Slashdot Mirror
Turn Your FPS Skills Into Cash
Game|Life is posting about a new agreement between Valve and an outfit called Tournament.com that will allow for an official Counter-Strike/Half-Life 2 Multiplayer game competition service. It sounds a lot like online poker tournaments, where players ante into a pot and the winner walks away with the results. "Another option is a perpetual, ongoing game that players can drop into at any time. If you get killed, you lose $1. If you kill another player, you get $1. When your virtual 'wallet' is out of money, you're done playing. Until you add some more funds with a credit card or PayPal, that is. For now, Tournament.com is strictly small stakes. Entry fees for the example tournaments were $3.60 for each of six players, with an $18 pot split between first, second, and third place. Company representatives said they're considering high-roller tournaments, but want to make sure the service has been fully field-tested, and potential cheating methods blocked off, before big money starts getting thrown around." One of the findings of the SOE White Paper was that some people are perfectly happy making money off of their gaming hobby. How long before we see similar livelihoods via this service?
Let's give people financial incentive to create bigger, better, and less detectable aimbots with the purpose of scamming people.
This has the very real potential to ruin public servers.
I'm still trying to figure out how the most generic FPS ever has such a huge following. Are we, as gamers, that starved for entertainment that we're playing games with the simplest premise ever?
We're all going to die. i intend to deserve it.
I foresee this going in the same direction as online poker for US residents. It will soon be illegal for players to fun their multiplayer accounts with cash using a US bank account.
Stand by for an amendment to the current port security bill
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
I don't care about this at all as a gamer.
As a computer scientist, I'm fascinated by the research potential of creating AI with for-profit motives. It even has some turingtest-esque features. "Did you just get fragged by billy or Stanfords KillBot version 3.2?"
Here's how I would play:
Find 3 or more players close together.
Run into the middle of them.
Detonate grenades killing everyone around (including myself).
1) I lose $1.
2) I gain $4.
3) Profit!!
*NOTE* Shouting "Leroy Jenkins" is an optional embellishment.
Okay the three posts I see here so far are all negative. As a person who enjoys Half-Life FPS mods (particularly DOD, not so much CS) I love this idea. I don't see how it will ruin any public servers unless they are the servers that are running the contests. And even then, its not terribly expensive and could be fun. The sites that run servers where I play (when I have time) regularly have just for fun tournaments and they are pretty cool.
I'll admit I don't know what the guy is talking about with the port security post, so I can't comment there. But in general I see this as being pretty cool. Like a football pool only for gaming. Nothing to take too seriously.
"Contrarily the lookaside buffer might not be the panacea... "
Not necessarily. While there would be a greater incentive to create bots, there would be also be more outcry against this form of cheating, and more pressure on the game server admins to enforce anti-cheating rules. Its one thing to lose a few points when a cheating sniper owns you with an aimbot. Its quite another thing when you lose a couple dollars for the same reason.
Why was the parent modded redundant? Browsing at +1, its the first comment on the page...
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
When I read that headline, I thought the US Army found a new recruitment scheme.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"Find 3 or more players close together.
Run into the middle of them.
Detonate grenades killing everyone around (including myself).
"
I think the Iraqi's have a patent on it.
Gambling is defined as a game where chance and luck plays an important role. Now, find me one FPS enthusiast who will admit that his headshots are purely lucky.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unlike MMORGs which are controlled almost entirely by server side user agents, first person shooters very vulnerable to cheating.
.txt filed associated with enabling this trivial hack!)...
o d=article&id=4423
There are, even now, dozens of "hacks" that work with counterstrike - the most inventive give on screen itinerary information about players (which you can see through translucent walls) a la Deux Ex!
Allow me to ramble...
COD similarly suffers from cheaters. A sponsored (paid!) COD2 player was recently "discovered" cheating after a commercial hack manufacturer had their website's database exposed via a phpbb (iirc?) vulnerability. The happy-hacker was an admin at a gaming forum and compared the email addresses gleened from the site to ones registered on his forum... and tada, one of the biggest names in COD2 was a known cheat user... he even PAID $200 for it. (private cheats are almost always undetected)
Anti-cheat techniques often fail. VAC (now VAC2) - the Vale AntiCheat plugin - is notorious for being easy to sidle past. Other commercial varients such as Punk Buster either no longer support the games you want to play, or offer only a small degree better detection than the game manufacturer.
I was on a COD2 server last night, and Punk Buster kicked in doing a check, and the number of players went down from 20 to 3.
I may be wrong here, but the BF2 patches, compared to the release client, have seriously stepped up the anti-cheat detection. Alt-tabbing out of the game or running background processes on a single processor machine can make BF2 unbreakable as PunkBuster threads kick in to scan the system.
