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| Meta Title | What Elon Musk's favorite game tells us about him |
| Meta Description | A review, of sorts, of Polytopia. |
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| Boilerpipe Text | [NOTE: this post is sort of an āā¦and another thing!ā riff on my
original review of the Walter Isaacson book
. I wanted to write something light this week.]
āI am just wired for war, basically.ā
-Elon Musk, taking a mobile strategy game waaaaay too seriously.
Elon Musk really likes the game
Polytopia
. He has skipped birthday parties and international business meetings to play the game. He has effused that it is āthe best game ever.ā He has posited that it is more complicated than chess.
Walter Isaacson treats
Polytopia
as a window into Muskās unique, brilliant mind. He devotes nearly as many pages to the game as he does to the Boring Company. (Which is, yāknow, one of his
actual companies.
It has a multi-billion dollar valuation.) He even prints eight ālife lessonsā that Musk and his hangers-on think you can distill from the game.
Itāsā¦ a bit much.
I left
Polytopia
out of
my original review of the book
. It seemed like a bit of a strange personality tick. The parallel to SBFās mobile gaming habit was a little interesting. But I had never heard of the game. Iād never played it. And I already had more than enough material to work with.
A few months later, while visiting some family on the west coast, I noticed my brother-in-law playing
Polytopia
on his phone. āYāknow, Elon Musk says thatās the greatest game of all time,ā I said to him. My brother-in-law gave me a quizzical look. Heās a pretty well-adjusted fellow, neither addicted to Musk nor
Polytopia
. He just thought the game was reasonably fun.
So I tried it out.
Hereās what I can tell you about the game: Itāsā¦ fine. Itās a nice little time-killer. Calling it the ābest game everā is a bit like calling
Ant-Man and the Wasp
the greatest film in the history of cinema. It tells us far more about the psyche of the person making the claim than it does about the game itself.
Polytopia
is developed by Midjiwan, an indie game company. It is a cheap game. You can play the whole thing for free, or you can unlock additional tribes to play for $1-2 apiece. The most you can spend on the game is $30.
(This, by the way, strikes me as capitalism at its best. Midjiwan built a fun game. People play and enjoy it. Those who really enjoy it decide to spend a perfectly reasonable amount of money to enjoy it some more. Good for them. They seem like good folks. I wish them the best.)
The game isnāt trying to be Fortnite or Roblox. It isnāt attempting to redefine gaming. There is nothing particularly unique or innovative about it. If you enjoy turn-based strategy games, youāll probably like it. But youāll also figure the whole thing out pretty quickly. I was able to beat the game on its hardest settings with every character class after a couple dozen playthroughs.
I cannot fathom how anyone would think it is more complex than chess.
The strategy in
Polytopia
is straightforward. The game generates a new map every time, which keeps you paying attention, but generally youāre trying to (1) expand your territory, (2) generate more stars (the resource that you spend each turn), (3) unlock stronger units, and (4) find and demolish your opponents.
So you will always spend your first few turns exploring your surroundings and upgrading your first town. Then you encounter some map-based challenges, and build toward overcoming them.
The ātech treeā is straightforward and, after a few playthroughs, it becomes pretty obvious which slots to unlock in which order. (Youāll need archers to defeat early-game opponents. Youāll need bombers to overwhelm late-game opponents. If you have a lot of bombers, you are unbeatable.)
The game constantly engages your executive functions. You gauge conditions and make resource allocation decisions, proceeding across the map in a straightforward manner. It only takes about 45 minutes to play a full game. Itās a nice way to occupy yourself during a short plane flight.
But it is not a particularly
addictive
game.
Starcraft
is a harder and more addictive strategy game than this.
Slay the Spire
is a harder and more addictive mobile strategy game.
Tears of the Kingdom
is not a strategy game, but my god you will lose a month of your life to
Tears of the Kingdom
.
Iād say the game is about as addictive as sudoku.
Looking back on Isaacsonās book, this casts the Musk anecdotes in a different light. Isaacson tells a story in the book about Musk flying to Mexico for his sister-in-lawās birthday party. Grimes is DJing. His family and close friends are all there. But Musk doesnāt leave his room. He plays
Polytopia
all night instead.
