Modeling a Case of Herding Behavior in a Multi-Player Game

Abstract

The system mentioned in the title belongs to the family of the so-called massively multi-player online social games (MMOSG). It features a scoring system for the elements of the game that is prone to herding effects. We analyze in detail its stationary regime in the thermodynamic limit, when the number of players tends to infinity. In particular, for some classes of input sequences and selection policies, we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a complete meanfield-like measure, showing off an interesting condensation phenomenon.