Lewis Signaling Game

A game about how linguistic conventions emerge

About this game

  1. Two players — a Sender and a Receiver — each on their own device
  2. Each round, Sender sees a secret world state and picks a signal to transmit
  3. Receiver sees only the signal and must guess the world state
  4. Signals have no pre-assigned meanings — conventions emerge through repeated play

One person creates a game and shares the room code with their partner.

Sender

Share this code with your partner:

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Connecting to server…

Both players must be on this page at the same time.

Receiver

Enter your partner's room code:


🎉
YOU ESTABLISHED CONVENTIONS!
All four signals now have stable, shared meanings.
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Rounds
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Successes
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Final Rate
"A regularity R in the behavior of members of a population P when they are agents in a recurrent situation S is a convention if and only if… everyone conforms to R, everyone expects everyone else to conform to R, and everyone prefers to conform to R on condition that the others do." — David Lewis, Convention (1969)

You started with four meaningless sounds and turned them into a working language — without any explicit agreement. That's a convention.

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Connection Lost

Your partner has disconnected.