NetworkGames: Simulating Cooperation in Network Games with Personality-driven LLM Agents

Abstract: The advent of LLMs presents a novel opportunity to build high-fidelity agent-based models for simulating complex social systems. However, the behavior of these LLM-based agents in game-theoretic network games remains surprisingly unexplored. In this work, we introduce "NetworkGames," a novel simulation framework designed to investigate how network topology and agent personality jointly shape the evolution of cooperation in network games. We instantiate a population of LLM agents, each endowed with a distinct personality from the MBTI taxonomy, and situate them in various network structures (e.g., small-world and scale-free). Through extensive simulations of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, we first establish a baseline dyadic interaction matrix, revealing nuanced cooperative preferences between all 16 personality pairs. We then demonstrate that macro-level cooperative outcomes are not predictable from dyadic interactions alone; they are co-determined by the network's connectivity and the spatial distribution of personalities. For instance, we find that small-world networks are detrimental to cooperation, while strategically placing pro-social personalities in hub positions within scale-free networks can significantly promote cooperative behavior. Our findings offer significant implications for designing healthier online social environments and forecasting collective behavior. We open-source our framework to foster further research in network game simulations.