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Cheating

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Challengers
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Joined: 12/31/1969

First of all, thanks for linking to Shannon Appelcline's excellent series of articles. While exploring some of his other offerings, I came across one that deals with problems external to the game(http://www.skotos.net/articles/TTnT_156.phtml). While the focus was on Online RPG games, he mentioned how the various problems are handled by Tabletop games as well.
The topic got me thinking: has anyone ever seen a game that makes cheating irrelevant? I have a few thoughts on the matter:

Irrelevance - by definition - would imply that a cheater's actions would have no impact on the outcome of the game. That seems to be oxymoronic, since cheating - by definition - is an attempt to gain an unfair advantage by performing an action that is contrary to the rules of the game.
Therefore, if cheating is to be irrelevant, the game must not have an advantageous outcome! How much fun is that?
Fluxx is the only game I can think of that has the means to accomplish this. For instance, if a player had the opportunity to palm an extra card or two while drawing from the deck, he might think he'd have an advantage, as he would have more options during his turn. However, there are so many variables that could result in his hand becoming worthless, that there is almost no point to it. Of course, if he were to unfairly draw a winning goal that he could capitalize on immediately, then his cheating will have ruined at least the spirit of the game (if no one caught him).
My opinion of Fluxx is that - aside from keeping younger children entertained on a rainy day - due to its randomness, it is not too much fun.
One might argue that abstract games of skill, such as chess, don't lend themselves to cheating, because all pieces are visible to all participants and each participant is in full view of the other(s), but that is not my point. If the stakes are high enough, a determined cheater could find a way to receive help by communicating with an observing co-conspirator who is a better player than both of the participants (sign-language, a walkie-talkie disguised as a hearing-aid, etc.)
Is there a point to designing a game that is cheater-proof? I would not want the answer to be that the game rewards cheating, thereby encouraging all players to cheat, unless doing so effectively removes the incentive to cheat!. The reason I say that is, as soon as the game makes allowances for cheating, it becomes part of the rules and, therefore, is no longer considering cheating!

If I were to attempt to make cheating irrelevant in a game, I would model the Darwinian principal of survival of the fittest. Since a cheater would not rely on using the rules to his maximum benefit, while his non-cheating counterparts would, the non-cheaters presumably would become more skilled at the game, possibly rendering the cheater's methods obsolete (or, at least, less effective.) Of course, Darwin didn't discriminate, and it is quite possible that the cheater would be the one to adapt and maintain his domination of the game. (Brings to mind Black-hats vs White-hats in the computer world of crackers.)
So, it seems that a Darwinian model would have to favor non-cheaters, but how? My knowledge of biology is too limited to understand if such favoring actually hurts the beneficiary in the long run (antibiotics favor human and cattle only to a point, for example.)

Mitch

Anonymous
Cheating

I think zendo would count as a game where cheating has minimal relevance.
Yes you can steal guessing stones but if you are wrong you only help your opponent. Yes you could secretly get suggestions from a better player but there is a change they are wrong as well in which case you would be helping your opponents. While there is much strategy in zendo that can seperate the newlings from the masters, this is a induction game and so it is very hard to be absolutely right in your guesses.

Hedge-o-Matic
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Cheating

An example I can think of is Zertz. Since everyone has common control of the balls, and a capture is maditory, it's nearly impossible to shift a ball in any meaninful way without the attempt being immediately obvious.

I've designed an abstract that I don't think cheating will help you win, but, again, the pieces are common to both sides. Perhaps that's a uniform benefit to having shared pieces?

The "getting better information" problem is a little different, since it's not so much cheating as playing another player by proxy.

jwarrend
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Joined: 08/03/2008
Re: Cheating

Challengers wrote:

Is there a point to designing a game that is cheater-proof?

In my opinion, no. A group that contains a cheater has a bigger problem than you as a designer can be expected to arbitrate.

The only thing I think you need to worry about is a situation where players can accidentally cheat. An example would be a game where players have hidden information behind a screen or some such -- it's not too hard for a player who gets up to leave the table briefly to accidentally catch a glimpse behind someone else's screen. These kinds of things should be worried about a little bit, I think.

There's a card in "Dragon's Gold" by Bruno Faidutti that lets you cheat a little bit each turn -- until you get caught. I believe that the Illuminati rulebook also endorses this kind of thing. It might be fun to make a game like this, where players are encouraged to try to cheat without getting caught.

But other than those two situations, I wouldn't worry about cheaters at all. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, Hell doesn't get veto power over Heaven, and similarly in game terms, players who want to screw things up for everyone, by cheating or however, shouldn't become so foremost in our minds that we build our designs around their childish behavior.

-Jeff

Rick-Holzgrafe
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Joined: 07/22/2008
Cheating

Jeff made a point about "accidental cheating" that I think is worth following up. We've all had the experience of playing a game by the wrong rules for a while; and anyone can make a mistake even when they know the right rules. I'm prone to the latter kind of absent-minded slips, and my family keeps me honest. This works because the moves we are making are all in public view, so other players can see when someone doesn't follow the rules.

But I've recently been thinking about a design that would require a fair amount of hidden information. I don't worry about deliberate cheaters; I agree with Jeff on that point. But accountability is an issue in any game with secret information: the design should ensure that a game can't easily be ruined by a player's misunderstanding or accidental error.

