Towards Network Games with Social Preferences

TL;DR

This paper explores how social relationships among players in network games influence equilibria, extending traditional models by introducing a social range matrix and analyzing its effects through a simplified network creation game.

Contribution

It introduces the social range matrix concept to model arbitrary social relationships in network games, expanding the understanding of equilibrium behavior beyond selfishness.

Findings

Social range matrix affects equilibrium outcomes.

Extended model captures altruistic and malicious behaviors.

Simplistic network creation game illustrates social influence effects.

Abstract

Many distributed systems can be modeled as network games: a collection of selfish players that communicate in order to maximize their individual utilities. The performance of such games can be evaluated through the costs of the system equilibria: the system states in which no player can increase her utility by unilaterally changing her behavior. However, assuming that all players are selfish and in particular that all players have the same utility function may not always be appropriate. Hence, several extensions to incorporate also altruistic and malicious behavior in addition to selfishness have been proposed over the last years. In this paper, we seek to go one step further and study arbitrary relationships between participants. In particular, we introduce the notion of the social range matrix and explore the effects of the social range matrix on the equilibria in a network game. In order to derive concrete results, we propose a simplistic network creation game that captures the effect of social relationships among players.