  In spatial games players typically alter their strategy by imitating the most
successful or one randomly selected neighbor. Since a single neighbor is taken
as reference, the information stemming from other neighbors is neglected, which
begets the consideration of alternative, possibly more realistic approaches.
Here we show that strategy changes inspired not only by the performance of
individual neighbors but rather by entire neighborhoods introduce a
qualitatively different evolutionary dynamics that is able to support the
stable existence of very small cooperative clusters. This leads to phase
diagrams that differ significantly from those obtained by means of pairwise
strategy updating. In particular, the survivability of cooperators is possible
even by high temptations to defect and over a much wider uncertainty range. We
support the simulation results by means of pair approximations and analysis of
spatial patterns, which jointly highlight the importance of local information
for the resolution of social dilemmas.