Isaacson treats this as evidence of Musk as a deft, dynamic strategic thinker who has trouble taking pleasure in normal-people things. Isaacson never clocks that this means he must have played a half-dozen games of
Polytopia
. And he also never realizes that the game
just isnāt that hard
.
If someone flew to Mexico for a fancy party and then skipped the whole thing to play sudoku in their hotel room, you probably wouldnāt think āsuch an ineffable genius.ā A more reasonable reaction would be āoh shit that guy desperately needs to talk to a therapist.ā
Thereās an old saying about poker: āit takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.ā
Polytopia
takes five minutes to learn and maybe twenty hours to master.
And look, I donāt mean that as a critique of the game. I can see why my brother-in-law likes it. I like it as well. I am entirely in favor of indie game studios producing fun little mobile games that I can enjoy on a plane flight.
But it raises a question that Walter Isaacson never asks. Because Isaacson, as far as I can tell, found Muskās little gaming addiction to be a delightful detail without ever trying out the game himself:
why this game? What does it say about Elon Musk that he finds
this particular
game so appealing?
I think the answer is simple: Elon Musk only plays games that he can dominate without working too hard at learning the rules.
Polytopia
is not complicated. There arenāt a ton of divergent strategies. The game rewards aggression and domination. You build up resources, unlock the tech tree, and kill your opponents. The fog of war and randomly generated maps make for a new challenge every time, but itās
also the same challenge every time
. And you either recognize early that the random map put you in an unwinnable position or you get the satisfaction of an inevitable march to victory.
There are no surprises or hidden reversals late in the game. Once you control half the map and have a resource advantage, taking over the other half of the map is a light downhill jog.
By comparison, chess is a game where one can spend much of the game believing they are in the lead, only to find that they had been trapped all along. Chess is a game of extraordinary sophistication, requiring years of study. There is a reason why ābeat a chess grandmasterā was, for so long, an artificial intelligence benchmark.
Poker, meanwhile, is a game of incomplete information. One of the most frustrating parts of the game is that you can outplay your opponent and still lose. In fact, most of your biggest losses will happen when you were in a position of strength ā You get the money in with the stronger hand, but catch a bad river card. You flop middle set against your opponentās top set. One of the major skills for high-level poker play is emotional regulation. You have to learn to manage the emotional rush of outplaying your opponent and losing anyway.
(Musk, as I noted previously,
is a terrible poker player
.)
The appeal of
Polytopia
is that it isnāt hard to tell whether you are winning or losing. And you will be right. You get the satisfaction of beating the computer, or of beating your friends in a multiplayer online game. You wonāt win every time, but you also will never be surprised.
The central contradiction of present-day Elon Musk (now that the
real-world-Iron-Man
myth machine has broken down) is that he has attained such phenomenal wealth while behaving like such an utter fool. We are constantly encouraged to suspend disbeliefāsurely there must be wheels within wheels, layers upon layers that would cast his impulsive actions in a different light. The man just
fired the entire team behind Teslaās Supercharger network
, which was supposed to be the companyās firewall against its competitors. Is this exactly what it looks like, or is there some brilliant gamesmanship that we normal folks cannot see?
Isaacson assumes the latter. Thatās the premise of the whole endeavor. And so he latches on to Muskās
Polytopia
habit as evidence of something deep, special, and unique.
But Isaacson didnāt take the time to actually play
Polytopia
. Hell, he seemingly didnāt even read any
reviews of the game
. And, having played
Polytopia
, a different story emerges:
There are no hidden layers to Elon Muskās thinking. He likes the gratification of impulsively pushing a button and seeing the numbers go up. He likes games that are straightforward and easy to beat. Heād rather reset every 45 minutes than execute meticulous plans that extend far into an uncertain future. He does not think ten moves ahead. He just responds with maximal aggression to the latest change of conditions. (
The stock is down again. Announce robotaxis
!) When this works, he gets the satisfaction of dominance. When it doesnāt, he can always just reset and try again.
Elon Muskās suit of armor is that he is extremely rich. He made a couple of high-risk, high-reward bets that paid off. He doesnāt have some grand, overarching insight into the nature of business, science and technology, or humanity. He is exactly who he appears to be.
