination
- Nash equilibrium
- Mixed strategies
Debrief, while the boards are still up
- 01
What made backing down feel expensive — and who actually lost more?
- 02
Round two put someone in the passenger seat. Did higher stakes make the room safer or braver?
- 03
If you could have committed publicly before the round — thrown away your steering wheel — would it have helped you?
How it works
- 01
Add it to your library
Sign up free and pull the activity from Decka's built-in classroom catalog — one click copies it into your own library, ready to run from Decka or inside PowerPoint.
- 02
Students join by QR
Everyone scans from the projector and plays in their phone's browser. No app, no account, nothing to install.
- 03
You run the room
You move the activity phase by phase: collection closes, the boards resolve on the big screen, and the debrief happens while the results are still up.
What is the chicken game in game theory?
Chicken is the model game theory reaches for when the catastrophe is mutual and the contest is over who blinks: stand-offs, brinkmanship, two firms daring each other into a price war neither can afford. Its structure is the inversion of the prisoner's dilemma. There, one choice dominates and drags both players to a bad equilibrium; here, no choice dominates at all — mutual aggression is the worst outcome for both, so each equilibrium has exactly one driver swerving and one sailing through.
That asymmetry is why it needs to be played rather than described. On paper, "two equilibria, ranked oppositely by the two players" is a sentence. In the room, it is your phone asking whether you hold the middle of the lane, the projector about to tell everyone what you chose, and the knowledge that the person opposite is looking at exactly the same screen. The second round raises the price of pride — there is a passenger now — and the class gets to see whether higher stakes produced caution or commitment.
FAQ
Chicken game questions, answered
How is this different from the prisoner's dilemma?
In the dilemma, defecting dominates: it is your best move whatever your partner does, and the trap is that both of you know it. In chicken nothing dominates — the best reply to holding the middle is to pull over, and the best reply to pulling over is to hold. The dilemma has one equilibrium and it is bad; chicken has two and they disagree about who wins.
What changes in the second round?
The scenario changes the stakes: the second run is priced with somebody in the passenger seat, so a collision costs more than pride. The class plays the same structure at a different price, which is exactly the comparison a debrief wants on the board.
How long does it take?
Two quick rounds; the saved default is shown under the headline as "About N min", and every timer is a setting you control before you run it.
Do students need an app or an account?
No. Students scan a QR code from the projector (or open a link) and play in their phone's browser. Nothing to install and nothing to sign up for.
Does it work in PowerPoint or Google Slides?
In PowerPoint, yes: open the Decka add-in on a slide and choose the Classroom tile. Google Slides is not supported yet; there you present from Decka itself. Students play from their phones either way.
How many students can play at once?
Up to 50 participants per live activity on the free plan, 150 on Pro, and 300 on Badass.
More game theory games to run live
- Prisoner's dilemma — two suspects, separate rooms
- Twenty coins, take it or leave it
- The stag hunt — one day, two ways to spend it
- Battle of the sexes — one evening, two plans
- Ten rounds in the pot
- Rock, paper, scissors — two rivals and a contract
- Matching pennies — the game where you want opposite things
- All game theory activities
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