COOLNET: COOperation in Large-scale NETworks. Video game experiments to find ways to promote cooperation

The project and its environment:
Solutions to environmental crises are well known, but lack widespread implementation. Social dilemmas in game theory illustrate why: ecosystem health benefits everyone, even those who deteriorate it—which leads to free riding. Mechanisms that limit this social defection have been proposed, but cannot address the global systemic cooperation required by socio-environmental crises. The COOLNET project intends to discover, using video games, what structures of social interactions can foster such large-scale cooperation.

The project will first build a formalism for mechanisms driving cooperation, including new mechanisms that we will explore. We then wish to measure the efficiency of each mechanism in promoting cooperation. By building a massively multiplayer game with industry professionals, we intend to reach thousands of players, allowing for large-scale experiments inaccessible in a traditional lab setting. The in-game interactions will all be social dilemma comparable to game theory models. Each mechanism will be implemented in different game versions, leading to fair comparisons of the cooperation levels they each bring. These evaluations of societal-scale phenomena, in particular those bound to the structure of the interaction network and multi-layer networks, might then inform local and global environmental governance.

COOLNET’s team will comprise up to 5 members and work within the Centre for Sociology Of Humans And Machines (SOHAM), joint between Trinity College Dublin and TU Dublin. SOHAM’s team is interdisciplinary, diverse, welcoming and performing cutting-edge quantitative research on societal issues. COOLNET also has academic connections with École Polytechnique (Paris), Princeton U. (USA) and PIK (Berlin).

Envisioned tasks of the student:
Beyond the academic development of the student, suggested tasks will be to:
- Design, prepare and lead the first-stage small-scale behavioral experiments, with a prototype of the game before its large-scale distribution.
- Analyse the data of these small-scale experiments and help publish the results.

Depending on the student’s interest and progress, these tasks could be touched on:
- Contribute to theoretical models showing innovative ways of promoting cooperation.
- Help prepare the large-scale experiments with the massively multiplayer game.

Lead supervisor: Guillaume Falmagne
Co-supervisor: Taha Yasseri
Starting date: as soon as available, Summer 2026 at the latest.

The candidate should be keen on transdisciplinary and novel approaches, but preferably with a quantitative and computational leaning. A Masters is required, with minimum GPA 2.1.

The candidate should have knowledge of/interest in complex systems, but their training is not required to be from a specific field. If from Physics, Biology, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science or related fields, there should be an interest in sociological/political/ecological/environmental issues. If from Economics, Sociology, Politics or related fields, a strong quantitative background should be demonstrated. Knowledge of/interest in network science and game theory is desirable.

Funding Agency : Lopez-Loreta Foundation

Student Stipend per annum: € 25000

Materials & Travel Budget per annum: €2000

Fees covered by the funding per annum: € 5500

Duration of Funding: 48 months

 If you are interested in submitting an application for this project, please complete an Expression of Interest.

 https://forms.office.com/e/0hCcrv2Gkp