This point may be off-topic from the original post, but it's been on my mind so I thought I'd share it anyway. Hope nobody minds.

FastLearner
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Cheating

As a designer, I do think that it's my responsibility to not make it too easy to cheat -- a flawed design invites cheating, imo.

During playtesting yesterday we were reviewing possilbe changes for a game of mine. One possibility involved a player choosing some secret information at the begging of the game, and adding more secret information at the mid-point. However, with this particular design there was no way to verify at game-end that the player hadn't selected all of the secret information at the mid-game point, where it was much more advantageous.

I instantly ruled out the change. In addition to not being accountable (as Rick brought up, above), it was far, far too easy to cheat. If I were to use a mechanism where the players select different pieces of secret information at different points, I'd make it card-based or something where it was much harder to cheat.

I do see it a my role to not tempt people by making it incredibly easy to cheat. Or more importantly, not make everyone at the table worried that even the village idiot could have cheated.

-- Matthew

Hedge-o-Matic
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Cheating

Actually, in games I design where there is hidden information, I don't do much to cheat-proof. I (naively, perhaps) assume that everyone will lose graciously, even if it is within their power to distort hidden information so that they don't. Anyone who's played me in a game of virtually anything will tell you that I enjoy losing as much as winning, as long as the play of the game's good. I can't imagine wanting to win so much that I resort to cheating, frankly, so the entire subject is sort of academic to me.

Anonymous
Cheating

I agree with Jeff that a cheater will attempt to cheat whenever possible, and that we shouldn't make it our goal to design a cheat proof game (there's almost always a way to cheat if you really want to).

I do, however think that we need to recognize areas where cheating is made too easy, and then try to fix it.

I have a game whereby a player was allowed to upgrade or required to downgrade the hidden status of an item in his possession. The idea of a player cheating had entered my mind (if no one sees his starting status and no one confirms his new status, then what's to keep him from taking any status he wants), but I didn't know what to do about it. The game play made it far too easy to cheat.

Thanks to the input I got from the Game Design Workshop, I settled on a solution (suggested by Seth, thank you!) that removed the possibility of cheating in that situation.

Another situation that falls under the "cheating by accident" title would be a game with so much player information, that it becomes commonplace for players to forget a hindrance or special ability and act as if they didn't have it. It would change the game play and affect others (especially if no one else noticed it because they were so focused on their own player information).

Also in this category would be a game with so many rules or such complex rules, that the first few times through, players forget some of them or play other rules wrong.

We may not be able to make every game so simple that no rule is forgotten, or with such a small amount of player information that no parts are ever omitted, but we should be ever on the look out for situations that could result in cheating, either deliberate or accidental, and try to either reduce the risk or eliminate it altogether.

Challengers
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Cheating

All of the replies are thought-provoking. I wonder if a game design should include Anti-Cheating Quality Control (ACQC). You would have to classify cheaters. SiskNY mentions accidental cheaters. This would be the lowest level, and the easiest to prevent. At the other extreme is what Rick-Holzgrafe terms deliberate cheaters. There is no defense against these pathological miscreants, except banishment. So, perhaps the highest level of ACQC would be preventing the opportunistic cheater from gaining an advantage in tournament play (as there is no practical advantage for him in casual play.)
I used to think that there was no way for Chess server admins to detect cheating over the internet, until I read a detailed article about their techniques in an issue of Chess Life. The gist of it is that, given a player's calculated rating on the server, the admin can analyze the moves in a disputed match game and detect moves that demonstrate a depth of understanding that is beyond the average player of that particular rating level.
I used that example because it seems to me that a design could incorporate that same concept. I have no idea how, but I suspect that it would be accomplished in the same fashion that units are "balanced".

Here is a nebulous analogy: suppose you had a game involving cryptograms and other code-type puzzles. If an honest player developed the skill to crack a code early in the game, he would be able to apply the knowledge gained in the decoded message toward a more difficult code later on. Now consider that there is a well-balanced chain of these codes and, suppose further that the revealed knowledge is cumulative. If a cheater were to somehow unfairly decode a code further along in this chain (in the hopes of reaching the end first), then he would be stuck at that point, because he would not have the rest of the required knowledge to advance!
(note: the word skill, as used above, need not be actual brain-power. It could be a deck of cards containing clues or code-cracking hints.)

This may be unnecessarily complex but, if you can whip up a spreadsheet to balance units, I suppose you could construct some kind of ACQC model.

But, as Jeff and Hedge-O-Matic said, there really is no point. I just present it as an academic exercise.

Mitch

Phil_D
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Cheating

Bloodbowl is interesting as it says cheating is fine, but if you get caught, it results in a turnover unless you expend a re-roll counter!

What an awsome game.

#Phil

Triktrak
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Cheating

I think the best solution for cheeters is not to play with them. They obviously haven't grasped the concept of the joy of winning a game using the rules. I think we all probably delt with these sort of people at least as children and learned to stay away from them.
I had the pleasure of playing Illuminati 2 weeks ago, which endorses cheating, provided you don't get caught (those caught simply have to undo their action). This sort of game is a different case, since cheating is actually in the rules. Perhaps it isn't really cheating then, but more of a slight of hand skill you can employ. If everyone agrees cheating is okay then it levels the playing field and a "real" cheater has no real advantage.

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