Arcade Golf Game Fraud Scandal Revealed, Probed

Thanks to Highway Games for reprinting The Stinger Report articles on further developments regarding revelations of tournament fraud in arcade game Golden Tee Golf. The situation developed after "Incredible Technologies... ejected eight ranked players following investigation into the manipulation of scores... [following the discovery of] either a software or firmware system to deceive the ITS [networked arcade golf] network." The piece notes that "Over US$12 million in cash prizes has been awarded since the International Tournament System (ITS) [for Golden Tee] began in 1995", although the amount involved in this fraud is rumored to be closer to $20,000, and it's also mentioned: "Efforts to exceed this interface's limits has led to a series of bizarre experiments on personally owned machines ranging from a Belt Sander or even the drive wheel of a motor scooter employed to max out the track ball." In this case, it's theorized that "...fraudsters may have created a firmware mechanism that emulates the movement of the trackball and talks to the game board, so able to generate the optimum power and direction for shots."

Comments

Re:course design?

[vitaflo]

I've never played Golden Tee, I'm curious to know how the holes are laid out and what the maximum power is. Is it possible to drive the ball 400 yards if you can hit the trackball the right way? And if so, is hitting a long ball beneficial? Depending on the physics, seems like the ball should bounce right off if a player tried to drive the green.

Yes the faster you spin the trackball, the further the ball goes. This is why you see guys beat the hell out of these machines. For most of them I think it's a macho "look how hard I can beat on this piece of plastic" thing, which is rather stupid, simply because there are much better ways to get the trackball to spin fast than pounding the thing (two thumbs on the ball w/ a quick motion works extremely well). And yes, I have seen drives well over 400 yards.

Thus, the long ball is very benefitial. There are many shortcuts in the game that can get you to the green faster, or on the green in one shot, and many of these you need to be able to hit the ball very far. But they're high risk/reward shots. If you don't shoot far, or accurate enough, you usually end up in the drink, or some other not so nice place. As for the physics, you'd think the ball would bounce right off the green from a drive, but there's a backspin button in the game, and, as unrealistic as this sounds, you can backspin the ball off any club, including the driver, making the ball slow down on the green very quickly.

Re:Anyone with personal experience?

[Anonymous Coward]

Software updates? Costly? They update the systems all the time for free, to fix bugs, close loopholes, lock out cheaters, etc. Those updates are done over the same phone call that is used to send/receive game statistics.

If you want new courses, you have to pay. If you want to have a tournament-ready system, you need the latest courses. The average operator makes back the money they spend on the course update within a month or so. Yeah, I know, 2-3 weeks, you want money NOWWWWWWW... and tournament courses are only released once a year. Oh yeah, that's SO HORRIBLE.

Bar owners rarely own machines. Operators typically own the machines. Operators rarely are happy when someone gets inside their property, no matter who owns the location it's in. And there is a skill testing system, so if you go from #500000 to #5 in a month, and stay there consistently for a couple tournaments, expect a visit. If you're consistently shooting -25 and shoot a +15 on the test, sorry, you're barred from the tournament.

The Real Story

[Ralph Wiggam]

I am involved in the Golden Tee community. One of my best friends runs GoldenTeePlayers.com and I've known about this scandal since it happened a few months ago. The way these guys got caught is because on the national tournament results it shows your name, score, and longest drive distance, which is the third tie breaker. All seven of the top scores had an identical long drive distance. We figured they had opened their home machines, unplugged the trackball, and plugged in some kind of signal generator to create perfectly repeatable, exact shots. Apparently other people assumed that because it's mentioned in the story write up. The real story is much dumber. The trackball has two rollers, one for X and Y movement. If you unplug the Y roller, you hit a pefectly straight shot. That's all they were doing. It's obviously still against the rules and they were all banned for life. But it's not like they were Lex Luthor. There were two rule changes as a result. The 50 to 75 people who owned machines in their home have been forced to place them in bars. Also, the tournament conditions now change every 4 hours instead of every day. Yes, those seven guys won several thousand bucks by cheating, but there were still 3000 other prizes awarded each month. It sucked, but we're still playing.

-Barry