Heās the guy who thinks
Polytopia
is more sophisticated than chess. The guy who loses a ton of money going all-in on a dozen poker hands, just for the satisfaction of finally winning one. He runs each of his companies the same way. He gets away with a lot, simply because he has amassed so much money and marketshare that the normal rules donāt apply to him.
Thatās the real lesson from Muskās obsession with
Polytopia.
The man doesnāt have hidden depth. Heās actually prettyā¦ basic. |
| Markdown | [](https://davekarpf.substack.com/)
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# What Elon Musk's favorite game tells us about him
### A review, of sorts, of Polytopia.
[](https://substack.com/@davekarpf)
[Dave Karpf](https://substack.com/@davekarpf)
May 05, 2024
157
40
22
Share
**\[NOTE: this post is sort of an āā¦and another thing!ā riff on my [original review of the Walter Isaacson book](https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-the-infinite-rebuy). I wanted to write something light this week.\]**
*āI am just wired for war, basically.ā* -Elon Musk, taking a mobile strategy game waaaaay too seriously.
Elon Musk really likes the game *Polytopia*. He has skipped birthday parties and international business meetings to play the game. He has effused that it is āthe best game ever.ā He has posited that it is more complicated than chess.
[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WA4L!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc6679305-55df-4e8a-bb7a-7e5e8c083ca8_886x414.png)
Walter Isaacson treats *Polytopia* as a window into Muskās unique, brilliant mind. He devotes nearly as many pages to the game as he does to the Boring Company. (Which is, yāknow, one of his *actual companies.* It has a multi-billion dollar valuation.) He even prints eight ālife lessonsā that Musk and his hangers-on think you can distill from the game.
Itāsā¦ a bit much.
I left *Polytopia* out of [my original review of the book](https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-the-infinite-rebuy). It seemed like a bit of a strange personality tick. The parallel to SBFās mobile gaming habit was a little interesting. But I had never heard of the game. Iād never played it. And I already had more than enough material to work with.
A few months later, while visiting some family on the west coast, I noticed my brother-in-law playing *Polytopia* on his phone. āYāknow, Elon Musk says thatās the greatest game of all time,ā I said to him. My brother-in-law gave me a quizzical look. Heās a pretty well-adjusted fellow, neither addicted to Musk nor *Polytopia*. He just thought the game was reasonably fun.
So I tried it out.
[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wDO5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faf070b0f-dac8-4e21-ab24-80eba0273860_1920x1016.png)
Hereās what I can tell you about the game: Itāsā¦ fine. Itās a nice little time-killer. Calling it the ābest game everā is a bit like calling *Ant-Man and the Wasp* the greatest film in the history of cinema. It tells us far more about the psyche of the person making the claim than it does about the game itself.
*Polytopia* is developed by Midjiwan, an indie game company. It is a cheap game. You can play the whole thing for free, or you can unlock additional tribes to play for \$1-2 apiece. The most you can spend on the game is \$30.
(This, by the way, strikes me as capitalism at its best. Midjiwan built a fun game. People play and enjoy it. Those who really enjoy it decide to spend a perfectly reasonable amount of money to enjoy it some more. Good for them. They seem like good folks. I wish them the best.)
The game isnāt trying to be Fortnite or Roblox. It isnāt attempting to redefine gaming. There is nothing particularly unique or innovative about it. If you enjoy turn-based strategy games, youāll probably like it. But youāll also figure the whole thing out pretty quickly. I was able to beat the game on its hardest settings with every character class after a couple dozen playthroughs.
I cannot fathom how anyone would think it is more complex than chess.
The strategy in *Polytopia* is straightforward. The game generates a new map every time, which keeps you paying attention, but generally youāre trying to (1) expand your territory, (2) generate more stars (the resource that you spend each turn), (3) unlock stronger units, and (4) find and demolish your opponents.
So you will always spend your first few turns exploring your surroundings and upgrading your first town. Then you encounter some map-based challenges, and build toward overcoming them.
