ABSTRACT

Nobody can object that the players of a game in its technical sense are individual decision-makers1 who choose freely their strategy (or more generally their movements). In addition, they are supposed to be selfish maximizers for the sake of simplicity.2 Are such very broad assumptions sufficient to conclude that the original framework of game theory is no more than an extended and sophisticated, or at variance oversimplified (Spohn 1982), version of the standard individualistic paradigms of neoclassical economics? We do not think so. From the very beginning, and in spite of some misinterpreted statements, the scope of game theory is not to be found in the entities themselves (the decision-makers) with their individual characteristics (preferences, ability to maximize selfish utilities, etc.), but rather in the content of their relations during the interactive process, precisely labelled as the ‘game’. Several pieces of historical evidence show that the founders of game theory were aware of this novelty.