Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence rewards and named it "prisoner's dilemma", presenting it as follows: Two members of a criminal gang are arrested and imprisoned.
Albert W. Tucker memformulasikan permainan tersebut dengan imbalan hukuman penjara dan menamakannya dengan "dilema tahanan" (Poundstone, 1992), seperti cerita berikut: Dua anggota geng kriminal tertangkap dan dipenjara.