Generating games for the catalog#

Alongside the curated catalog of games (built and hosted separately; see the catalog’s developer guide for how to contribute new games), pygambit can generate games on the fly from two external sources: the OpenSpiel library and the GAMUT suite.

Loading OpenSpiel games

Games from the OpenSpiel library can be generated using pygambit.catalog.generate_openspiel():

pygambit.catalog.generate_openspiel("matrix_rps")
pygambit.catalog.generate_openspiel("tiny_hanabi")
pygambit.catalog.generate_openspiel("blotto", params={"players": 2, "coins": 3, "fields": 2})

The params argument is forwarded directly to pyspiel.load_game; see the OpenSpiel game list for available parameters per game.

This requires open_spiel to be installed (pip install open_spiel; not available on Windows). The game is exported to EFG or NFG format on the fly and loaded into Gambit. Not all OpenSpiel games can be exported; a ValueError is raised for games that are incompatible with either format. See the OpenSpiel interoperability tutorial for worked examples.

Generating GAMUT games

Games from the GAMUT generator suite can be created using pygambit.catalog.generate_gamut():

pygambit.catalog.generate_gamut("RandomGame", params={"players": 2, "actions": 3}, gamut_jar="/path/to/gamut.jar")
pygambit.catalog.generate_gamut("CovariantGame", params={"players": 2, "actions": [3, 3]}, gamut_jar="/path/to/gamut.jar")
pygambit.catalog.generate_gamut(
    "RandomGame",
    params={"players": 3, "actions": 4, "normalize": True, "min_payoff": 0, "max_payoff": 100},
    gamut_jar="/path/to/gamut.jar",
)

The params argument maps directly to GAMUT command-line flags. Boolean flags such as -normalize and -int_payoffs are passed as True; list values for -actions expand to space-separated tokens. See the GAMUT documentation for the full list of game classes and parameters.

GAMUT requires Java (install from java.com) and gamut.jar to be installed. Provide the path to gamut.jar via the gamut_jar argument or the GAMUT_JAR environment variable. Download GAMUT from http://gamut.stanford.edu/.

All 35 GAMUT game classes

	Class	Description	Players
0	ArmsRace	Arms race with cost and demand functions chose...	n
1	BattleOfTheSexes	Coordination game where players prefer to meet...	2
2	BertrandOligopoly	Bertrand oligopoly with arbitrary cost and dem...	n
3	BidirectionalLEG	Bidirectional local-effect game on a specified...	n
4	Chicken	Classic 2x2 Chicken game.	2
5	CollaborationGame	Game where all players choosing the same actio...	n
6	CongestionGame	Congestion game where payoffs depend on how ma...	n
7	CoordinationGame	Pure coordination game rewarding matching acti...	n
8	CournotDuopoly	Cournot duopoly with arbitrary cost and invers...	2
9	CovariantGame	Game with payoffs whose cross-player correlati...	n
10	DispersionGame	Game where dispersed action choices are rewarded.	n
11	GrabTheDollar	Simultaneous competition to claim a prize first.	2
12	GreedyGame	Players each choose a subset from a set; payof...	2
13	GuessThirdsAve	Players guess a number trying to reach 2/3 of ...	n
14	HawkAndDove	Classic 2x2 Hawk and Dove game.	2
15	LocationGame	Hotelling-style two-player location game on a ...	2
16	MajorityVoting	Majority voting game with arbitrary candidate ...	n
17	MatchingPennies	Classic 2x2 Matching Pennies game.	2
18	MinimumEffortGame	Payoffs depend on the minimum effort exerted a...	n
19	NPlayerChicken	N-player Chicken game with cooperation costs a...	n
20	NPlayerPrisonersDilemma	N-player Prisoner's Dilemma with parameterised...	n
21	PolymatrixGame	Polymatrix game formed by two-player edge game...	n
22	PrisonersDilemma	Classic 2x2 Prisoner's Dilemma.	2
23	RandomCompoundGame	Compound game whose payoffs are sums of random...	n
24	RandomGame	Game with payoffs drawn uniformly at random.	n
25	RandomGraphicalGame	Random graphical game on a specified graph.	n
26	RandomLEG	Random local-effect game on a specified graph.	n
27	RandomZeroSum	Two-player zero-sum game with random payoffs.	2
28	RockPaperScissors	Classic Rock, Paper, Scissors game.	2
29	ShapleyGame	Shapley's original game; no stable equilibrium...	2
30	SimpleInspectionGame	Inspection game where players choose from diff...	2
31	TravelersDilemma	Players claim a value; the lowest claim wins a...	n
32	TwoByTwoGame	2x2 game of a specified type per Rapoport's cl...	2
33	UniformLEG	Local-effect game where all edges share the sa...	n
34	WarOfAttrition	Players choose concession times; payoffs depen...	2

See the GAMUT interoperability tutorial for worked examples.

The package for computation in game theory

Generating games for the catalog#