Most attempts at tracking and hashing memory have failed - there's too much ram on PCs nowadays! Without OS-level write handlers its very hard to track subversive programs. And I'm not even going to mention game-based "hacks" such as enabling the alpha channel on Valve textures (vtf files have a
Then there's always the driver. Seeing as there are so many ogl implementations and extended vendor drivers (ie: NGO drivers for nvidia hardware etc) it would be impossible to market a game that requires signed drivers!
Lets talk about the UK counter-strike scene for a sec...
C4U - See For Yourself - were, by all means, a talented clan. However, they fielded two known AND CAUGHT hackers for some time, Kritical, and Willzooo (less the l33tisms in their handles). I went to the UKs biggest lan event a few weeks back, as a gamer, only to find in none other than the counter-strike tournament, Kritical and Willzooo... To make my disgust worst, they were PLAYING for the UKs formost and successful sponsored team - Team Dignitas! http://www.team-dignitas.org/ - they're sponsored by Intel and Creative, and I can assure you these guys get a monthly salary for playing computer games (not to mention the hardware)...
So there you have it. Cheating is interlaced within the gaming community, ex-cheaters who have been banned from competitions and ridiculed by the community are forgotten about in only a matter of months, and later find themselves paid to play games.
There is no incentive not to cheat. It is ludicrous to bet on something where you cannot tell if someone is cheating or not.
Matt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PunkBuster
http://www.ggl.com/index.php?controller=News&meth
http://www.ukterrorist.com/news/wilzooo_hax/
But there's "AI" (Artificial Intelligence) and then there's "AI" (ACTUAL Intellegence).
Simple game + real opponents = huge following
A goal is a dream with a deadline
So now everyones so afraid of losing money they all buy AWMs and camp the spawn points. First one to pop their head up dies..
CS players don't need encouragement to camp, they are already camper than Graham Norton in a gay bar.
I like muppets.
Collusion could be a problem as well. In comparison to online poker, collusion here would be much more effective in terms of winning and would be more difficult to control. An unofficial "team" could fill up all but one spot in a tournament and gang up on the loner. Once the buy-ins get a little bigger, even a 5-way split of the winnings could be pretty good money.
Finn, I worked on a HL2 mod team for a little while (HL2CTF) and during that time I spent a little while doing research into HL2 cheats. What I found was not surprising, but disappointing: 1) there are a number of very active cheats 2) the communities surrounding these cheats already involve money 3) the anti-cheat mechanisms in place are woefully out-dated (Valve's VAC is not much better or worse then most) 4) reporting and active discovery of these cheats while very possible is not done seriously.
After having done the work on my own I was actually a little more disappointed in the state of cheat detection. My antivirus client updates almost daily yet VAC and even Punkbuster goes ages without updates. Cheating is, simply put, a reality.
Of course as a some-time competitive player the biggest problem with this *can* be telling to difference between being highly skilled and augmented. That goes for running a server (and trying to determine) as well as playing (and having less skilled players accuse you/your team).
Quack, quack.
The scammers will go where the money is, leaving the local games pure again.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
Else it might be a fun idea. I have exposed so many admin, and people, who have lied for months about cheating. They admit it to me privately in chat. I would say 30% of counter strike source players cheat.
Now lets look at real gambling. Frankly I would never gamble over the internet, it is a sham compared to the real thing. Typically with the real thing, you know there are not any cheaters. There are many eyes in the sky in a casino. If it were setup on a lan it would be cool, but are'nt there already shows that do this? I think the cheating factor is huge in this, and anyone who spends their money on this is not very bright. It has nothing to do with hating FPS
+$1 for a frag, -$1 for a death?
Hardcore.
/* No Comment */
Enter some paintball tourneys. You like playing an FPS? Paintball is the ultimate FPS thrill. They pay out lots of money and you can actually use it for REAL equipment that you keep from game to game. Not to mention actual, physical exercise. Good times. :)
Blerg.
I got filthy rich by running away from home with the kid from "The Wonder Years" and the singer from Rilo Kiley, and not saying much. You can too!
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
There's a much more direct way to make money off of FPS skills.
1) Be female and sort of good looking.
2) Be sort of good at a popular multiplayer FPS.
3) Get boatloads of sponsorship to play in tournaments.
4) Profit!
(No, there is no step between 3 and 4.)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
At first I was tempted, doing very well in a private CS:S server on a daily (or almost) basis. I am pretty good at the game, I know the hiding spots and I use a bit of common sense. Being good with my 'twitch' skills doesn't hurt either.
