Even though it’s rarely referred to by name, the matching pennies pattern appears constantly in multiplayer games. The castle battle is a matching pennies game, because the defender wants to match his defense against your attack, while you want a mismatch. In a multiplayer shooter, when you’re defending an objective in a room with two doors, you’re playing a matching pennies game; you want to defend the door that your opponent chooses to attack, while your opponent wants to come in the other door and shoot you in the back.
- alternative to rock-paper-scissors