The ātech treeā is straightforward and, after a few playthroughs, it becomes pretty obvious which slots to unlock in which order. (Youāll need archers to defeat early-game opponents. Youāll need bombers to overwhelm late-game opponents. If you have a lot of bombers, you are unbeatable.)
The game constantly engages your executive functions. You gauge conditions and make resource allocation decisions, proceeding across the map in a straightforward manner. It only takes about 45 minutes to play a full game. Itās a nice way to occupy yourself during a short plane flight.
But it is not a particularly *addictive* game. *Starcraft* is a harder and more addictive strategy game than this. *Slay the Spire* is a harder and more addictive mobile strategy game. *Tears of the Kingdom* is not a strategy game, but my god you will lose a month of your life to *Tears of the Kingdom*.
Iād say the game is about as addictive as sudoku.
Looking back on Isaacsonās book, this casts the Musk anecdotes in a different light. Isaacson tells a story in the book about Musk flying to Mexico for his sister-in-lawās birthday party. Grimes is DJing. His family and close friends are all there. But Musk doesnāt leave his room. He plays *Polytopia* all night instead.
Isaacson treats this as evidence of Musk as a deft, dynamic strategic thinker who has trouble taking pleasure in normal-people things. Isaacson never clocks that this means he must have played a half-dozen games of *Polytopia*. And he also never realizes that the game *just isnāt that hard*.
If someone flew to Mexico for a fancy party and then skipped the whole thing to play sudoku in their hotel room, you probably wouldnāt think āsuch an ineffable genius.ā A more reasonable reaction would be āoh shit that guy desperately needs to talk to a therapist.ā
***
Thereās an old saying about poker: āit takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.ā *Polytopia* takes five minutes to learn and maybe twenty hours to master.
And look, I donāt mean that as a critique of the game. I can see why my brother-in-law likes it. I like it as well. I am entirely in favor of indie game studios producing fun little mobile games that I can enjoy on a plane flight.
But it raises a question that Walter Isaacson never asks. Because Isaacson, as far as I can tell, found Muskās little gaming addiction to be a delightful detail without ever trying out the game himself: **why this game? What does it say about Elon Musk that he finds** ***this particular*** **game so appealing?**
I think the answer is simple: Elon Musk only plays games that he can dominate without working too hard at learning the rules.
*Polytopia* is not complicated. There arenāt a ton of divergent strategies. The game rewards aggression and domination. You build up resources, unlock the tech tree, and kill your opponents. The fog of war and randomly generated maps make for a new challenge every time, but itās *also the same challenge every time*. And you either recognize early that the random map put you in an unwinnable position or you get the satisfaction of an inevitable march to victory.
There are no surprises or hidden reversals late in the game. Once you control half the map and have a resource advantage, taking over the other half of the map is a light downhill jog.
By comparison, chess is a game where one can spend much of the game believing they are in the lead, only to find that they had been trapped all along. Chess is a game of extraordinary sophistication, requiring years of study. There is a reason why ābeat a chess grandmasterā was, for so long, an artificial intelligence benchmark.
Poker, meanwhile, is a game of incomplete information. One of the most frustrating parts of the game is that you can outplay your opponent and still lose. In fact, most of your biggest losses will happen when you were in a position of strength ā You get the money in with the stronger hand, but catch a bad river card. You flop middle set against your opponentās top set. One of the major skills for high-level poker play is emotional regulation. You have to learn to manage the emotional rush of outplaying your opponent and losing anyway.
(Musk, as I noted previously, [is a terrible poker player](https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-the-infinite-rebuy).)
The appeal of *Polytopia* is that it isnāt hard to tell whether you are winning or losing. And you will be right. You get the satisfaction of beating the computer, or of beating your friends in a multiplayer online game. You wonāt win every time, but you also will never be surprised.
The central contradiction of present-day Elon Musk (now that the *real-world-Iron-Man* myth machine has broken down) is that he has attained such phenomenal wealth while behaving like such an utter fool. We are constantly encouraged to suspend disbeliefāsurely there must be wheels within wheels, layers upon layers that would cast his impulsive actions in a different light. The man just [fired the entire team behind Teslaās Supercharger network](https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/3/24147402/tesla-supercharger-layoffs-stalled-ev-infrastructure-projects), which was supposed to be the companyās firewall against its competitors. Is this exactly what it looks like, or is there some brilliant gamesmanship that we normal folks cannot see?
