A Private Reputation Mechanism for n-Player Games

In n-player games a focal player may choose n− 1 players to play a round of the game. It makes sense that this choice might be informed, meaning that the focal player tries to choose the best n− 1 players from the population. Reputation is a mechanism that allows such informed choice. In this paper we present a private reputation mechanism that can be applied to any n-player game. Our solution targets the case when a player cannot identify the partner responsible for his payoff. Players collect information from previous interactions and build an imprecise reputation of their candidate partners. This information is used in future interactions to select the best partners. Results show that when there are not enough good partners, our mechanism is able to select the top n− 1 best partners.