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Killing The Fun - Cheating In Online Games
Thanks to the San Jose Mercury News for its story discussing the ever-present problem of cheating in online games. One of the issues discussed is cheating on Xbox Live using Action Replay-like devices, with a Microsoft spokesperson suggesting: "We didn't go into this with the idea that no one's ever going to be able to exploit this... But we absolutely take this stuff seriously and are taking action on it every day." However, noted FPS player Dennis 'Thresh' Fong laments an unfortunate side effect for the dextrous: "Because there is this perception that everybody cheats, people that are good are not recognized for their skills. When I play online, I'm always accused of being a cheater."
As someone who released the first aimbot for unreal tournament, and coded a few different cheats I can tell you why I, cheated. To grief people. I never cared about looking 'uber'. I was a good player in my own right. I cheated just because I wanted to grief the mindless, shitball, cliquey clannie fuckheads that played that game. I *liked* the fact that they knew I was cheating.
Other people in my clan/grief group botted for other reasons. One guy just liked looking uber to noobz. Another just throught it was funny.
Simple solution... ever play Yahoo games? There are beginner, intermed and expert rooms to choose from. This might be something to consider in games. I find that the rooms are pretty honest in skill level. Sure, someone could troll the beginner rooms if they're good, but, from the Yahoo example, it doesn't happen (much). If you're #4 ranked, but in the beginner level, that's not much respect.
Cheaters are bad. But they are NOTHING compared to TKs.
At least cheaters you kick and they go cheat somewhere else. TKs keep coming back cause they enjoy it too damn much. Not to mention TKs have a sad history of coming back with different name.
At least cheaters are wanted by one team. TKs are hated by everybody. The team that win gets an unsatisfying victory. The team that lose gets abused.
You hit upon an important point, people who are casual players can look at cheating as a way of levelling the playing field. This is often overlooked in the knee-jerk reaction of 'CHEATING BAD!' we see so often.
For about a year I ran a Counterstrike server. My brother bought me a copy so I'd run it for him but I ended up getting hooked on it for a while. I saw my fair share of cheaters but I took a relaxed approach to it - if the player wasn't ruining the game for other people I let it slide. It added a challenge from an otherwise uninteresting opponent. On the other hand, if the cheater was putting the beats on everyone else I told him/her to knock it off but usually had to ban the player outright.
It took a few months of pruning out the griefing cheaters but eventually the server produced a regular group of good players, either by skill alone or augmented by a cheating program. Some of the cheating players even dropped the cheats as their skills grew. We had a lot of fun...