I'm interested in video game design and game design in general, and also in raising the rationality waterline. I'd like to combine these two interests: to create a rationality-focused game that is entertaining or interesting enough to become popular outside our clique, but that can also effectively teach a genuinely useful skill to players.

I imagine that it would consist of one or more problems which the player would have to be rational in some particular way to solve. The problem has to be:

• Interesting: The prospect of having to tackle the problem should excite the player. Very abstract or dry problems would not work; very low-interaction problems wouldn't work either, even if cleverly presented (i.e. you could do Newcomb's problem as a game with plenty of lovely art and window dressing... but the game itself would still only be a single binary choice, which would quickly bore the player).

• Dramatic in outcome: The difference between success and failure should be great. A problem in which being rational gets you 10 points but acting typically gets you 8 points would not work; the advantage of applying rationality needs to be very noticeable.

• Not rigged (or not obviously so): The player shouldn't have the feeling that the game is designed to directly reward rationality (even though it is, in a sense). The player should think that they are solving a general problem with rationality as their asset.

• Not allegorical: I don't want to raise any likely mind-killing associations in the player's mind, like politics or religion. The problem they are solving should be allegorical to real world problems, but to a general class of problems, not to any specific problems that will raise hackles and defeat the educational purpose of the game.

• Surprising: The rationality technique being taught should not be immediately obvious to an untrained player. A typical first session should involve the player first trying an irrational method, seeing how it fails, and then eventually working their way up to a rational method that works.

A lot of the rationality-related games that people bring up fail some of these criterion. Zendo, for example, is not "dramatic in outcome" enough for my taste. Avoiding confirmation bias and understanding something about experimental design makes one a better Zendo player... but in my experience not as much as just developing a quick eye for pattern recognition and being able to read the master's actions.

Anyone here have any suggestions for possible game designs?