However with that said.... cheaters are abounds in CS:S. Wall hacks, aimbots, etc. With an online tournament there are far too high risks of cheating. People won't use aimbots but they will wall hack, and just use that to avoid dying, rather than racking up the kills (if they are smart). You can be smart and not get detected, people just chalk it up to your being 'good', but in fact I know so many players who people think are just 'good' that have later been banned with VAC after they clamped down on the cheaters.
Anyway, until they can guarantee cheaters to not play, then I have no interest in playing. So I guess I'll never be playing.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
CS games are already slow enough. I would hate to see how bad they were with some kid hiding out because he doesn't want to lose a buck. I bet you would learn all the lame camping spots fairly quickly though. Plus, CS isn't 100% hack free.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
This concept has been tried many times before by various companies, e.g. mplayer.com back in 2000, UltimateArena.com in 2003, PaycheckArena.com just last year. It never worked and it never will, for the simple reason that FPS games are highly skill-dependent - the random factor is very low and the better player wins 95% of the time. Some people try it, but the below average players soon realise they don't have any chance to win money and quit, thus raising the average difficulty until noone is left. This as opposed to poker, where the outcome of any single tournament is highly random and anyone with half a clue can win sometimes, leaving everyone convinced that they too have a chance of winning.
Hold the tournements in a public venue, with everyone in the same building. Every player plays on identical equipment, provided by a sponser. Every computer is flashed with an identical image, no modification beyond basic controls is allowed. No player is left alone with their computer, put security cameras on them or something.
Problem solved.
The title should've been "PWNZ PPLZ 4 MUNEY$" so more FPS players would've been interested.
I knight thee: lord Spamalot, esquire of the rounded e-square.
As we know, SC(r)OTUS is diminishing the power^ of trademarks, so that means I'll have to demote you now...
I emasculate thee: mister Spamalot, gentile of the penetraded rectum.
My fellow slashdotians, do not cry for that fallen s-him. He earned his rank of man-bitch.
It won't work, I'll tell you why: People who lose money more than they make, will stop playing after a while. There will be some kind of Darwinian selection where only the most skilled players will be left playing. Then of course, the less skilled of the more skilled players will stop playing until only the top notch, professional "fatality-like" players will be left.
When that happens, even the top players will on average lose more money than they make, since the playing field should be somewhat balanced (With Kill/Death ratios approaching 1:1). The playing fee would, therefore, be higher than the profit.
If one player is so good that he makes heaps of profit every time, people will just start logging off as soon as he logs in, because for him to make profit, someone else has to lose money, and people aren't going to stick around to see that happen. I already see it happen in regular games, no doubt it will happen in payed ones.
There is a reason those things only work with gambling, because you can keep the less skilled players playing since they know there is a lucky chance that they might win. When it comes to games that are 100% skill, you will notice that 99.9% of the time the prize money comes from sponsors and not the competitors own pockets.
Would you play Quake against Fatality or Starcraft against Boxer if your own money was the line?
Blood Toll tried this. A neat idea. They use the Cube game engine with a java 'lobby' that doubles as an anti-cheat tool. Been in early testing stages for a while, doubt it will come to fruition with the current engine but it has potential as an idea.
People lose more than they make when gambling.
I guess that's why Vegas turned to dust long ago.
I enjoy fragging some chump as much as anyone else, but if they lost money every time I got a good shot in, I'd actually start to feel bad after a few shots.
... glitch... (not a hack, not really a cheat, just a bit of a glitch), expected to only use it once or twice before people clued in and stayed out of that room, and instead I got this chump (or chumpette) who just went batty that I kept headshotting them when I couldn't see them. I laughed my ass off, so did my friend, so did most of the other people playing.
:)
Quick story: A few years ago, was playing Quake 3, Weapons Factory Arena mod, at a friends place. I discovered that when you turned on Player Name Labels, if you passed your crosshairs over an area that you could shoot through but couldn't see through (like a curtain over a window), the player name would pop up when you went over them, even though you couldn't actually see them.
So, I did what any good sniper would do. I found a hole to hide in, pointed my gun at the window, and waited for labels to start popping up. A few shots later I had the exact height for headshots.
Some chucklehead started running in there. I shot him. He ran back. I shot him again. He tried to sneak back in. I shot him again. All headshots. He started doing nothing but running from the spawn point to this room, trying to find a way to avoid me. He'd duck, he'd run back and forth, he'd bunnyjump. All the while he was cursing me, accusing me of cheating, and going completely rabid and foamy-mouth. I must have headshotted him 50 times before the timer ran out.
