Variants Of Game Research Articles

The Effect of Participation in a Game of Tag, an Activity Promoting Helping Behavior, on Children’s Helping Behavior-Related Self-Efficacy

With a breakdown in classroom discipline, bullying and social withdrawal have become social problems in recent years; there is a heightened expectation toward physical education for developing proper social attitudes and cultivating morality. In this study, children were instructed to play “Nakama-oni (helping tag)”, a tag game variant promoting helping behavior through physical education. Thereafter, the frequency of helping behavior in Nakama-oni was checked, and the effect of participation in physical education through Nakama-oni on children’s helping behavior-related self-efficacy was discussed. Sixty elementary school children in the fifth grade played both Nakama-oni and normal tag. The results suggested that: 1) children experienced helping behavior more often in Nakama-oni, compared to normal tag; and 2) participation in Nakama-oni enhanced children’s helping behavior-related self-efficacy. In conclusion, results suggest that incorporating Nakama-oni that promotes helping behavior in physical education enhances children’s helping behavior-related self-efficacy.

The game variants in Europe. Trends and perspectives during youth competitive stages

Abstract AIMS The aim of this study was to verify how European countries manage the type of game variants and their frequency during different age groups of youth competition. METHODS Data were collected from the official rules of youth football championships. To identify countries homogenous groups according to their game variants, Two Step Cluster Analysis procedure was used while a nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare the game variants distribution in each Cluster. In order to correlate the game variants with age groups, a Chi-Square independence test and a Spearman ordinal correlation coefficient were used. RESULTS The results showed there were five clusters with significant differences in their game variants distribution (X2 kw (4) = 22.149; p<0.001; n = 30) and a significant correlation between age group and game variant (χ2(63) = 477.724; p<0.001; n = 30). Specifically, the most used game variants in each age group were the five-a-side (F5) in Under-8; the nine-a-side (F9) in Under-12; the seven-a-side (F7) in Under-9 and Under10; and the eleven-a-side (F11) in and above Under-13. CONCLUSION These results may contribute to understand the different country perspectives about the competitive game variants of youth football within the European space and its relation with diverse learning philosophies and pathways.

Wages, Promises and Effort in an Intercultural Labour Market: Experimental Evidence from Australia

AbstractIn this article, we use economic experiments to explore the role of culture in labour market interactions between Australian employers and either Australian or Asian workers. We use two variants of the gift exchange game. In one, employers make binding, in the other non‐binding, wage offers. Results show that attitudes and behaviour are similar across cultural groups, but intercultural interaction changes between the games. Non‐binding wage offers are completely disregarded in final wage decisions by employers when made to Asians. However, Asians are rewarded more for additional effort.

Graph labeling games

We propose the study of many new variants of two-person graph labeling games. Hardly anything has been done in this wide open field so far.

Game distinguishing numbers of Cartesian products

The distinguishing number of a graph H is a symmetry related graph invariant whose study started two decades ago. The distinguishing number D ( H ) is the least integer d such that H has a distinguishing d -coloring. A distinguishing d -coloring is a coloring c : V ( H ) → {1, …, d } invariant only under the trivial automorphism. In this paper, we continue the study of a game variant of this parameter, recently introduced. The distinguishing game is a game with two players, Gentle and Rascal, with antagonistic goals. This game is played on a graph H with a fixed set of d ∈ N colors. Alternately, the two players choose a vertex of H and color it with one of the d colors. The game ends when all the vertices have been colored. Then Gentle wins if the d -coloring is distinguishing and Rascal wins otherwise. This game defines two new invariants, which are the minimum numbers of colors needed to ensure that Gentle has a winning strategy, depending who starts the game. The invariant could be infinite. In this paper, we focus on the Cartesian product, a graph operation well studied in the classical case. We give sufficient conditions on the order of two connected factors H and F that are relatively prime, which ensure that one of the game distinguishing numbers of the Cartesian product H ▫ F is finite. If H is a so-called involutive graph, we give an upper bound of order D 2 ( H ) for one of the game distinguishing numbers of H ▫ F . Finally, using in part the previous result, we compute the exact value of these invariants for Cartesian products of relatively prime cycles. It turns out that the value is either infinite or equal to 2 , depending on the parity of the product order.

