Japanese Game Show Prisoner's Dilemma

Today I was scrolling through my Facebook news feed when a colorful video of a Japanese game show caught my eye. In the show, 6 contestants each wearing different colored body suits compete to win a cash prize by being the first to successfully climb two flights of slime-covered stairs. It seems fairly simple, but the competitors slip and slide constantly and when they fall they bring all the other competitors down with them. At one point the yellow and the red player reach approach the top simultaneously (skip to 4:30). As they carefully crawl to the top, neck and neck, competing for the prize, the two players enter into a prisoner’s dilemma.

Because this is econ and we love making assumptions and I don’t speak Japanese I’m going to assume that if both players arrive at the top of the stairs at the same time they get to split the prize 50-50. As the red and yellow players approach the summit at the same time they each face two options: Let the other person reach the top at the same time or try to knock the other person down.

(Yellow, Red)	Let other player finish	Knock other down
Let other player finish	( ½ of prize, ½ of prize)	(Entire prize, Nothing)
Knock other down	(Nothing, entire prize)	(1/6 chance of winning, 1/6 chance of winning)

If a player decides to let the other player finish, they’ll either end up getting half the prize, or the other player could knock them down and they get nothing.  If they decide to knock the other person down, they’ll either successfully knock the other person down and get the full prize or the other person will also knock them down and they both end up back where they started with an equal chance at winning. The Nash prediction is that each person would choose to knock the other down in order to claim the prize themselves or be knocked down and start all over again. Thus the Nash equilibrium is that they both knock each other down. This moment of the show follows the Nash prediction and the two players both take the other out and return to the bottom. At the end of it all their not working together costs them as the green player takes the prize.