How far would you trust your player's honesty when it comes to a game? Trusting them to follow the suit led in a trick taking game seems pretty easy, but often the other players can police them.
What about trusting them to be honest with what they were thinking with no physical evidence of it, etc. How far would you go?
In my opinion a non-cooperative and non party game that relies on player's honesty has a major design flaw.
There should be always a way to police other players. In a coop game players can cheat themselves, but who cares?
In many party games it doesn't matter who wins. So I also would accept it here.
But asking for a way to police other players, doesn't mean I will actually do it.
You can always have the player write down (or otherwise record) the secret. It even gives you the possibility of selling "refills" for your game.
I too don't care if they do so in a co-op or single player game.
There are games that need someone to watch over. But then there is this chance that this person can take a side as well.
Players should not get room for cheating.
So there should be a proof ready for anything that makes use of hidden information.
I never design around cheating. Its up the players to play with honest people. If you catch a cheat, stop playing with them. I often wonder how big an issue this really can be in gaming. Can you imagine cheating and getting caught, the embarrassment and ill will it would engender? Its surely cannot be that prominent an issue.
hi.
in general i have a very low opinion of humanity. i think fear of consequences is pretty much the only thing keeping us from a mad max world.
if there is a way for players to play the system, bend the rules or exploit a grey area they will. most people won't, however flat out cheat because it will mean nobody will play with them.
this is also true of people who are bad winners or losers, alpha Gamers and various other social faux pas but cheating is one of the things designers can build against.
if a player has found a way to "cheat" without breaking a rule thats not (entirely) their fault, its yours. you didn't explain the rules and/or the social contract properly.
a game like 20 questions is open to cheating very easily. it can be fixed with some decent explanation though. if the rules say you have to write down your word you eliminate the issue on a practical level. if you say " you may not change your word" you eliminate any wiggle room. and if you explain this is a light family game (not a take that game or somthing involving money) you eliminate cheating on a social level, people understand the social contract they have entered.
on the other hand in a game with a take that element or an agressive zero-sum game, for instance monopoly, i expect people to do everything and anything to win as long as it isnt strictly forbidden (in my house it was acceptable to try and steal from the bank, short change players, skip an extra space etc)
In the proposed game design, as I understood it, a cheater can never be caught. This is the problem.
No point in playing games if people cheat. If this hobby is filled with that kind of dishonesty. Why be involved? No fun.
you can always turn the bug into a feature. designing a game with dishonesty at its heart can make for a great game as it gives people permission to be evil.
***
I encourage my players to find faults and abuse them asap. It makes the game interesting once someone is using it against the others.
My first time was when designing units went wrong at the basics, 8 years ago. My cousin abused it to an abnormal scale and I got defeated in only 3 rounds. Where a game at the intended scale would normally take like 30-60 rounds.
It stimulates me to create a cheat free game.
I would always avoid systems with no accountability where cheating would benefit the player, especially in competitive games. I played around with the idea of a game based on the prisoner's dilemma but with more than two people. The problem is that I wanted the "bad" player to be anonymous unless they were caught. So you would know someone screwed you over, but not exactly who unless you had a counter play. This "unless they were caught" idea meant you had to have an undeniable way to trace the origin of let's say a negative card in a group of cards. Relying on people to fess up was never even something I considered. In an ideal world, nobody would play with a cheater, but we don't live in an ideal world. So you have to take a pragmatic approach.
I'd split the term "Cheating" into multiple game designer terms.
"Breaking" the game
"Player sneakiness"
"Player Trust"
"Player poor-sport/meanness"
Breaking the game is a useful tool to help see where the game is not balanced, flawed or just an "exercise" (Like tic-tac-toe) This is important and necessary in game design, but not in the game itself. If a game is "broke" is "pointless or boring"
"Player sneakiness" would refer to the games out there that include cheating IN the rules. there are a couple. a vampire one comes to mind.
This is allowed IN game and has consequences.
"Player Trust" could refer to games like werewolf or one night werewolf. There is a specific rule (And the game has been tremendously successful, so even if you don't like this concept, other people do) that requires players to remember AND be honest about what card they started with. sure there's ways to remedy that with rules, but its easier if you say to the group: "okay, now just be honest about this part, otherwise the game is dumb" which, if you're playing with friends (referring to the party game thought)
might work.
Poor sport? can't control for that in a game, i mean you can cheat in monopoly. or catan. or any number of games out there. if your game is easily exploitable, it might be for a niche of players that like the theme. I guess you could include a rule for "if they steal all the money from the bank, then send their piece for jail and don't let them use the dice until they return it all. do this by physical force if necessary, perhaps flipping the table to make your point" but in general.. poor sports are poor sports
Idk if there are better "terms" out there for these ideas, anyway, just some thoughts!
I recall reading results of a scientific study that reported: - some people will always try to cheat
- some will always be honest
= and the largest group will cheat if they think they can get away with it
So I try not to provide occasions when players can do the third action.
And I recall that according to a survey sponsored by Hasbro, 51 percent of Monopoly games end in an argument and 13 percent of players cheat!
 | Hi guys ~ Gameland and Yaofish are officially accepting board game design submissions! (2) by questccg |
 | Hidden Movement: What Makes it Cool? (37) by Jacob |
| I need a 5th category of encounters (7) by larienna |
| Dymino Monsters Update 4-18-2024 (2) by Stormyknight1976 |
| Wizardry Legacy: the Forgotten Academy (12) by larienna |
| TradeWorlds — Tactical Core (3) by questccg |
| Introducing, Jacob! (that's me by the way...) (0) by Jacob |
| Chat GPT: Testing as a design assistant (8) by larienna |
| Winner Announced for the Meta Progression Community Challenge! (0) by The Game Crafter |
| A programmer's dilemma (16) by larienna |
| Qubits: a solo trick taking game (9) by Wobt2 |
| Worker placement, Role selection and Action cards: Is it the same thing? (11) by larienna |
| Site Ads and Google Experiments (0) by questccg |
| TradeWorlds — Smuggler's Run (7) by questccg |
| Single Item Shipping at The Game Crafter (0) by The Game Crafter |
| Protospiel Indy 2024 (May 24-26) (0) by The Game Crafter |
| How to avoid being blocked at content creation (10) by questccg |
| Protospiel Indy 2024 (0) by sirvalence |
| In need of some IDEAS concerning a "Battle" System (15) by questccg |
| How to avoid quarterbacking in an adventure game (7) by larienna |
| How complicated could math get? (23) by X3M |
| Can we have gaming ads on this website (7) by questccg |
| Dice Mitigation Challenge - Winner Announced! (0) by The Game Crafter |
 | Delving! - " That is when it hit me, it was starting to feel like other games" (3) by MarkJindra |
| Game Purchase Contract (0) by MarkJindra |
