The Bank Robber's Dilemma

The prisoner's dilemma is a beautiful moral quandry -- do you rat your friends out for less jail time, or do you not testify (and hope they would do the same) for the hope of possibly getting off with no time whatsoever?  It's one that's largely been unexplored outside of more traditional RPGs, but the niche bank robbery shooter genre seems to be coming close to exploring these actual quandries.

Payday: the Heist is a cooperative shooter where players plan and orchestrate a bank robbery.  It's well executed, but without the level of intrigue and moral quandary that fully explores the issue.  It assumes that the band of thieves will work together.  There's really no opportunity for backstabbing here, but it does have a fairly unique respawn mechanic: you essentially trade hostages for lives.  That in and of itself is intriguing, but the other bank robbery shooter has far more interesting -- if much more poorly executed -- quandries.

Kane and Lynch, a robbery-based shooter published by Eidos, is Payday's lackluster competition.  It's clunky, it's not particularly polished, but it has a multiplayer mode called Fragile Alliance, where players take turns as the police and the thieves.  There's a unique, twist, though, and that comes once the cash is grabbed.

Once money is obtained, players on the robber side can suddenly kill one another -- and are encouraged to -- to make off with the whole pot.  You want to win with extreme prejudice.  I can only imagine this devolves rather quickly into a blood-soaked mess as soon as you think you've escaped.  While I've not played the game, because of its terrible reviews, this particular mechanic was almost enough to sell me a copy of the game, just to see how it plays out.  I'm surprised it's not made it into Counterstrike maps or something of the sort, all things considered.  It's an exercise in competition and risk vs reward as players try to make out, quite literally, like bandits.  I can only imagine the paranoia and suspicion that hits the players, wondering how many of their peers will turn on them at the very last moment.

The sequel, Dog Days, takes this mechanic to an entirely new level:

While it is roughly as terrible as its predecessor, Dog Days places a "plant" on the criminal team.  Suddenly, they not only have to worry about being backstabbed by their friends, but that one of their friends is actively working for the other team up 'til the point that people start backstabbing each other to boot!  This must play out brilliantly.  I want to see this mechanic not only rolled into Payday, but in other games, as well.  Counterstrike matches suddenly become more interesting.  I'm curious to see what the next Kane and Lynch title comes up with.  I do hope that the first thing the developers conjure up is a decent game, so that I can see how the Fragile Alliance turns out.