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Game Theory Explorer: software for the applied game theorist

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Abstract

This paper presents the “Game Theory Explorer” software tool to create and analyze games as models of strategic interaction. A game in extensive or strategic form is created and nicely displayed with a graphical user interface in a web browser. State-of-the-art algorithms then compute all Nash equilibria of the game after a mouseclick. In tutorial fashion, we present how the program is used, and the ideas behind its main algorithms. We report on experiences with the architecture of the software and its development as an open-source project.

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Notes

  1. GTE does not show singleton information sets as ovals that contain a single node, only information sets with two or more nodes.

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Acknowledgments

We are indebted to Mark Egesdal, Alfonso Gómez-Jordana and Martin Prause for their invaluable contributions as programmers of GTE. Mark Egesdal designed the main program structure and coined the name “Game Theory Explorer”, with financial support from a STICERD research grant at the London School of Economics in 2010. Alfonso Gómez-Jordana and Martin Prause were funded by the Google Summer of Code in 2011 and 2012 for the open-source Gambit project, and continue as contributing volunteers. Karen Bletzer wrote conversion programs between GTE and Gambit file formats. Wan Huang implemented the enumeration of Nash equilibria based on the sequence form. We thank Theodore L. Turocy for inspiring discussions and for his support of GTE as part of Gambit. David Avis has written the lrsNash code for computing all Nash equilibria of a two-player game. All contributions and financial support are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Liverpool , L69 3BX, UK

    Rahul Savani

  2. Department of Mathematics, London School of Economics, London , WC2A 2AE, UK

    Bernhard von Stengel

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  1. Rahul Savani
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  2. Bernhard von Stengel
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Correspondence to Bernhard von Stengel.

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Savani, R., von Stengel, B. Game Theory Explorer: software for the applied game theorist. Comput Manag Sci 12, 5–33 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10287-014-0206-x

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