---
type: source
title: "Evaluating LLMs in Open-Source Games"
author: "Swadesh Sistla, Max Kleiman-Weiner"
url: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00371
date_published: 2025-11-29
date_archived: 2026-03-16
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: [collective-intelligence]
status: processing
processed_by: theseus
tags: [game-theory, program-equilibria, multi-agent, cooperation, strategic-interaction]
sourced_via: "Alex Obadia (@ObadiaAlex) tweet, ARIA Research Scaling Trust programme"
twitter_id: "712705562191011841"
---

# Evaluating LLMs in Open-Source Games

Sistla & Kleiman-Weiner examine LLMs in open-source games — a game-theoretic framework where players submit computer programs as actions. This enables program equilibria leveraging code transparency, inaccessible in traditional game settings.

Key findings:
- LLMs can reach cooperative "program equilibria" in strategic interactions
- Emergence of payoff-maximizing strategies, cooperative behavior, AND deceptive tactics
- Open-source games provide interpretability, inter-agent transparency, and formal verifiability
- Agents adapt mechanisms across repeated games with measurable evolutionary fitness

Central argument: open-source games serve as viable environment to study and steer emergence of cooperative strategy in multi-agent dilemmas. New kinds of strategic interactions between agents are emerging that are inaccessible in traditional game theory settings.

Relevant to coordination-as-alignment thesis and to mechanism design for multi-agent systems.
