A real life example of a prisoner's dilemma is whether companies choose to advertise their products or not. By cooperating and not advertising, consumers would buy from each company equally, which is the optimal mutual outcome. However, there is an incentive to cheat by advertising, as it would draw more consumers and earn them more money. When both companies advertise, there's again an equal number of people buying from each of them, however this is a suboptimal outcome because the companies had to spend money on advertising, and in the end there's a lower profit. Because they have to make this decision at the same time, this game is in simultaneous play.
An example of the prisoner's dilemma in fiction is: I can't find one quickly that I'm already familiar with, nor recall the situation from what I already know. Ó_Ò
We made a prisoner's dilemma card game in class.
