Influence is even more so -- it's common to have situations where nobody is truly paying attention to anyone else. The people with good ideas can't get any traction, and the whole organization just spins in circles, lurching from one externally-imposed crisis to the next. If the people who gain influence use that influence to promote others who are worth paying attention to (and thus they gain influence), everyone benefits. But if you measure that in terms of how many minutes each person gets to speak at the All Hands, it's zero-sum.
Is there such a thing as "partially zero-sum"? I mean, to express how, unless you get really creative in difficult ways, the supply of land is under pressure due to other people taking all the currently useful parts of it, such as the parts on your island and not underwater.
The Asia, Africa & the Americas have so much unused space that isn't as inhospitable as central Australia
To be a bit specific: if you're currently in education, you almost certainly have to play many zero sum games. Yes, education can be a positive thing in itself, but only one of you is going to be best in class. Only a limited number of you will get your papers into that prestigious congress. And while the knowledge may hopefully be useful in itself, the credentials you got in getting it will be less valuable the more people have them.
Then you're off into the housing market. Can more houses be built? Sure. Can we build dikes to claim land from the oceans? Sure. All that is true, but it doesn't help you here and now when you need a place to live - then you're in a game with everyone else who needs a home right now, and if you get one, that's one someone else doesn't get.
Then you have your home, and someone is planning to expand the local almost-unused airport to suddenly take a lot of heavy transport air planes. The noise will impact you a lot. You'd like to influence politics, to call off these plans or at least demand some mitigation, but then you're in a game with others who want to influence politics. Sure, maybe there's a happy compromise to be found, but often there's not. If there isn't, then your ability to put pressure on the decision makers to defend your interests, is going to come at the direct expense of the people wanting an expansion of the airport. Or more likely the other way around.
My point is that yes, it sucks, but often we can't quit the rat race, and often there are conflicts of interest which can't be papered over. It comes off as too easy to, as this author does, say that we can just choose to play different games.