Social contract theory in action in survival games

In the recent trend of survival games like Minecraft, Rust, DayZ and many other, there is some sort of inner social experiment. Players can do whatever they want to but, as in real life, their actions will have consequences for them and for others. This is pretty much like the state of nature in the social contract theory.

The state of nature is the way humans behaved before societies. For Hobbes it was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", now if we look closer to social interactions inside multiplayer survival games we will see exactly this behavior at the very beginning but the interesting part is how people tend to stick together in small groups in order to survive longer.

As far as I had experienced a leader will raise (the Leviathan) and the rest of the group will cede some freedom in order to get protection. This seems to be the most primitive form of society and that's why it will appear naturally in this kind of games.

The problem is that there are conflicts between groups constantly so while there's more protection inside a group, it will only be safe if you are the most powerful one. The social hierarchy will not be stable since there will be a constant fight for the power.

If we let this experiment run for enough time at some point it will reach Nash equilibrium and a more advanced form of society will emerge in the game. So next time you're playing Rust remember that it is more than just a simple game, in fact, you can help in the search for a better kind of government.