Muir was an error--I was referring to Nash. Part of the study will be determining whether the players tend towards Nash-type best responses, based on their
perceptions of the resource game (one-shot vice repeating, open v closed info, etc.).
As the proposal has developed, GT has become more a way to schematize the research rather than an active attempt to predictively model--as you point out, the math is just prohibitive for me. I'm picking up a bit of calculus through my hydrology courses, but I just don't have the math to really pursue this quantitatively. So even though I would be far more comfortable with statistical methods, this is going to be qualitative research (ugh!).
Based on the responses in the GD thread, I'm making my way through the Binmore intro text, as well as the Yale online course.