Teoria dos Jogos - "What is good for? Absolutely nothing..."?

"(...) Adopting our usual rigorous methodology, we set the following parameters. To count, an example must:

*be an actual business situation where somebody used the insights of game theory;
*have occurred within the past five years; and
*involve real, live, actual companies -- not governments, nonprofit organizations, or Russell Crowe. (...)

Traditional game theory "prescribes a lot of advice that does not actually seem to work," admitted Paul Bartha of the University of British Columbia. Why not? Maybe because "the sorts of situations that would allow the application of formal methods are so simple that people can understand them without much help," suggested the University of Minnesota's Andy McLennan.

Does that mean game theory is just, um, common sense? "Game theory gives you a nice systematic way to think about strategy, but it's not magic," agreed Hal Varian, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and coauthor of the bestselling Information Rules (Harvard Business School Press, 1999). Or, as MIT's David McAdams put it, "Game theory is really a frame of mind and, once you have it, you see it everywhere."

Everywhere, perhaps, and nowhere.

In the end, none of our experts had a concrete example. But many offered the same advice: "Ask Preston McAfee" -- an economist at the California Institute of Technology and perhaps the country's foremost working game theorist (he designed that government spectrum auction). He was more encouraging: "There are lots of examples," he emailed, agreeing to an interview.
We reached the professor in his office at Caltech. "So," we asked, "what are all these examples of game theory applied to real life?" There was a silence on the line. "Well," he said, "a lot of companies hired game theorists to prepare for those spectrum auctions." Okay -- but what about nongovernment auction situations? "I don't know of any companies that employ pure game theorists -- but maybe they're keeping it quiet."

Very, very quiet." You Got Game Theory! Fast Company