Re: Part 2: System Structure

[Bas Wijnen]

On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 03:35:56PM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > > I have evidence that people trust each other to not submit bogus data, for
> > > example web sites where you just send in screenshots of your score, or
> > > forums where they just post their stats.
> > 
> > That works pretty well, but is only accepted because there isn't anything
> > better.
> > 
> > Considering what proprietary software games try to stop people from
> > cheating, including punkbuster servers, and that these methods are
> > actually used, not only by the vendors of the software, but also by people
> > who host their own games, I'd say that is evidence that people do want a
> > defense against cheaters.
> 
> But you are talking about the people providing competitions, while I
> am talking about people playing games.

In many cases, these are the same people.  When I want to play a game of
"Pioneers", I start a server and log into it as a player.  Then I ask others
to do the same (or use AI players, but that makes it a single-player game,
which is not what this is about).

I am talking about people who want to play a game on-line with some strangers.
They start the server, register at some meeting-place, and wait for people to
join the game.  They don't want cheaters to join.  But they don't know the
people at all, so there is no trust.

This exact situation is more complicated, because there're more computers
involved.  But there are also games which can be played over the network on a
server (where all players have an account).  In that case, the OS can provide
some cheating-defense.

> Competitions and games are two very different things.

Not always.  In the example above, you could call it a competition in the
sense that during the game, cheating should be impossible.  However, it really
is just a multi-player game, where the players agreed not to cheat.  Because
the players may not actually know each other at all, some extra technical
enforcement of this agreement is welcome.

Also, if I like to play minesweeper, that's just a game.  The fact that high
scores are listed adds something to the game (it can be argued if it's
something good, but it does add something ;-) ).  It adds a competition.  It
doesn't make very much difference for the player though.  Well, perhaps for
some it does, but when I play nethack on nethack.alt.org, I think it's nice to
have a score and compare it to others.  But it's still mostly a game, and only
very slightly a competition.

> What you say is correct.  But competitions have others affect as well.
> They nurture and exploit addictive strains in people, and in fact they
> frequently kill people.

While this is true (I suppose, I didn't actually check), I think the solution
for this should not be a technical one.  People should be educated about these
problems, just as they should be educated about the problems of other
addictions (like watching television).

If there is nothing to win, then it makes sense to make such a thing
impossible.  However, I think in this case there is: multi-player games are
much better when cheating is made harder.

> So, no, it is not at all obvious to me that we should support this.
> In fact, I am quite convinced that personally, I do not want to
> support this.

I don't think it's really essential that we support it.  Currently such things
run on system resources, and it works fine.  But it is conceptually wrong,
especially if the high score is only a small addition to the game (like on
nethack.alt.org).  So I think we need good reasons to not support it.  The
fact that some competitions give problems is for me not a reason to not
support any competitions at all, except if it is likely that (almost) all
competitions are very bad for most people.  But I don't think this is the
case.

Thanks,
Bas

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