Game Theory was an American power pop band, founded in 1982 by singer/songwriter Scott Miller, combining melodic jangle pop with dense experimental production and hyperliterate lyrics. MTV described their sound as "still visceral and vital" in 2013, with records "full of sweetly psychedelic-tinged, appealingly idiosyncratic gems" that continued "influencing a new generation of indie artists." Between 1982 and 1990, Game Theory released five studio albums and two EPs, which had long been out of print until 2014, when Omnivore Recordings began a series of remastered reissues of the entire Game Theory catalog. Miller's posthumously completed Game Theory album, Supercalifragile, was released in August 2017 in a limited first pressing.

Miller was the group's leader and sole constant member, presiding over frequently changing line-ups. During its early years in Davis, California, Game Theory was often associated with the Paisley Underground movement, but remained in northern California, moving to the Bay Area in 1985, while similarly aligned local bands moved to Los Angeles.

The group became known for its fusion of catchy musical hooks with musical complexity, as well as for Miller's lyrics that often featured self-described "young-adult-hurt-feeling-athons," along with literary references (e.g., Real Nighttime's allusions to James Joyce), and pop culture references ranging from Peanuts ("The Red Baron") to Star Trek quotes ("One More for St. Michael").

Prior to founding Game Theory, Scott Miller had been the lead singer and songwriter of Alternate Learning, which issued an EP in 1979 and an LP in 1981. Alternate Learning was based in Sacramento and Davis, California, and frequently performed at U.C. Davis. Two members of the band, Jozef Becker and Nancy Becker, would join Miller in Game Theory. Alternate Learning was disbanded in early 1982.

Scott Miller chose to name his new band "Game Theory" as an allusion to the mathematical field of game theory, which he described as "the study of calculating the most appropriate action given an adversary, ... someone who was thinking against you, and you had to organize what his moves could be, and what your moves should be, to give yourself the minimum amount of failure." In a 1988 interview, Miller stated, "It's a theory of probability that's a mathematical discipline that more or less has been applied improperly to real-life situations. It's just that idea of a set of rules that gets misused that intrigued me about it ... kind of a telling comment on life in general—that you just have to have some sort of set of rules, but who knows what the set of rules should be." That theme, according to Miller, was what many Game Theory songs were about: "Always be wary of the superstructure of whatever situation you're in. It may just be that the whole game that you're into is something very bogus and you should get out."

By mid-1982, Scott Miller had assembled the first iteration of Game Theory, with himself as lead guitarist and vocalist. The group consisted of Miller, Nancy Becker (keyboards, vocals), Fred Juhos (bass, guitar, vocals), and Michael Irwin (drums).

The first Game Theory album was the Blaze of Glory LP, released on Rational Records in 1982. Due to a lack of funds to both press the album and print a jacket, a thousand copies of the LP were packaged in white plastic trash bags with Xeroxed cover art glued to each bag.

Nearly thirty years after the release of Blaze of Glory, Harvard professor Stephanie Burt described it as "true to the wordy awkwardness ... of the nerd stereotype, and yet true to the visceral power, the sexual charge, in guitar-based Anglo-American pop. The songs, and the people depicted in the songs, attempted to have fun, to act on instinct, but they knew they were too cerebral to make it so, except with like-minded small circles of puzzle-solvers."