Starcraft Game Theory

At UC Berkeley they are teaching a class called "Game Theory in Starcraft." A link to a sample lecture can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7XiE_V0PZ8

I think this is a very interesting topic as game theory can be used to make a computer game more interesting. For example, in this article http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/cornell-info204/2008/03/02/game-theory-in-starcraftbroodwar-build-order/ they talk about how the 3 races in SC are balanced so picking one race won't give you a significant advantage over another. Thus there is no pure Nash Equilibrium. The concept of build order can also be introduced through game theory. For example, if all the players pick the same strategy there will not be a direct benefit. This is like if all the guys went for the blonde girl. However, if one of those players picked a different strategy, they would be greatly benefited.

Starcraft is a rather remarkable game, because although your initial choice of 3 races may seem to limit what you can do in the game, the strategies that can be employed seem endless. Within each race, there are a multitude of strategies that rely on either speed, power, or number. Yet it is hard to implement all three, if not impossible, because one of those three seem to be sacrificed for the other two to be effective.

The lack of a pure Nash Equilibrium comes into play because no one strategy is dominant, even if you know the other player's strategy. If you know the other player's strategy, then you can defeat your opponent, but the moment the other player knows his strategy has been discovered, he can shift his gears immediately and implement a counter-strategy. This back-and-forth of strategy and counter-strategy, prevents a pure Nash equilibrium from existing within the game of Starcraft, because no one strategy can be consistently dominant, throughout the course of the game.