Blocking defector invasion by focusing on the most successful partner

Abstract

According to the standard protocol of spatial public goods game, a cooperator player invests not only into his own game but also into the games organized by neighboring partners. In this work, we relax this assumption by allowing cooperators to decide which neighboring group to prefer instead of supporting them uniformly. In particular, we assume that they select their most successful neighbor and focus external investments exclusively into the related group. We show that this very simple alteration of the dynamical rule results in a surprisingly positive evolutionary outcome -- cooperators prevail even in harsh environment represented by small values of the synergy factor in the game. The microscopic mechanism behind the reported success of the cooperator strategy can be explained by a blocking mechanism which affects the propagations of competing strategies in a biased way. Our results, which remain intact by using different interaction topologies, reveal that it could be beneficial to concentrate individual efforts to reach a higher global wellbeing.