If You Play Stupid Games, You Will Win Stupid Prizes
The first time I heard the term “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” was from Naval Ravikant, cofounder of Angelist. If you haven’t checked out his podcast, I higher recommend it. Lots of nuggets of wisdom in there.
Apparently this is a common phrase, but for some reason I have never heard of this idiom. As someone who grew up playing video games and board games, the words suddenly became painfully obvious. Why would I want to play a bad game with a horrible ending. It makes no sense. How is life any different? Naval reassuringly added this to his original quote about stupid games, “it might not be obvious now because you’re blinded by competition.”
The worst kind of game to get caught up in is a status game.
“Status games are multiplayer, zero-sum, hierarchical, judged socially.”
I am no expert in game theory but I’m going to try to fumble my way through understanding what he is trying to say.
To me the two important points in that tweet are:
Status games are zero-sum
Status games are socially judged
First, let’s tackle zero-sum.
Here’s a dictionary definition from the Oxford Language Dictionary:
Zero-Sum
Adjective
Relating to or denoting a situation in which whatever is gained by one side is lost by the other.
In a zero-sum game, there is only one person that can win. Either the opponent your are facing loses or everyone else competing loses as well. Zero-sum games are inherently competitive. When competition is high, humans tend to do things that are morally ambiguous. Especially when the stakes are really high. Rules are broken, cheating happen, the game’s integrity is ruined. On the other hand, in positive-sum games, multiple people can win. Also, the more people that play, the bigger the pie is. Creating a food court with a bunch of great food options is a positive sum game. It attracts more customers to come to the food court compared to if there was just one stand alone restaurant. Basically, positive sum games are mutually beneficial relationships.
As often as you can, try to play positive sum games where the pie gets bigger and bigger the longer you play. This creates value for everyone.
Second, status games are socially judged.
Socially judged means that you are being graded and voted on by your peers or society as a whole. The problem with this is it's not objective. Some people can like you for one reason and hate you for another. Essentially, you’re at the mercy of court of public opinion. Public opinion is fragile. Celebrities know this all too well. One day they are America’s sweet heart, the next they are a wash up actor that “used to be somebody.”
As soon as I understood this concept, an anime protagonist immediately came to mind; Light Yagami from Death Note. Light was playing the ultimate status game.
Let me walk you through why Light Yagami is the epitome of the saying “Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes.
SPOILER WARNING: We’re going to be touching on various story points throughout the Death Note series including the end. If you haven’t watched the series, go do it. It’s on most of the streaming platforms. It’s a great series.
Light Yagami holding the Death Note
Light Yagami Analysis
Light Yagami is like any typical high school student in Japan. He goes to school, lives in a happy family, his father is Chief of Police, and in normal circumstances he has a normal sense of moral justice. The main difference with Light is his genius level deduction skills. He scored top of his class, got into one of the most prestigious universities in Japan, and was set to become a high level detective following in the footsteps of his father. The fatal flaw that Light personifies from the foundation of his character development is his value system. He values power above all else. This is a common trait among people. Acquiring power is what every history lesson boils down to. Who’s trying to get it and who’s trying to maintain it. However, you mix the thirst for power, boredom, and a genius level IQ and a scary combination is born. Once Light comes in contact with the Death Note and confirms that the power to kill is real, he officially opts into the game that the Death Note presents.
Light sets out to create a world where he alone can pass judgement on who he deems a criminal. In turn creating his version of a just world. He believes that because he is so smart (reinforced by his test scores and by the conversation he has with his peers), he is the only person that can turn this idea of a “perfect” world into reality. When “L” appears, this is the first time since Light started using the Death Note to kill people, that someone has come to challenge him. Having been intoxicated by the power to kill, Light immediately accepts “L’s" challenge to see who can catch or kill the other person first. With the acceptance of “L” as Light’s official opponent, the second player of this zero-sum game has joined.
The most entertaining parts of Death Note are the banter and deductive mind games that transpire between "L" and Light. However, the instance at which the game enters a point of no return is when someone outside of Light and Misa Amane (the second Kira) discovers how the notebook works. While Light might have had no other options at this point to try to clear his name, once the police force learns about the notebook, Light’s end game gets way more complicated. Up until this point, he might have been able to walk away from the game and just stop killing people. But once the notebook was discovered, he either has to kill everyone that knows about the notebook or risk getting caught.
What leads to Light’s downfall is trying to control too many variables. Too many people know about the notebook. Light has to juggle, trying to to manage Misa Amane, balancing communication between Kiyomi Takada and Teru Mikami, fighting off Mello and Near, and maintaining a facade as ‘L’. All of this is way too much for a single person to handle and one misstep would lead to Light’s demise, which it does. Ultimately though, what truly leads to Light’s demise is opting into the Death Note game to begin with.
