The Coordination Games did not invent cooperation. They formalized it — drawing from fifty years of commons research, behavioral game theory, multi-agent systems work, and cooperative law.
Deep Roots is the provenance document. It exists because every design choice in the games — the five trust bands, the public attestation requirement, the graduated sanctions structure, the conditional-cooperation mechanic — comes from somewhere. The paper traces where.
The document is not a literature review. It is a lineage record. It names the scholars whose work is load-bearing in the design, identifies the open arguments the games are participating in, and assembles a working vocabulary for those who want to understand the intellectual frame before engaging with the mechanics.
It is also an invitation. The Coordination Games are a standing experiment, not a finished system. The scholars listed here are active researchers. The arguments documented in section four are genuinely open. The games generate evidence that feeds back into them.
Contents · Six sections
01
Where each design choice comes from
The five trust bands traced to Ostrom's graduated sanctions. Public attestations as commons monitoring. Conditional cooperation and the sixth mechanic. Each mechanic, sourced.
02
A working vocabulary
"A game is an action situation made teachable." Key terms from the Institutional Analysis and Development framework, behavioral economics, and cooperative AI — defined precisely for this context.
03
Living scholars
Active researchers whose work is load-bearing in the design — at Google DeepMind, Carnegie Mellon, CU Boulder, Penn, Arizona State, Microsoft Research, and elsewhere. The field is alive.
04
Open arguments
The unresolved debates the games are participating in — commons governance, the conditions for AI cooperation, the relationship between rules and norms. Evidence the games generate feeds back into these.
On why this document exists in the first place — and what it means to publish intellectual lineage alongside a live experiment.
Living scholars · Section 03
The document identifies active researchers whose work is directly load-bearing in the design of the games. Not historical antecedents — current practitioners. The field producing this work is alive and producing new results.
Cooperative AI Lab
Google DeepMind
Multi-agent cooperation, AI safety, mechanism design for cooperative systems
Foundations of Cooperative AI Lab
Carnegie Mellon University
Theoretical foundations for cooperation in AI systems; alignment through coordination
Cristina Bicchieri
University of Pennsylvania
Social norms, norm dynamics, behavioral game theory; how expectations shape cooperation
Media Economies Design Lab
CU Boulder
Platform governance, commons design, digital cooperative institutions
ProSocial World
Binghamton University
Applying Ostrom's principles to contemporary group behavior; prosocial institutional design
Plurality Institute
Microsoft Research
Plurality, quadratic funding, democratic technology; governance mechanisms at scale
Law & Social Science
Villanova · Pittsburgh · NYU
Cooperative law, institutional economics, the legal architecture of commons governance
Criminal Justice & Cooperation
CUNY · John Jay College
Informal governance, restorative justice, cooperation under adversarial conditions
Complex Systems & Cooperation
Arizona State University · Dartmouth
Computational modeling of cooperative systems; evolutionary dynamics of cooperation
Works cited · Seven thematic sections
A
Commons Governance
Ostrom's foundational commons research; the eight design principles; institutional analysis; commons as infrastructure
B
Game Theory & Behavioral Economics
Prisoner's dilemma structure; punishment in public goods experiments; focal points; cooperation under iterated conditions
C
Multi-Agent Systems & Cooperative AI
Agent coordination mechanisms; cooperative AI alignment; mechanism design for AI systems; experimental economics of agents
D
Institutional Economics & Cooperative Law
Cooperative ownership structures; organizational economics; the legal architecture of democratic institutions
E
Network Science & Trust
Trust as computational infrastructure; citation networks; reputation systems; the structure of cooperative networks
F
Philosophy & Lineage
Exit, voice, and loyalty (Hirschman); restorative justice; the philosophical roots of cooperative design; lobster gangs as informal governance
G
Practitioner & Emerging Work
Radical markets; Consilience; quadratic funding; contemporary practitioner research at the intersection of cooperation and technology
A note on voice · Section 06
"A game is an action situation made teachable."
— Deep Roots · Working Vocabulary · Section 02
"A standing experiment in cooperation. Cultivating scenius."
— RegenHub, LCA · games.coop · Public benefit statement
The document closes with a reflection on why it exists. Intellectual lineage documents are not common in applied research. Publishing them alongside a live experiment is a commitment — it makes the theory falsifiable, names the predecessors who deserve credit, and invites challenge from anyone who has read the same sources and reached different conclusions.
The Coordination Games are evidence-generating infrastructure. Deep Roots is the map of what questions that evidence bears on.
Plain-language companion
How the Games Got Their Rules
The accessible companion — each design choice in the games matched to the person who inspired it. For curious readers, no prior knowledge required.