Tale of one emergent game: Opinion formation in dynamical undirected hypergraphs

Opinion dynamics in dynamical hypergraphs, mirroring the dynamical nature of high-order social interactions, are attracting increasing attention. Opinion dynamics on high-order interactions lead to non-trivial dynamical patterns compared with that on pairwise networks. How should we systematically understand the intrinsic differences between opinion dynamics in hypergraphs and that in networks? We establish a voter model in a dynamical hypergraph. We find that both opinion formation and transient topology are captured by a single multi-player game, provided that the hypergraphs evolve sufficiently fast. The Nash equilibrium analysis facilitates us to reveal the intrinsic differences between high-order interactions and pairwise interactions in the empirical system. Furthermore, we perform simulations to show how robust our theoretical results are beyond fast rewiring. Our work provides a game route for opinion dynamics and sheds a hidden connection between opinion formation on dynamical high-order interactions and multi-player games.