Social Matrix Games are a texted based way of gaming highly dynamic situations with a minimum of time, money, and skill. They have been around for nearly 4 decades as of 2025. Now they are playable on line, without the need of an expert moderator. This is the start of what will grow into a new type of social media and information technology. I, Chris Engle, invented Matrix Games in 1988 and developed them to a world wide research technique. I am now the one taking them online. The game shown hear was first developed in 2015 and was described in "The Matrix Game Handbook" in 2018 and fully described in my 2023 book "A Scientific Matrix Game".
But what exactly are Social Matrix Games?
This kind of game explores people's imaginations about what can happen in a given situation. It uses words/conversations to make up what happens. A player gets an idea and shares it. Often times their idea becomes the next "move" in the game. A game goes from move to move, each one adding to the story. In this way it is like a brainstorming session but with a few twists.
Players are given a problem they have to solve. They also champion different characters in the scenario. This makes them want to reach different answers. So players may cooperate some but in the end may be opposed to one another. When this happens they will want to stop certain moves. They do this in two ways. The most complete way is to replace the previous move. When they do this they overwrite it with a move of their creation. Effectively a line is drawn through the first move and another is written below it. Since this could lead to a never ending loop of one move replacing another there is a second type of opposition. Each player in the game may challenge a move. The move is subject to a 50/50 dice roll. If it fails the roll, the move gets a line through it. If it succeeds, then it happens and cannot be replaced. A move might have to survive many rolls, so moves that bother lots of people are not likely to happen. Players may call for challenges even if a move was not replaced, if they just don't like it. Also, if a move is replaced it is possible and even likely that the players will accept it and proceed with the game. These different types of opposition form the conversation of the game. In effect it is brain storming with conflict. In other words, a dialectic.
If the present game one player makes a move and the other players are the audience but they are not a passive audience. They are allowed to express likes and dislikes. They can make assessments on which moves appear to be strong, weak, or even stupid. They can show their emotional reactions to a given move. None of these alter the wording of the move but do add depth and color to meaning.
The game starts with a scenario. This is a short written piece (often supplemented with pictures) that explain the situation the players are interested in exploring. Each player takes the information and forms a mental matrix of what is happening. As moves are made, the player's mental matrix changes. Which is why it is called a matrix game. Each piece of information is one cell of data in the matrix. But this is not a definitive matrix. Each person forms their own mental image, which means that they are almost certainly different. Just as we don't know if everyone sees the color blue the way we do but we agree that there is something we call blue even if our actual perspectives are different.
It needs to be clearly stated that Social Matrix Games are not simulations of the world. At best they are simulations of human imagination. There is no algorithm here that corresponds with a real world pattern. If a players makes a move that involves a ball dropping, that is a descriptive statement. It doesn't tell us anything about physics. It just tells us what we think physics would say. So Social Matrix Games and other Matrix Games should not be generalized to make predictions. They can suggest possibilities and allow people to plan contingencies but cannot describe probabilities. With repeated play of the same scenario it might tell us something useful about public opinion but could not, for instance, predict the outcome of an election.
Most matrix games are about the real world or a fantasy world that is very similar to our own. That is because that is what people are most interested in. A game could be about something outside our experience or even something completely symbolic but finding players capable of this kind of exploration would be difficult. Much of human behavior is tied up in repetitions of the same conflicts again and again. It is kind of depressing if you are a believer in free will but since no two snowflakes are the same (or so we are told) then no two imaginations are the same either.
Social Matrix Games have great potential in promoting human growth. They easily fit into education, psychotherapy, planning, trouble shooting, and trying to figure out what happened after the fact with major events. Online Social Matrix Games make this technique available to even more people. There is no need for an expert game presenter or expert players. It is a tool that can be used for five minutes or a couple of hours depending on the need. A person can even play them by themselves to explore the range of their own thinking on a topic. They just let the different voices of our self talk speak to one another through play.