On network formation games with heterogeneous players and basic network creation games

We consider two variants of the network formation game that aims to study the creation of large-scale networks and to capture the impact of selfish behavior, on behalf of the network administrators, on the overall network structure and performance. In particular, we study basic network creation games, where each player aims to minimize her distance to the remaining players, and we present an improved lower bound on the graph diameter of equilibria of this game. We also consider network formation games with a large number of heterogeneous players and monetary transfers, and prove tight bounds on the price of anarchy under realistic assumptions about the cost function. Finally, we argue about the setting where these heterogeneous players must be connected with additional edge-disjoint paths to mitigate the impact of failures.

The limit to behavioral inertia and the power of default in voluntary contribution games

It is well documented that people are reluctant to switch from a default option. We experimentally test the robustness of this behavioral inertia in a collective decision-making setting by varying the default option type and the decision-making environment. We examine the impacts of automatic-participation and no-participation default options on subjects’ participation in a public goods provision and their contributions. Two variants of public goods game are employed: the linear and the threshold public goods games. The study shows the evidence of partial stickiness rather than complete stickiness of default options as indicated in empirical studies. Our experimental results square with the evidence of behavioral inertia only when the automatic-participation default is used. This default boosts contributions in the linear public goods game but not in the threshold public goods game. The evidence of partial stickiness is robust to the variation of the game employed, but the effect on contribution is sensitive to it.

Risk Sensitivity of Price of Anarchy under Uncertainty

In game theory, the price of anarchy framework studies efficiency loss in decentralized environments. Optimization and decision theory, on the other hand, explore tradeoffs between optimality and robustness in the case of single-agent decision making under uncertainty. What happens when we combine both approaches?We examine connections between the efficiency loss due to decentralization and the efficiency loss due to uncertainty and establish tight performance guarantees for distributed systems in uncertain environments. We present applications based on novel variants of atomic congestion games with uncertain costs, for which we provide tight performance bounds under a wide range of risk attitudes. Our results establish that the individual’s attitude toward uncertainty has a critical effect on system performance and therefore should be a subject of close and systematic investigation.

Nonlocal PDEs on Graphs: From Tug-of-War Games to Unified Interpolation on Images and Point Clouds

In this paper, we introduce a new general class of partial difference operators on graphs, which interpolate between the nonlocal $$\infty $$?-Laplacian, the Laplacian, and a family of discrete gradient operators. In this context, we investigate an associated Dirichlet problem for this general class of operators and prove the existence and uniqueness of respective solutions. We show that a certain partial difference equation based on this class of operators recovers many variants of a stochastic game known as `Tug-of-War' and extends them to a nonlocal setting. Furthermore, we discuss a connection with certain nonlocal partial differential equations. Finally, we propose to use this class of operators as general framework to solve many interpolation problems in a unified manner as arising, e.g., in image and point cloud processing.

Game of Life variations for image scrambling

The rapid development of multimedia and Internet technology has given more and more people the opportunity to exchange information via the Internet. There are many cases in which images containing trivial information are transmitted, but most of the time images will contain private data and therefore must be protected. Consequently, the security and confidentiality of digital data during storage and transmission have become an important and critical issue. Digital image scrambling is often used for image encryption and its aim is to transform a meaningful image into a meaningless one to enhance the ability to resist invalid attack and in turn improve security. In this paper, a new scheme is presented for digital gray image scrambling based on variants of the famous Game of Life (GoL) Cellular Automaton (CA). More specifically, two of those variations, namely asynchrony and enlarged neighborhood are taken into account. They are further enhanced to implement suitable GoL variations for efficient digital grey image scrambling while the presented simulation results prove that the modified variations can provide high security by scrambling pixel locations. It is shown that the resulting scrambling effect is influenced by the employed variation of GoL as well as by the dimensions of the image. Finally, in terms of Gray Difference Degree (GDD) the proposed digital image scrambling method, which is based on the aforementioned GoL variations, outperforms the existing techniques and produces an effective image encryption technique which enables excellent confidentiality.

