The "Two's Company, Three's a Crowd" Game
Philippe Collard
Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, I3S, France
UNS, Parc Valrose, 06108 Nice, France
Philippe.Collard@unice.fr
Abstract
The so-called Two's Company, Three's a Crowd game is a tiny artificial world populated by individuals, each with their own behavior, which is expressed by the way they move around the world; when they move, individuals meet others and establish social links with some of them. This model allows carrying out experiments in silico; its goal is not truly to model the real world but rather to suggest that a system of individuals, moving through an artificial world and reacting together, is adequate to account for the formation of some patterns comparable to those resulting from animal and human behavior. First, according to the density of individuals and the distribution of mobility behaviors, we study the properties of the resulting relational network. Then, assuming that in turn, proximity links may influence the behaviors, we study the impact of the feedback loop on both spatial distribution and social patterns. Such dynamics lead to various kinds of homophilous groups where links between separate groups are weak, while links within a group are strong. Although the emergent social networks could be seen as the result of individual strategies striving for uniformity, seclusion, gregarious instinct or the need to live as a couple or in a narrow group, it is suggested that the explanation does not require a reductionist theory.
