  The conflict between individual and collective interests is in the heart of
every social dilemmas established by evolutionary game theory. We cannot avoid
these conflicts but sometimes we may choose which interaction framework to use
as a battlefield. For instance some people like to be part of a larger group
while other persons prefer to interact in a more personalized, individual way.
Both attitudes can be formulated via appropriately chosen traditional games. In
particular, the prisoner's dilemma game is based on pair interaction while the
public goods game represents multi-point interactions of group members. To
reveal the possible advantage of a certain attitude we extend these models by
allowing players not simply to change their strategies but also let them to
vary their attitudes for a higher individual income. We show that both
attitudes could be the winner at a specific parameter value. Interestingly,
however, the subtle interplay between different states may result in a
counterintuitive evolutionary outcome where the increase of the multiplication
factor of public goods game drives the population to a fully defector state. We
point out that the accompanying pattern formation can only be understood via
the multipoint or multi-player interactions of different microscopic states
where the vicinity of a particular state may influence the relation of two
other competitors.

Physics and Society;Statistical Mechanics;Computer Science and Game Theory;Populations and Evolution