[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CEOA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F625c8484-dc05-495a-b5d3-b9393ec201c7_887x1000.jpeg)
Isaacson assumes the latter. Thatās the premise of the whole endeavor. And so he latches on to Muskās *Polytopia* habit as evidence of something deep, special, and unique.
But Isaacson didnāt take the time to actually play *Polytopia*. Hell, he seemingly didnāt even read any [reviews of the game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Polytopia#Reception). And, having played *Polytopia*, a different story emerges:
There are no hidden layers to Elon Muskās thinking. He likes the gratification of impulsively pushing a button and seeing the numbers go up. He likes games that are straightforward and easy to beat. Heād rather reset every 45 minutes than execute meticulous plans that extend far into an uncertain future. He does not think ten moves ahead. He just responds with maximal aggression to the latest change of conditions. (**The stock is down again. Announce robotaxis**!) When this works, he gets the satisfaction of dominance. When it doesnāt, he can always just reset and try again.
Elon Muskās suit of armor is that he is extremely rich. He made a couple of high-risk, high-reward bets that paid off. He doesnāt have some grand, overarching insight into the nature of business, science and technology, or humanity. He is exactly who he appears to be.
Heās the guy who thinks *Polytopia* is more sophisticated than chess. The guy who loses a ton of money going all-in on a dozen poker hands, just for the satisfaction of finally winning one. He runs each of his companies the same way. He gets away with a lot, simply because he has amassed so much money and marketshare that the normal rules donāt apply to him.
Thatās the real lesson from Muskās obsession with *Polytopia.* The man doesnāt have hidden depth. Heās actually prettyā¦ basic.
[](https://substack.com/profile/39075252-aj)
[](https://substack.com/profile/11543247-henrik)
[](https://substack.com/profile/14880251-jeff)
[](https://substack.com/profile/80533226-mooper-hooper)
[](https://substack.com/profile/5923033-diogo-m-reis)
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#### Discussion about this post
Comments
Restacks
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[May 5, 2024](https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/what-elon-musks-favorite-game-tells/comment/55607003 "May 5, 2024, 4:38 PM")
Liked by Dave Karpf
I'd say Musk is a man with "hidden shallows", but they're not exactly hidden anymore, are they?
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[Andrew](https://substack.com/profile/35017541-andrew?utm_source=substack-feed-item)
[May 5, 2024](https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/what-elon-musks-favorite-game-tells/comment/55606521 "May 5, 2024, 4:31 PM")
Liked by Dave Karpf
I quite enjoy polytopia as a simpler, less addictive Civilization. Itās just fun and you donāt need to think too hard. So, I agree with almost everything you said.
Multiplayer polytopia is a different beast. It brings the complexity and strategy up to the level of Backgammon. If you enjoy single player and find it too easy, try multiplayer.
To be absolutely clear, itās still a simple, but fun game.
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| Readable Markdown | **\[NOTE: this post is sort of an āā¦and another thing!ā riff on my [original review of the Walter Isaacson book](https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-the-infinite-rebuy). I wanted to write something light this week.\]**
*āI am just wired for war, basically.ā* -Elon Musk, taking a mobile strategy game waaaaay too seriously.
Elon Musk really likes the game *Polytopia*. He has skipped birthday parties and international business meetings to play the game. He has effused that it is āthe best game ever.ā He has posited that it is more complicated than chess.
[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WA4L!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc6679305-55df-4e8a-bb7a-7e5e8c083ca8_886x414.png)
Walter Isaacson treats *Polytopia* as a window into Muskās unique, brilliant mind. He devotes nearly as many pages to the game as he does to the Boring Company. (Which is, yāknow, one of his *actual companies.* It has a multi-billion dollar valuation.) He even prints eight ālife lessonsā that Musk and his hangers-on think you can distill from the game.
Itāsā¦ a bit much.
I left *Polytopia* out of [my original review of the book](https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-the-infinite-rebuy). It seemed like a bit of a strange personality tick. The parallel to SBFās mobile gaming habit was a little interesting. But I had never heard of the game. Iād never played it. And I already had more than enough material to work with.
