Skip to main content
Log in

Manipulating Games by Sharing Information

  • Published:
Studia Logica Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We address the issue of manipulating games through communication. In the specific setting we consider (a variation of Boolean games), we assume there is some set of environment variables, the values of which are not directly accessible to players; the players have their own beliefs about these variables, and make decisions about what actions to perform based on these beliefs. The communication we consider takes the form of (truthful) announcements about the values of some environment variables; the effect of an announcement is the modification of the beliefs of the players who hear the announcement so that they accurately reflect the values of the announced variables. By choosing announcements appropriately, it is possible to perturb the game away from certain outcomes and towards others. We specifically focus on the issue of stabilisation: making announcements that transform a game from having no stable states to one that has stable configurations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Austin J. L.: How to Do Things With Words. Oxford University Press, Oxford, England. (1962)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Bachrach, Y., E. Elkind, R. Meir, D. Pasechnik, M. Zuckerman, J. Rothe, and J. S. Rosenschein. The cost of stability in coalitional games. In Proceedings SAGT 2009, 2009.

  3. Bonzon, E., M.-C. Lagasquie, J. Lang, and B. Zanuttini. Boolean games revisited. In Proceedings of the Seventeenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-2006), Riva del Garda, Italy, 2006.

  4. Bonzon E., Lagasquie-Schiex M.-C., Lang J.: Dependencies between players in Boolean games. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning 50, 899–914 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Brafman, R., C. Domshlak, Y. Engel, and M. Tennenholtz. Planning games. In Proceedings of the Twenty-First International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-09), 2009.

  6. Cohen P.R., Perrault C.R.: Elements of a plan based theory of speech acts. Cognitive Science 3, 177–212 (1979)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. van Ditmarsch H., van der Hoek W., Kooi B.: Dynamic Epistemic Logic. Springer-Verlag, Berlin (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Dunne, P. E., S. Kraus, W. van der Hoek, and M. Wooldridge. Cooperative boolean games. In Proceedings of the Seventh International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-2008), Estoril, Portugal, 2008.

  9. Endriss, U., S. Kraus, J. Lang, and M. Wooldridge. Designing incentives for boolean games. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS-2011), Taipei, Taiwan, 2011.

  10. Fagin R., Halpern J.Y., Moses Y., Vardi M.Y.: Reasoning About Knowledge. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Fikes R.E., Nilsson N.: STRIPS: A new approach to the application of theorem proving to problem solving. Artificial Intelligence 2, 189–208 (1971)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Gottlob G., Greco G., Scarcello F.: Pure nash equilibria: Hard and easy games. Journal of AI Research 24, 357–406 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Grant, J., S. Kraus, and M. Wooldridge. Intentions in equilibrium. In Proceedings of the Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2010), Atlanta, GA, 2010.

  14. Halpern J.: Reasoning about Uncertainty. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Harel D., Kozen D., Tiuryn J.: Dynamic Logic. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Harrenstein, P., W. van der Hoek, J.-J.Ch. Meyer, and C. Witteveen. Boolean games. In J. van Benthem, (ed.), Proceeding of the Eighth Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge (TARK VIII), Siena, Italy, 2001, pp. 287–298.

  17. Hoare C.A.R.: An axiomatic basis for computer programming. Communications of the ACM 12(10), 576–583 (1969)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Maskin, E., The theory of implementation in Nash equilibrium: A survey. MIT Department of Economics Working Paper, 1983.

  19. Monderer D., Tennenholtz M.: K-implementation. Journal of AI Research 21, 37–62 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Osborne M.J., Rubinstein A.: A Course in Game Theory. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Papadimitriou, C. H., Computational Complexity. Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA, 1994.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Wooldridge.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Grant, J., Kraus, S., Wooldridge, M. et al. Manipulating Games by Sharing Information. Stud Logica 102, 267–295 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11225-014-9544-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11225-014-9544-5

Keywords

Navigation