Distributed Games

The Internet exhibits forms of interactions which are not captured by existing models in economics, artificial intelligence and game theory. New models are needed to deal with these multi-agent interactions. In this paper we present a new model -- distributed games. In such a model each player controls a number of agents which participate in asynchronous parallel multi-agent interactions (games). The agents jointly and strategically (partially) control the level of information monitoring and the level of recall by broadcasting messages. As an application, we show that the cooperative outcome of the Prisoner's Dilemma game can be obtained in equilibrium in such a setting.

[1]  J. Keynes.  A Treatise on Probability. , 1923 .

[2]  N. Dalkey.  EQUIVALENCE OF INFORMATION PATTERNS AND ESSENTIALLY DETERMINATE GAMES , 1952 .

[3]  H. W. Kuhn,et al.  11. Extensive Games and the Problem of Information , 1953 .

[4]  J. R. Isbell.  3. FINITARY GAMES , 1958 .

[5]  S. Vajda.  Contributions to the Theory of Games. Volume III. Annals of Mathematics Studies Number 39. Edited by M. Dresher, A. W. Tucker and P. Wolfe. (Princeton University Press) , 1959 .

[6]  Robert J . Aumann,et al.  28. Mixed and Behavior Strategies in Infinite Extensive Games , 1964 .

[7]  Whitfield Diffie,et al.  New Directions in Cryptography , 1976, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[8]  C. A. R. Hoare,et al.  Communicating sequential processes , 1978, CACM.

[9]  John H. Reif,et al.  Multiple-person alternation , 1979, 20th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (sfcs 1979).

[10]  A. Rubinstein.  Equilibrium in supergames with the overtaking criterion , 1979 .

[11]  Robin Milner,et al.  On Observing Nondeterminism and Concurrency , 1980, ICALP.

[12]  David M. Kreps,et al.  Rational cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoners' dilemma , 1982 .

[13]  Ramaswamy Ramanujam,et al.  Distributed Processes and the Logic of Knowledge , 1985, Logic of Programs.

[14]  A. Neyman.  Bounded complexity justifies cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoners' dilemma , 1985 .

[15]  Ronald Fagin,et al.  A formal model of knowledge, action, and communication in distributed systems: preliminary report , 1985, PODC '85.

[16]  Drew Fudenberg,et al.  The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games with Discounting or with Incomplete Information , 1986 .

[17]  Joseph Y. Halpern,et al.  A little knowledge goes a long way: knowledge-based derivations and correctness proofs for a family of protocols , 1992, JACM.

[18]  E. Lehrer.  Repeated Games with Stationary Bounded Recall Strategies , 1988 .

[19]  Andrew S. Tanenbaum,et al.  Computer networks: 2nd edition , 1988 .

[20]  Eitan Zemel.  Small Talk and Cooperation A Note on Bounded Rationality , 1989 .

[21]  Amir Pnueli,et al.  On the synthesis of a reactive module , 1989, POPL '89.

[22]  R. Aumann,et al.  Cooperation and bounded recall , 1989 .

[23]  Martín Abadi,et al.  Realizable and Unrealizable Specifications of Reactive Systems , 1989, ICALP.

[24]  W. M. Wonham,et al.  The control of discrete event systems , 1989 .

[25]  W. M. Wonham,et al.  Decentralized control and coordination of discrete-event systems with partial observation , 1990 .

[26]  Amir Pnueli,et al.  Distributed reactive systems are hard to synthesize , 1990, Proceedings [1990] 31st Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science.

[27]  Jerzy Tiuryn,et al.  Logics of Programs , 1991, Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, Volume B: Formal Models and Sematics.

[28]  E. Allen Emerson,et al.  Tree automata, mu-calculus and determinacy , 1991, [1991] Proceedings 32nd Annual Symposium of Foundations of Computer Science.

[29]  W. Murray Wonham,et al.  Think Globally, Act Locally: Decentralized Supervisory Control , 1991, 1991 American Control Conference.

[30]  Joseph Y. Halpern,et al.  A little knowledge goes a long way: knowledge-based derivations and correctness proofs for a family of protocols , 1992, JACM.

[31]  Anne Bergeron,et al.  A Unified Approach to Control Problems in Discrete Event Processes , 1993, RAIRO Theor. Informatics Appl..

[32]  Nimrod Megiddo,et al.  Essays in Game Theory, In Honor of Michael Maschler , 1994, Essays in Game Theory.

[33]  P. Morris.  Introduction to Game Theory , 1994 .

[34]  Ariel Rubinstein,et al.  A Course in Game Theory , 1995 .

[35]  Volker Diekert,et al.  The Book of Traces , 1995 .

[36]  Jim Alves-Foss,et al.  Higher Order Logic Theorem Proving and its Applications 8th International Workshop, Aspen Grove, Ut, Usa, September 11-14, 1995 : Proceedings , 1995 .

[37]  Hal R. Varian,et al.  Economic Mechanism Design for Computerized Agents , 1995, USENIX Workshop on Electronic Commerce.

[38]  Wolfgang Thomas,et al.  On the Synthesis of Strategies in Infinite Games , 1995, STACS.

[39]  Ronald Fagin,et al.  Reasoning about knowledge , 1995 .

[40]  Ariel Rubinstein,et al.  On the Interpretation of Decision Problems with Imperfect Recall , 1996, TARK.

[41]  Craig Boutilier,et al.  Economic Principles of Multi-Agent Systems , 1997, Artif. Intell..

[42]  Ko Nishihara.  A resolution of N-person prisoners' dilemma , 1997 .

[43]  D. Fudenberg,et al.  The Folk Theorem for Repeated Games with Discounting and Incomplete Information , 1998 .

[44]  Hagit Attiya,et al.  Distributed Computing: Fundamentals, Simulations and Advanced Topics , 1998 .

[45]  A. Neyman.  Cooperation in Repeated Games When the Number of Stages is not Commonly Known , 1999 .

[46]  Wojciech Penczek,et al.  Local Interactions, Explicit Communication and Causal Knowledge in Games and Multi-Agent Systems , 1999, CEEMAS.