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arXiv · 2401.02353

Game Mining: How to Make Money from those about to Play a Game

James W. Bono·David H. Wolpert
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Abstract

It is known that a player in a noncooperative game can benefit by publicly restricting his possible moves before play begins. We show that, more generally, a player may benefit by publicly committing to pay an external party an amount that is contingent on the game's outcome. We explore what happens when external parties -- who we call ``game miners'' -- discover this fact and seek to profit from it by entering an outcome-contingent contract with the players. We analyze various structured bargaining games between miners and players for determining such an outcome-contingent contract. These bargaining games include playing the players against one another, as well as allowing the players to pay the miner(s) for exclusivity and first-mover advantage. We establish restrictions on the strategic settings in which a game miner can profit and bounds on the game miner's profit. We also find that game miners can lead to both efficient and inefficient equilibria.

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BibTeXRIS

James W. Bono, David H. Wolpert. 2024-01-04. Game Mining: How to Make Money from those about to Play a Game. https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.02353

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