| Your choice | Fen hunts stag | Fen hunts hare |
|---|---|---|
| you hunt stag | 4 · 4the feast | 0 · 3alone in the snow |
| you hunt hare | 3 · 0fed, but she waited | 3 · 3two small dinners |
Fen
The first morning. Fen is watching you. Hunt the stag and hope she comes, or take a hare: alone, and sure. Choose in the picture, or with the buttons below.
As a table
What just happened
Notice the arithmetic of her heart: a morning you showed up moved her a little; one no-show cut her confidence nearly in half. Trust is built in deposits and lost in withdrawals, and the exchange rate is brutal — which you already knew, from being a person.
Both ways of spending a winter are stable. Hunting together, neither of you gains by switching; hunting hares, neither gains by switching alone. Game theorists call the feast payoff-dominant and the hares risk-dominant: the better place to be, and the safer one. Assurance is what carries two strangers from the second to the first.
The prisoner’s dilemma gets the headlines, but most human–machine coordination is a stag hunt: both sides prefer the cooperative outcome and hesitate only because they cannot be sure of each other. The remedy is not punishment but assurance — track records, credible signals, showing up in the snow. That is the working half of bilateral alignment.
More play on the Playground · the sibling game: The Trust Game