Abstract. We study pure-strategy Nash equilibria in multi-player concurrent deterministic games, for a variety of preference relations. We provide a novel construction, called the suspect game, which transforms a multi-player concurrent game into a two-player turnbased game which turns Nash equilibria into winning strategies (for some objective that depends on the preference relations of the players in the original game). We use that transformation to design algorithms for computing Nash equilibria in finite games, which in most cases have optimal worst-case complexity, for large classes of preference relations. This includes the purely qualitative framework, where each player has a single ω-regular objective that she wants to satisfy, but also the larger class of semi-quantitative objectives, where each player has several ω-regular objectives equipped with a preorder (for instance, a player may want to satisfy all her objectives, or to maximise the number of objectives that she achieves.)

Abstract.We study the computational complexity of Nash equilibria in concurrent games with limit-average objectives. In particular, we prove that the existence of a Nash equilibrium in randomised strategies is undecidable, while the existence of a Nash equilibrium in pure strategies is decidable, even if we put a constraint on the payoff of the equilibrium. Our undecidability result holds even for a restricted class of concurrent games, where nonzero rewards occur only on terminal states. Moreover, we show that the constrained existence problem is undecidable not only for concurrent games but for turn-based games with the same restriction on rewards. Finally, we prove that the constrained existence problem for Nash equilibria in (pure or randomised) stationary strategies is decidable and analyse its complexity.

Abstract. We study infinite games played by arbitrarily many players on a directed graph. Equilibrium states capture rational behaviour in these games. Instead of the well-known notion of a Nash equilibrium, we focus on the notion of a subgame perfect equilibrium. We argue that the latter one is more appropriate for the kind of games we study, and we show the existence of a subgame perfect equilibrium in any infinite game with ω-regular winning conditions. As, in general, equilibria are not unique, it is appealing to compute one with a maximal payoff. This problem corresponds naturally to the problem of deciding given a game and two payoff vectors whether the game has an equilibrium with a payoff in between the given thresholds. We show that this problem is decidable for games with ω-regular winning conditions played on a finite graph and analyse its complexity. Moreover, we establish that any subgame perfect equilibrium of a game with ω-regular winning conditions played on a finite graph can be implemented by finite-state strategies. Finally, we consider logical definability. We state that if we fix the number of players together with an ω-regular winning condition for each of them and two payoff vectors the property that a game has a subgame perfect equilibrium with a payoff in between the given thresholds is definable in the modal µ-calculus.

Abstract. We study the complexity of Nash equilibria in infinite (turnbased, qualitative) multiplayer games. Chatterjee & al. showed the existence of a Nash equilibrium in any such game with ω-regular winning conditions, and they devised an algorithm for computing one. We argue that in applications it is often insufficient to compute just some Nash equilibrium. Instead, we enrich the problem by allowing to put (qualitative) constraints on the payoff of the desired equilibrium. Our main result is that the resulting decision problem is NP-complete for games with co-Büchi, parity or Streett winning conditions but fixed-parameter tractable for many natural restricted classes of games with parity winning conditions. For games with Büchi winning conditions we show that the problem is, in fact, decidable in polynomial time.We also analyse the complexity of strategies realising a Nash equilibrium. In particular, we show that pure finite-state strategies as opposed to arbitrary mixed strategies suffice to realise any Nash equilibrium of a game with ω-regular winning conditions with a qualitative constraint on the payoff.

We study nondeterministic strategies in parity games with the aim of computing a most permissive winning strategy. Following earlier work, we measure permissiveness in terms of the average number/weight of transitions blocked by a strategy. Using a translation into mean-payoff parity games, we prove that deciding (the permissiveness of) a most permissive winning strategy is in NP ∩ coNP. Along the way, we provide a new study of mean-payoff parity games. In particular, we give a new algorithm for solving these games, which beats all previously known algorithms for this problem.Sponsored by ANR-06-SETI-003 DOTS, and by ESF-Eurocores LogICCC GASICS.