Selfish-rational non-vaccination: Experimental evidence from an interactive vaccination game

This paper provides an experimental game model – the Interactive Vaccination (I-Vax) Game – in order to investigate the behavioral consequences of risks from disease and from vaccination, and the epidemiological interdependence of vaccination decisions. Results from a controlled laboratory experiment provide evidence for selfish-rational non-vaccination: individuals react to the interactive incentive structure and make strategic vaccination decisions. We also find support for additional psychological factors determining behavior: individuals with stronger positive other-regarding preferences are more likely to vaccinate. Moreover, costs from action (vaccine-adverse events) have a stronger impact on behavior than costs from inaction (disease), which is evidence for the omission bias. Overall, we suggest that variants of the I-Vax Game can contribute to a better understanding of vaccination behavior and vaccine hesitancy. It can further be a useful experimental tool for testing interventions aiming at increasing vaccine uptake.

Restoring Pure Equilibria to Weighted Congestion Games

Congestion games model several interesting applications, including routing and network formation games, and also possess attractive theoretical properties, including the existence of and convergence of natural dynamics to a pure Nash equilibrium. Weighted variants of congestion games that rely on sharing costs proportional to players' weights do not generally have pure-strategy Nash equilibria. We propose a new way of assigning costs to players with weights in congestion games that recovers the important properties of the unweighted model. This method is derived from the Shapley value, and it always induces a game with a (weighted) potential function. For the special cases of weighted network cost-sharing and weighted routing games with Shapley value-based cost shares, we prove tight bounds on the worst-case inefficiency of equilibria. For weighted network cost-sharing games, we precisely calculate the price of stability for any given player weight vector, while for weighted routing games, we precisely calculate the price of anarchy, as a parameter of the set of allowable cost functions.

Fairness requires deliberation: the primacy of economic over social considerations

While both economic and social considerations of fairness and equity play an important role in financial decision-making, it is not clear which of these two motives is more primal and immediate and which one is secondary and slow. Here we used variants of the ultimatum game to examine this question. Experiment 1 shows that acceptance rate of unfair offers increases when participants are asked to base their choice on their gut-feelings, as compared to when they thoroughly consider the available information. In line with these results, Experiments 2 and 3 provide process evidence that individuals prefer to first examine economic information about their own utility rather than social information about equity and fairness, even at the price of foregoing such social information. Our results suggest that people are more economically rational at the core, but social considerations (e.g., inequality aversion) require deliberation, which under certain conditions override their self-interested impulses.

Esteem and social information: On determinants of prosocial behavior of clinicians in Tanzania

We report experimental findings on the role of social information and esteem for prosocial behavior of clinicians in Tanzania. For this we conduct a lab experiment on variants of a dictator game, which allows us to classify types of clinicians by their responses to being chosen by their partner and to knowing more about the person they are paired with. We link this lab data to the effort exerted by the same sample of clinicians to their patients in the field. We show that clinicians who are responsive both to information and to being chosen in the lab exert more average effort in the field. Responsiveness to being chosen is also correlated with a smaller variance of effort in the field, while variance is larger for clinicians who respond to social information. Our combination of lab and field results suggests that behavioral traits identified in the lab are informative of clinician’ choices in their actual workplace.

Do Capacity Constraints Constrain Coalitions?

We study strong equilibria in symmetric capacitated cost-sharing games. In these games, a graph with designated source s and sink t is given, and each edge is associated with some cost. Each agent chooses strategically an s-t path, knowing that the cost of each edge is shared equally between all agents using it. Two variants of cost-sharing games have been previously studied: (i) games where coalitions can form, and (ii) games where edges are associated with capacities; both variants are inspired by real-life scenarios. In this work we combine these variants and analyze strong equilibria (profiles where no coalition can deviate) in capacitated games. This combination gives rise to new phenomena that do not occur in the previous variants. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we provide a topological characterization of networks that always admit a strong equilibrium. Second, we establish tight bounds on the efficiency loss that may be incurred due to strategic behavior, as quantified by the strong price of anarchy (and stability) measures. Interestingly, our results are qualitatively different than those obtained in the analysis of each variant alone, and the combination of coalitions and capacities entails the introduction of more refined topology classes than previously studied.

