Limited-perception games

Abstract

We study rational agents with different perception capabilities in strategic games. We focus on a class of one-shot limited-perception games. These games extend simultaneous-move normal-form games by presenting each player with an individualized perception of all players' payoff functions. The accuracy of a player's perception is determined by the player's capability level. Capability levels are countable and totally ordered, with a higher level corresponding to a more accurate perception. We study the rational behavior of players in these games and formalize relevant equilibria conditions. In contrast to equilibria in conventional bimatrix games, which can be represented by a pair of mixed strategies, in our limited perception games a higher-order response function captures how the lower-capability player uses their (less accurate) perception of the payoff function to reason about the (more accurate) possible perceptions of the higher-capability opponent. This response function characterizes, for each possible perception of the higher-capability player (from the perspective of the lower-capability player), the best response of the higher capability player for that perception. Since the domain of the response function can be exponentially large or even infinite, finding one equilibrium may be computationally intractable or even undecidable. Nevertheless, we show that for any $ε$, there exists an $ε$-equilibrium with a compact, tractable representation whose size is independent of the size of the response function's domain. We further identify classes of zero-sum limited-perception games in which finding an equilibrium becomes a (typically tractable) nonsmooth convex optimization problem.