On the limits of engine analysis for cheating detection in chess

The integrity of online games has important economic consequences for both the gaming industry and players of all levels, from professionals to amateurs. Where there is a high likelihood of cheating, there is a loss of trust and players will be reluctant to participate — particularly if this is likely to cost them money. Chess is a game that has been established online for around 25 years and is played over the Internet commercially. In that environment, where players are not physically present “over the board” (OTB), chess is one of the most easily exploitable games by those who wish to cheat, because of the widespread availability of very strong chess-playing programs. Allegations of cheating even in OTB games have increased significantly in recent years, and even led to recent changes in the laws of the game that potentially impinge upon players’ privacy. In this work, we examine some of the difficulties inherent in identifying the covert use of chess-playing programs purely from an analysis of the moves of a game. Our approach is to deeply examine a large collection of games where there is confidence that cheating has not taken place, and analyse those that could be easily misclassified. We conclude that there is a serious risk of finding numerous “false positives” and that, in general, it is unsafe to use just the moves of a single game as prima facie evidence of cheating. We also demonstrate that it is impossible to compute definitive values of the figures currently employed to measure similarity to a chess-engine for a particular game, as values inevitably vary at different depths and, even under identical conditions, when multi-threading evaluation is used

Living City, A Collaborative Browser-Based Massively Multiplayer Online Game

This work presents the design and implementation of our Browser-based Massively Multiplayer Online Game, Living City, a simulation game fully developed at the University of Messina. Living City is a persistent and real-time digital world, running in the Web browser environment and accessible from users without any client-side installation. Today Massively Multiplayer Online Games attract the attention of Computer Scientists both for their architectural peculiarity and the close interconnection with the social network phenomenon. We will cover these two aspects paying particular attention to some aspects of the project: game balancing (e.g. algorithms behind time and money balancing); business logic (e.g., handling concurrency, cheating avoidance and availability) and, finally, social and psychological aspects involved in the collaboration of players, analyzing their activities and interconnections

Surveillant assemblages of governance in massively multiplayer online games:a comparative analysis

This paper explores governance in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), one sub-sector of the digital games industry. Informed by media governance studies, Surveillance Studies, and game studies, this paper identifies five elements which form part of the system of governance in MMOGs. These elements are: game code and rules; game policies; company community management practices; player participatory practices; and paratexts. Together these governance elements function as a surveillant assemblage, which relies to varying degrees on lateral and hierarchical forms of surveillance, and the assembly of human and nonhuman elements.Using qualitative mixed methods we examine and compare how these elements operate in three commercial MMOGs: Eve Online, World of Warcraft and Tibia. While peer and participatory surveillance elements are important, we identified two major trends in the governance of disruptive behaviours by the game companies in our case studies. Firstly, an increasing reliance on automated forms of dataveillance to control and punish game players, and secondly, increasing recourse to contract law and diminishing user privacy rights. Game players found it difficult to appeal the changing terms and conditions and they turned to creating paratexts outside of the game in an attempt to negotiate the boundaries of the surveillant assemblage. In the wider context of self-regulated governance systems these trends highlight the relevance of consumer rights, privacy, and data protection legislation to online games and the usefulness of bringing game studies and Surveillance Studies into dialogue