A few months later, while visiting some family on the west coast, I noticed my brother-in-law playing *Polytopia* on his phone. āYāknow, Elon Musk says thatās the greatest game of all time,ā I said to him. My brother-in-law gave me a quizzical look. Heās a pretty well-adjusted fellow, neither addicted to Musk nor *Polytopia*. He just thought the game was reasonably fun.
So I tried it out.
[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wDO5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faf070b0f-dac8-4e21-ab24-80eba0273860_1920x1016.png)
Hereās what I can tell you about the game: Itāsā¦ fine. Itās a nice little time-killer. Calling it the ābest game everā is a bit like calling *Ant-Man and the Wasp* the greatest film in the history of cinema. It tells us far more about the psyche of the person making the claim than it does about the game itself.
*Polytopia* is developed by Midjiwan, an indie game company. It is a cheap game. You can play the whole thing for free, or you can unlock additional tribes to play for \$1-2 apiece. The most you can spend on the game is \$30.
(This, by the way, strikes me as capitalism at its best. Midjiwan built a fun game. People play and enjoy it. Those who really enjoy it decide to spend a perfectly reasonable amount of money to enjoy it some more. Good for them. They seem like good folks. I wish them the best.)
The game isnāt trying to be Fortnite or Roblox. It isnāt attempting to redefine gaming. There is nothing particularly unique or innovative about it. If you enjoy turn-based strategy games, youāll probably like it. But youāll also figure the whole thing out pretty quickly. I was able to beat the game on its hardest settings with every character class after a couple dozen playthroughs.
I cannot fathom how anyone would think it is more complex than chess.
The strategy in *Polytopia* is straightforward. The game generates a new map every time, which keeps you paying attention, but generally youāre trying to (1) expand your territory, (2) generate more stars (the resource that you spend each turn), (3) unlock stronger units, and (4) find and demolish your opponents.
So you will always spend your first few turns exploring your surroundings and upgrading your first town. Then you encounter some map-based challenges, and build toward overcoming them.
The ātech treeā is straightforward and, after a few playthroughs, it becomes pretty obvious which slots to unlock in which order. (Youāll need archers to defeat early-game opponents. Youāll need bombers to overwhelm late-game opponents. If you have a lot of bombers, you are unbeatable.)
The game constantly engages your executive functions. You gauge conditions and make resource allocation decisions, proceeding across the map in a straightforward manner. It only takes about 45 minutes to play a full game. Itās a nice way to occupy yourself during a short plane flight.
But it is not a particularly *addictive* game. *Starcraft* is a harder and more addictive strategy game than this. *Slay the Spire* is a harder and more addictive mobile strategy game. *Tears of the Kingdom* is not a strategy game, but my god you will lose a month of your life to *Tears of the Kingdom*.
Iād say the game is about as addictive as sudoku.
Looking back on Isaacsonās book, this casts the Musk anecdotes in a different light. Isaacson tells a story in the book about Musk flying to Mexico for his sister-in-lawās birthday party. Grimes is DJing. His family and close friends are all there. But Musk doesnāt leave his room. He plays *Polytopia* all night instead.
Isaacson treats this as evidence of Musk as a deft, dynamic strategic thinker who has trouble taking pleasure in normal-people things. Isaacson never clocks that this means he must have played a half-dozen games of *Polytopia*. And he also never realizes that the game *just isnāt that hard*.
If someone flew to Mexico for a fancy party and then skipped the whole thing to play sudoku in their hotel room, you probably wouldnāt think āsuch an ineffable genius.ā A more reasonable reaction would be āoh shit that guy desperately needs to talk to a therapist.ā
Thereās an old saying about poker: āit takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master.ā *Polytopia* takes five minutes to learn and maybe twenty hours to master.
And look, I donāt mean that as a critique of the game. I can see why my brother-in-law likes it. I like it as well. I am entirely in favor of indie game studios producing fun little mobile games that I can enjoy on a plane flight.