Directing remittances to education with soft and hard commitments: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment and new product take-up among Filipino migrants in Rome

This paper tests how migrants’ willingness to remit changes when given the ability to direct remittances to educational purposes using different forms of commitment. Variants of a dictator game in a lab-in-the-field experiment with Filipino migrants in Rome are used to examine remitting behavior under varying degrees of commitment. These range from the soft commitment of simply labeling remittances as being for education, to the hard commitment of having funds directly paid to a school and the student's educational performance monitored. We find that the introduction of simple labeling for education raises remittances by more than 15%. Adding the ability to directly send this funding to the school adds only a further 2.2%. We randomly vary the information asymmetry between migrants and their most closely connected household, but find no significant change in the remittance response to these forms of commitment as information varies. Behavior in these games is then shown to be predictive of take-up of a new financial product called EduPay, designed to allow migrants to directly pay remittances to schools in the Philippines. We find this take-up is largely driven by a response to the ability to label remittances for education, rather than to the hard commitment feature of directly paying schools.

Would I Care If I Knew? Image Concerns and Social Confirmation in Giving

This paper experimentally investigates the nature of image concerns in gift giving. For this, we test variants of dictator and impunity games where the influences of social preferences on behavior are kept constant across all games. Givers maximize material payoffs by pretending to be fair when receivers do not know the actual surplus size, implying that portraying an outward appearance of norm compliance matters more than actual compliance. In impunity games, receivers can reject gifts with no payoff consequence to givers. In the face of receivers’ feedback, some givers ensure positive feedback by donating more while some avoid negative feedback by not giving at all. Removing feedback reduces the incentive to give altogether. Differing behavior in the four games implies that social confirmation plays a crucial role in the transmission of image concerns in giving.

The Role of Visibility in Pursuit/Evasion Games

The cops-and-robber (CR) game has been used in mobile robotics as a discretized model (played on a graph G) of pursuit/evasion problems. The “classic” CR version is a perfect information game: the cops’ (pursuer’s) location is always known to the robber (evader) and vice versa. Many variants of the classic game can be defined: the robber can be invisible and also the robber can be either adversarial (tries to avoid capture) or drunk (performs a random walk). Furthermore, the cops and robber can reside in either nodes or edges of G. Several of these variants are relevant as models or robotic pursuit/evasion. In this paper, we first define carefully several of the variants mentioned above and related quantities such as the cop number and the capture time. Then we introduce and study the cost of visibility (COV), a quantitative measure of the increase in difficulty (from the cops’ point of view) when the robber is invisible. In addition to our theoretical results, we present algorithms which can be used to compute capture times and COV of graphs which are analytically intractable. Finally, we present the results of applying these algorithms to the numerical computation of COV.

The price of stability of fair undirected broadcast games is constant

Bounding the price of stability of undirected network design games with fair cost allocation is a challenging open problem in the Algorithmic Game Theory research agenda. Even though the generalization of such games in directed networks is well understood in terms of the price of stability (it is exactly H n , the n -th harmonic number, for games with n players), far less is known for network design games in undirected networks. The upper bound carries over to this case as well, while the best known lower bound is 2:245. For more restricted but interesting variants of such games, such as broadcast and multicast games, sublogarithmic upper bounds are known, while the best known lower bounds are 1:818 and 1:862, respectively. In this letter, we discuss a recent breakthrough in this field of research: an O (1) upper bound on the price of stability for undirected broadcast games.

Honesty vs. advocacy

We examine the roles and values of honesty and advocacy in communication by studying two closely-related variants of the standard cheap-talk game. In the honesty model, the sender is behavioral and honestly reveals the state with a positive probability. In the advocacy model, the sender is strategic but has no bias with a positive probability. In each model, the sender is strategic and has some bias with the complementary probability. We identify the effects on communication of commitment by the honest type to telling the truth and well-intentioned manipulation of the strategic type with no bias. We also show that neither characteristic uniformly dominates the other from the viewpoints of both the receiver and the biased sender: each player's maximal expected utility can be larger or smaller in one model than in the other, depending on parameter values.