Re: Open Source Games and Cheating - a paradoxum?
On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 08:28:01AM +0200, Richard Braakman wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2003 at 11:46:31AM -0600, John Hasler wrote:
> > I was thinking more of making "cheating" part of the game in some sense,
> > perhaps by making "cheaters" a different class of player.
>
> This reminds me of Netrek and its special "borg" servers, where players
> competed in writing the best "enhanced" clients. I knew someone who was
> really into that. He had a client that could almost play on its own.
>
> I was told that having the borg servers as an outlet significantly
> reduced cheating on the normal netrek servers.
Chess servers like FICS take a similar approach. Chess engines are
allowed, and programmers are encouraged to write their own and test them out
against other players, but computers must be clearly marked as such. If a
user is found to be cheating with a computer, they are administratively
rebuked.
I like the idea of giving "cheaters" an outlet to get what they want without
making things unfair for other players. There really is almost nothing that
can be done about folks who truly want to cheat to gain an unfair advantage,
whether the source code is open or not. This has been demonstrated clearly
in the past.
--
- mdz
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