I thought it was hilarious. I'd found a small
Now, if he lost a buck every time I nailed him... I'd really feel bad. Sure, it's his fault, but still, $50 lost and you don't understand how you lost it? That would suck.
Also brings to mind the old Descent days. We used to play v1 multiplayer in the university LAN. It was awesome 8 of us rippin it up. Thanks to my ability to think 3D (vs most of the other guys who all thought in terms of "flat"), I was the resident sniper, hanging nose down over doorways with homing missiles ready, jumping out of pits or corners in the ceiling, and of course, hiding out while they all fought, and then wiping out the winner.
All perfectly acceptable in a winner-take-all game for fun. But if I mega-missile someone up the ass because they went blasting through a doorway without looking, and then nail everyone who comes for their loot, and then nail the respawns who come looking for a powerup... well, it just doesn't sound as fun when there's serious money to be lost for everyone.
We've all had those days when we just can't accept that we're losing, and we have to keep trying (I did that yesterday in WoW... stupid spider queen). And while that's all fine when it's for fun, or when there's a 1-time bet on it... if you suddenly have a crappy night and are $200 in the hole because of it... I just wouldn't want to be the cause of that. Whether they deserved it or not.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Good lord, I so wish someone had done this for quake 2 / 3 back when I was playing seriously =)
Ask anybody. If you're playing a game like CS the best way to tell if someone is cheating is to get in their head. That means getting into a first person camera view of what they're doing -- how they move, their aim, their reaction times, etc.
99% of the time you'll be able to tell if someone is a cheater. Usually that's because they have a tell-tale sign. Maybe they seemed to just know someone was coming around a blind spot every time. Maybe you aren't totally sure they're cheating but then you see that they have a reaction time that seems instant. No human has an instant reaction time. In fact, it's usually measured in hundreds of milliseconds, and certainly not tens.
Often you can tell because the person has absolutely amazing aim and yet their normal mouse movements when there's nobody or nothing to aim at are erratic and disorganized. And on top of that these people usually have trouble navigating the tougher terrain and jumps in an FPS... which is weird because they have incredible hand-eye for aim but not so for jumps. This is almost NEVER the case for a truly skilled player. Their jumps and other forms of acrobatics are usually spot on.
The thing is, it's usually not just one sign. It's a bunch of them together that tell you to watch somebody with a lot more scrutiny. Often you'll reach a consensus amongst the other players and then the suspected cheater will be booted or banned.
And of course on the other side of this coin is the fact that most players can recognize real skill.
Does this stop 100% of cheaters? No... but it really does stop the majority. Sometimes it hurts non-cheaters who are really just very skilled. I'm not bragging, but I've been booted for cheating several times when I wasn't cheating. But that's usually when I go to a new server and nobody knows who I am. Which is where reputation comes into play. Once a server community gets to know you they remember you and know you're skilled. Of course, even then sometimes they boot you. But then we're not talking about cheating anymore, we're talking about jealousy and envy, and that's a different thing entirely.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Look at the something awful forums. They charge $10 for the ability to post on the forums, and if you troll or break the rules, youre banned and you need to pony up the cash to reactivate your account.
Its one of the cleanest forums on the internet to date. by charging for entry, you keep out the 2 key stereotypes present in CS: annoying Kids (because they dont have a credit card) and Idiots (because they cant afford to pay $1 for every TK or death they have). You can still kick/ban people from the server if they cheat (and keep their winnings/buy in as a consequence) and overall the community that is playing has a great time because theyre playing with people that want to play the game properly.
I finally got my games verified after many attempts and made my way into a CS:S team deathmatch game. Was pinging about 150-300 according to the netgraph, with anywhere from 7-40tic. All players in the server were complaining about the same issues. With players teleporting and the constant rubber-banding it was really just like gambling. Just spray and pray and hope you get lucky. They aren't going to make a penny unless they HUGELY increase server performance. They are going to need constant 100tic servers for people to throw down the cash every game.
Have you guys checked out PurePressure.com? They're running similar cash/prize tournaments for unreal tournament and CS:S, which run completely online on really high quality servers.
votekick TLF
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
:(
All this talk about FPS games makes me want to pick one up again. I've been in WoW gridlock for two years. And now that Blizzard has completely lost their sense of class direction and development, maybe it's time to cancel my three accounts!
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
As an admin of a public CS:S server I have to say I think this is a terrible idea. We already see too many problems such as "team-stacking" because of so many players who care too much about their k/d ratio. Imagine if actual money was on the line. Every current issue the game has would effectively be exacerbated on orders of magnitude. The huge majority of CS players just aren't mature enough for something like this.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.