Coordination Games: Why We All Drive on the Same Side

Why does everyone in the United States drive on the right side of the road? Not because it’s better than driving on the left—the British drive on the left and do just fine. We drive on the right because everyone else drives on the right.

This is a coordination game—a situation where the key is not beating others, but matching them. These games are everywhere, and they reveal fascinating insights about how societies form conventions, standards, and norms.

What is a Coordination Game?

A coordination game is a situation where all players benefit from making the same choice, but there’s more than one possible coordinated outcome.

The key properties:

1. Players want to coordinate with each other
2. Multiple equilibria exist (multiple ways to coordinate)
3. No conflict of interest (everyone prefers coordination to miscoordination)

The problem: Not “should we coordinate?” but “which equilibrium should we coordinate on?”

The Classic Example: Driving on the Same Side

Imagine two cars approaching each other on a road:

Two Nash Equilibria:

• Both drive right: (1, 1)
• Both drive left: (1, 1)

Miscoordination is disaster:

• You drive right, they drive left: Crash! (-10, -10)
• You drive left, they drive right: Crash! (-10, -10)

The solution: Society picks one equilibrium (driving right in the US, driving left in the UK) and makes it a convention. Everyone follows it, not because it’s inherently better, but because everyone else does.

Pure Coordination Games

In pure coordination games, players have identical preferences. They just want to coordinate—they don’t care which equilibrium.

Example: Meeting a Friend

You and a friend are trying to meet up but lost contact. You can go to:

• The Coffee Shop
• The Library

You both just want to find each other:

Two equilibria, both equally good. The challenge is figuring out which one your friend will choose.

Solution: Focal points—obvious or salient choices that people naturally coordinate on.

If you always meet at the coffee shop, or if it’s where you planned to meet originally, it becomes the focal point.

Coordination Games with Conflict

Sometimes players prefer different equilibria, but coordination is still better than miscoordination. This creates tension.

Example: Battle of the Sexes

A couple wants to spend the evening together, but have different preferences:

• One prefers the Opera
• One prefers the Football game

You prefer Opera together (2) > Football together (1) > Being apart (0)

Your partner prefers Football together (2) > Opera together (1) > Being apart (0)

Two Nash Equilibria:

• Both go to Opera: (2, 1) ✓
• Both go to Football: (1, 2) ✓

But you prefer the Opera equilibrium, and your partner prefers the Football equilibrium.

The challenge: Not just coordinating, but bargaining over which equilibrium.

Real-world solutions:

• Take turns
• Compensate (go to Football, but partner buys dinner)
• Communicate and compromise
• Establish norms (“We always do what you prefer on Fridays”)

Real-World Coordination Games

1. Technology Standards

VHS vs. Betamax, Blu-ray vs. HD DVD, USB-C vs. Lightning

Everyone benefits when we all use the same standard:

• Easier to share files
• More accessory availability
• Network effects

But we need to agree on which standard. Often the first mover or most popular choice becomes the focal point.

2. Language

Why do people in France speak French? Because everyone else does.

Language is a massive coordination game. Using the same language as everyone around you is incredibly valuable—but which language is somewhat arbitrary.

3. Currency

Why does the US use dollars? Because everyone else in the US uses dollars.

The value of a currency depends on others accepting it. We coordinate on a particular medium of exchange.

4. Social Norms

• Shaking hands when meeting
• Queuing in lines
• Tipping servers
• What to wear to different events

These are all coordination games. We follow these norms not because they’re inherently right, but because everyone else does, and coordinating makes society function smoothly.

Focal Points: How We Coordinate

Focal point (Schelling point): A solution that people naturally converge on when they can’t communicate.

Thomas Schelling discovered that people often coordinate successfully by picking the “obvious” choice, even without communication.

Famous Experiment

Question: You and a stranger need to meet in New York City tomorrow. You can’t communicate. Where do you go?

Result: Many people said “Grand Central Station at noon.”

Why? It’s a famous landmark, and noon is a natural time. It becomes the focal point—the obvious choice that people coordinate on through shared culture and intuition.

What Makes Something a Focal Point?