Light Yagami and L back to back
Light’s Possibilities
Let’s look at the main possibilities for how this game could end.
I see three main paths/outcomes for Light:
Doesn’t use the Death Note from the start of the show, killing no one
Uses the Death Note, but gets caught
Uses the Death Note, doesn’t get caught
Now let’s go into a little more detail with each path and how it actually unfolded in the series.
Doesn’t Use the Death Note
Curiosity killed the cat, Light with his genius IQ had to try it once on the off chance that the Death Note did actually have the power to kill people
The chances of Light actually taking this was very low mainly because of how bored he was
From the first episode you can tell from his character reveal that he wasn’t feeling challenged and was basically begging for something interesting to happen in his life
Uses the Death Note, but gets caught
This is the highest possibility of all three outcomes
Light has to continually fight off attack after attack from people that are trying to catch him and he can't slip up once
He is not just challenging the Japanese police force but instead every organization in the world that doesn’t agree with his way of serving justice
I believe a new version of ‘L’, Near, or Mello would continue to appear as time goes on
Uses the Death Note, doesn’t get caught
There are actually a couple of ways that this could happen but the way Light is going about it makes it very unlikely
He uses the Death Note once, never again
This way he doesn’t raise any suspicion, there is no pattern or enough evidence to pin him to the killing
No one knows about the notebook
The only thing to really worry about if this path is taken is that "any human that uses a Death Note can neither go to Heaven nor Hell for eternity when they die"
He uses the Death Note up until the point where he joins ‘L’ and the police task force
At this point, Light could potentially just stop killing all together, abandon his role as Kira and decide to find a way to make the investigation disappear
He has the ability to direct suspicion away from him and keep killing as Kira. So it’s not out of the question to assume that he can also lead the investigation in a way where they never find out about the notebook and the investigation just fizzles out
The biggest factor ruining this path is if Misa Amane gets the second Death Note and continues on to carry out the will of Kira
This path is not taken by Light because his ego is too big and believes he can still accomplish his goal once he eliminates L
He uses the Death Note, successfully kills ‘L’, Near, Mello, and anyone that crosses his path in turn making him “The God Of The New World"
This is Light’s ultimate goal, the goal he sets out on from episode 1
Light believe that with his genius IQ, he can out maneuver anyone that tries to come at him
He has adopted the facade of “L” and because of that feels unstoppable
As we know from the series, Light walks down the third path, trying to become “The God Of The New World.” His thirst for power leads him down path number three and ultimately gets himself killed because he couldn’t control all of the variables, namely Teru Mikami taking his own extra precautions for the benefit of Kira. Now if Light valued happiness over power, this story might have unfolded a little differently.
Alternate Universe
Consider an alternate universe where, Light graduated top of his class, went to work with his dad at the police department, and rose up the ranks to chief detective. He solved so many cases that eventually he started working with ‘L’. They acknowledge each other’s deductive abilities and start working together. If that was how the story unfolded, we might have saw an anime that more closely resembles Case Closed than the Death Note that we know today. This story could also technically unfold through the path of 3.2 where he used the Death Note but after joining the police task force, squashes the investigation through misdirection and ends up joining ‘L’. Definitely more unlikely, but still a possibility.
In this alternate universe scenario, Light solves most of his problems. He isn’t bored because he gets to solve hard cases with ‘L’, he has a friend that is just as smart as him, he isn’t in constant fear of getting caught, and he actually contributes to society. However, this story might not have been as entertaining as the Death Note series that we all know and love. It’s way more interesting to see a person who you might relate to at the beginning fall into chaos and ruin through the muddling of his mortality by his personal choices.
Death note shows that if you do have a genius level IQ with crazy deduction skills, you should probably follow ‘L’s’ life path. It’s the right and just path. It’s the path that Sherlock Holmes and Detective Conan took. Don’t follow Light.
Older and younger versions of Shinichi Kudo from Case Closed
Why You're Read This, Why I Wrote This
Analyzing Light is fun, but the scary thing with Light is that he could be any one of us if we were put in the same situation. You might not have his genius level deduction skills and last as long as he did, but being presented with the Death Note, you might go down a similar path that he did. Justice and self righteousness can get blurry quickly. Humans have a deep propensity for darkness.
But! Hopefully you can rationalize your options and see that the game you are opting into is a terrible one with very low chances of success. If Light couldn’t pull it off, it’s almost impossible that you can.
Remember, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I hope you choose to cultivate happiness my friend. Opt into positive sum games. Your life is too short to not live a happy one.
Until next time!
-Nikko