A Serious Game Based on a Public Goods Experiment

It has been pointed that public goods games lack experimental research in topics such as the study of the interaction of groups versus the interaction of individuals and effects of social identity and decision framing. Furthermore, the number of computational frameworks proposed to date to deploy these type of experiments is reduced. In this context, we propose the INVITE computational framework to serve as a useful research tool. The motivation behind the proposed framework is therefore straightforward: to allow researchers to be able to configure without difficulty public goods experiments where they can test their hypothesis regarding the behaviour of individuals, simulate behaviour of automated artificial intelligence and study the interaction between virtual agents and real persons. The greatest advantage of the INVITE framework is that it provides a high level of flexibility in the configuration of game theoretical paradigms. It is possible to configure simple structures such as the 2-player prisoner's dilemma or stag hunt as well as some of the most complex forms of inter-group conflicts such as team games. Accordingly, this framework allows an effortless parametrization, assisted by a tailored configuration tool, of a myriad of public goods games. Moreover, the 3D video game configured in the framework places the players in an immersive and engaging virtual environment where real-life conditions can be replicated and some circumstances, difficult to reproduce in real-life, such as life-threatening situations, can also be simulated. Given its characteristics, the proposed framework aims to represent an important contribution to the study of behaviour of both virtual and human players in scenarios of social conflict.