• Uniqueness: The Eiffel Tower in Paris (not “a café in Paris”)
• Symmetry: Meeting “in the middle”
• History: “Where we met last time”
• Salience: Something that stands out
• Cultural prominence: Famous landmarks, round numbers

First-Mover Advantage in Coordination

Sometimes the first to choose a strategy can influence everyone else to coordinate on their preference.

Example: If you arrive first at the meeting spot, others come to you.

Example: The first widely-adopted technology standard (QWERTY keyboard, VHS) often becomes the standard everyone adopts—even if better alternatives exist.

This creates path dependence: Historical accidents can lock us into equilibria that aren’t optimal, just because everyone coordinated on them first.

QWERTY keyboards: Designed to prevent mechanical typewriter jams, not for optimal typing speed. Yet we still use QWERTY today, long after mechanical jams are a concern, because everyone learned it and coordination is valuable.

Coordination Failures

Sometimes people fail to coordinate, even when coordination would benefit everyone:

Example: Competing Standards

When multiple incompatible standards compete, we may end up fragmented:

• Different messaging apps (WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, iMessage)
• Different streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.)
• Different cloud storage providers

Everyone would benefit from everyone using the same platform, but we’re split across many.

Switching Costs

Even when a better equilibrium exists, switching costs can keep us locked in a suboptimal equilibrium:

• Everyone using feet and inches in the US, even though metric is arguably better
• QWERTY keyboards
• Entrenched software platforms

The problem: Moving to the better equilibrium requires everyone to switch at once, but no individual has an incentive to switch alone.

Solutions to Coordination Problems

1. Communication

Simply talking beforehand can solve coordination problems: “Let’s meet at the coffee shop at 3 PM.”

2. Conventions and Norms

Societies develop conventions—established ways of coordinating—that become defaults:

• Drive on the right (in the US)
• Shake with your right hand
• Wait in line

3. Leadership and Standards Bodies

Organizations that set standards (ISO, IEEE, W3C) help coordinate:

• USB standards
• WiFi protocols
• Web standards (HTML, CSS)

4. First-Mover Advantage

Be the first to establish a pattern, and others may follow your lead.

5. Government Regulation

Laws can enforce a particular equilibrium:

• Traffic laws (drive on the right)
• Measurement standards (metric system)
• Currency (legal tender)

Why Coordination Games Matter

1. Conventions Emerge Spontaneously

Many social norms and behaviors emerge not from top-down design, but from spontaneous coordination:

• Language evolution
• Fashion trends
• Internet memes

2. Network Effects Are Powerful

The value of coordinating increases with the number of people on the same equilibrium:

• Social media (everyone on Facebook/Twitter)
• Phone networks (value increases with users)
• Language (more valuable if more people speak it)

3. Path Dependence

Historical accidents matter—the first equilibrium we coordinate on can persist for a long time, even if better alternatives exist.

4. Coordination ≠ Optimization

Just because we’ve coordinated on something doesn’t mean it’s optimal. We might be at a suboptimal equilibrium (QWERTY) and stuck there due to switching costs.

The Takeaway

Coordination games show us that:

Success = Matching, not optimizing: In these games, the key is doing what others do, not finding the abstractly “best” choice.

Multiple equilibria exist: There’s often more than one way to coordinate, creating the challenge of which one to pick.

Focal points help: Obvious, salient, or historically established choices help us coordinate without communication.

First movers matter: Being first can lock in an equilibrium—for better or worse.

Conventions are arbitrary but valuable: Driving on the right isn’t better than driving on the left, but everyone doing the same thing is critical.

Switching is hard: Even when better equilibria exist, coordination failures and switching costs can trap us in suboptimal outcomes.

The next time you follow a social norm, adopt a technology standard, or drive on the right side of the road, remember: you’re playing a coordination game. And the reason you’re doing it isn’t because it’s inherently the best choice—it’s because everyone else is doing it too.

This is part of our Game Theory Series. Coordination games explain how conventions, standards, and social norms emerge—and why we sometimes get stuck in suboptimal equilibria. Understanding them helps you see the invisible forces that shape social behavior.