A Short Note on Nonlinear Games on a Grid

Abstract

Players are arranged on a regular lattice and coded with a specific strategy for a pre-defined game. Each player sums their payoffs from playing the game with each of their neighbors, and then adopts the strategy of the most successful player in the neighborhood. Dynamics are thus determined by the relative ranks of all possible payoff sums. Linear sums of payoffs, however, generate only a small proportion of all possible rankings. Allowing for any ranking (motivated by Conway's Game of Life) creates a rich array of dynamics.