But it raises a question that Walter Isaacson never asks. Because Isaacson, as far as I can tell, found Muskās little gaming addiction to be a delightful detail without ever trying out the game himself: **why this game? What does it say about Elon Musk that he finds** ***this particular*** **game so appealing?**
I think the answer is simple: Elon Musk only plays games that he can dominate without working too hard at learning the rules.
*Polytopia* is not complicated. There arenāt a ton of divergent strategies. The game rewards aggression and domination. You build up resources, unlock the tech tree, and kill your opponents. The fog of war and randomly generated maps make for a new challenge every time, but itās *also the same challenge every time*. And you either recognize early that the random map put you in an unwinnable position or you get the satisfaction of an inevitable march to victory.
There are no surprises or hidden reversals late in the game. Once you control half the map and have a resource advantage, taking over the other half of the map is a light downhill jog.
By comparison, chess is a game where one can spend much of the game believing they are in the lead, only to find that they had been trapped all along. Chess is a game of extraordinary sophistication, requiring years of study. There is a reason why ābeat a chess grandmasterā was, for so long, an artificial intelligence benchmark.
Poker, meanwhile, is a game of incomplete information. One of the most frustrating parts of the game is that you can outplay your opponent and still lose. In fact, most of your biggest losses will happen when you were in a position of strength ā You get the money in with the stronger hand, but catch a bad river card. You flop middle set against your opponentās top set. One of the major skills for high-level poker play is emotional regulation. You have to learn to manage the emotional rush of outplaying your opponent and losing anyway.
(Musk, as I noted previously, [is a terrible poker player](https://davekarpf.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-the-infinite-rebuy).)
The appeal of *Polytopia* is that it isnāt hard to tell whether you are winning or losing. And you will be right. You get the satisfaction of beating the computer, or of beating your friends in a multiplayer online game. You wonāt win every time, but you also will never be surprised.
The central contradiction of present-day Elon Musk (now that the *real-world-Iron-Man* myth machine has broken down) is that he has attained such phenomenal wealth while behaving like such an utter fool. We are constantly encouraged to suspend disbeliefāsurely there must be wheels within wheels, layers upon layers that would cast his impulsive actions in a different light. The man just [fired the entire team behind Teslaās Supercharger network](https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/3/24147402/tesla-supercharger-layoffs-stalled-ev-infrastructure-projects), which was supposed to be the companyās firewall against its competitors. Is this exactly what it looks like, or is there some brilliant gamesmanship that we normal folks cannot see?
[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CEOA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F625c8484-dc05-495a-b5d3-b9393ec201c7_887x1000.jpeg)
Isaacson assumes the latter. Thatās the premise of the whole endeavor. And so he latches on to Muskās *Polytopia* habit as evidence of something deep, special, and unique.
But Isaacson didnāt take the time to actually play *Polytopia*. Hell, he seemingly didnāt even read any [reviews of the game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_Polytopia#Reception). And, having played *Polytopia*, a different story emerges:
There are no hidden layers to Elon Muskās thinking. He likes the gratification of impulsively pushing a button and seeing the numbers go up. He likes games that are straightforward and easy to beat. Heād rather reset every 45 minutes than execute meticulous plans that extend far into an uncertain future. He does not think ten moves ahead. He just responds with maximal aggression to the latest change of conditions. (**The stock is down again. Announce robotaxis**!) When this works, he gets the satisfaction of dominance. When it doesnāt, he can always just reset and try again.
Elon Muskās suit of armor is that he is extremely rich. He made a couple of high-risk, high-reward bets that paid off. He doesnāt have some grand, overarching insight into the nature of business, science and technology, or humanity. He is exactly who he appears to be.
Heās the guy who thinks *Polytopia* is more sophisticated than chess. The guy who loses a ton of money going all-in on a dozen poker hands, just for the satisfaction of finally winning one. He runs each of his companies the same way. He gets away with a lot, simply because he has amassed so much money and marketshare that the normal rules donāt apply to him.
Thatās the real lesson from Muskās obsession with *Polytopia.* The man doesnāt have hidden depth. Heās actually prettyā¦ basic. |
| Shard | 76 (laksa) |
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| Unparsed URL | com,substack!davekarpf,/p/what-elon-musks-favorite-game-tells s443 |