Individuals' Voting Choice and Cooperation in Repeated Social Dilemma Games

In this paper we explore the relationship between the individual’s preference for cooperation and the establishment of cooperative norms. Our aim is to provide an experimental test of the evolutionary hypothesis (see Carpenter, 2004, Fehr and Gachter 2002; Gintis 2000; Boyd, Bowles, Gintis and Richerson 2003; Bowles and Gintis 2004), according to which individuals are prepared to punish defectors in experimental social dilemma games because they want to enforce a social (“altruistic”) norm which may conduce to increasing their future payoffs, as in the case of sanctions against free riding behaviour. According to this line of research , the high levels of cooperation we observe in our societies can, therefore, be strictly related to the establishment of social norms which are able to enforce and maintain cooperation in the long run. We study the results of two experiments in which the individuals decided both whether to participate in a common project and the institutional rule according to which the profits of the project had to be shared among each of the participants in the group. They could choose between 1) a regime where gains were shared equally, regardless of individuals’ contributions and without sanctions and rewards (System A); 2) a regime where individuals were paid according to their marginal contribution, but the profits of the investments were lower than in the other contexts (System B); finally 3) a regime in which gains were shared equally (as in System A), but individuals were allowed to punish (and\or reward) free riding (cooperative) behaviours as in Sefton, Shupp and Walker (2007). Before the experiments took place, our subjects were required to fill a questionnaire composed of four sections, where their attitude to cooperate and their opinions on civic values and free riding behaviours were thoroughly explored. We then monitored the behaviour of potential free riders and cooperators in the game and their institutional choices. Our results partly contradict the evolutionary hypothesis in as much as System A and B received the largest shares of votes in almost all rounds and they were voted by free riders and cooperators alike. Thus, most individuals do not like sanctions (incentives) against defectors and free riders (cooperators), and their institutional preferences do not seem to be related to their willingness to cooperate. The inspection of individual data, however, reveals some interesting points. In fact, we can assert that System C was mostly chosen by cooperative individuals in response to observed free riding behaviour. Furthermore, when a cooperative individual chose C, she would tend to punish free riders and reward cooperators. Our conclusion is that, as far as the institutional choices are concerned, beside the profit motivations underlined in the evolutionary hypothesis, the ethical and cultural unobserved individual preferences play an important role. There is a number of individuals (limited in our experiments, ranging between 15 and 30 per cent of the entire population) who see cooperation as the “right” thing to do, and therefore are prepared to implement institutional rules that may favour this collective outcome. Most people in our experiments did not share these same values.public good games, experiments, voting choices

Social networking and digital gaming media convergence : classification and its consequences for appropriation

Within the field of Information Systems, a good proportion of research is concerned with the work organisation and this has, to some extent, restricted the kind of application areas given consideration. Yet, it is clear that information and communication technology deployments beyond the work organisation are acquiring increased importance in our lives. With this in mind, we offer a field study of the appropriation of an online play space known as Habbo Hotel. Habbo Hotel, as a site of media convergence, incorporates social networking and digital gaming functionality. Our research highlights the ethical problems such a dual classification of technology may bring. We focus upon a particular set of activities undertaken within and facilitated by the space – scamming. Scammers dupe members with respect to their ‘Furni’, virtual objects that have online and offline economic value. Through our analysis we show that sometimes, online activities are bracketed off from those defined as offline and that this can be related to how the technology is classified by members – as a social networking site and/or a digital game. In turn, this may affect members’ beliefs about rights and wrongs. We conclude that given increasing media convergence, the way forward is to continue the project of educating people regarding the difficulties of determining rights and wrongs, and how rights and wrongs may be acted out with respect to new technologies of play online and offline

Cheating in networked computer games: a review

The increasing popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) - games involving thousands of players participating simultaneously in a single virtual world - has highlighted the scalability bottlenecks present in centralised Client/Server (C/S) architectures. Researchers are proposing Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architectures as a scalable alternative to C/S; however, P2P is more vulnerable to cheating as it decentralises the game state and logic to un-trusted peer machines, rather than using trusted centralised servers. Cheating is a major concern for online games, as a minority of cheaters can potentially ruin the game for all players. In this paper we present a review and classification of known cheats, and provide real-world examples where possible. Further, we discuss counter measures used by C/S architectures to prevent cheating. Finally, we discuss several P2P architectures designed to prevent cheating, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses

A survey on network game cheats and P2P solutions

The increasing popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) - games involving thousands of players participating simultaneously in a single virtual world - has highlighted the scalability bottlenecks present in centralised Client/Server (C/S) architectures. Researchers are proposing Peer-to-Peer (P2P) game technologies as a scalable alternative to C/S; however, P2P is more vulnerable to cheating as it decentralises the game state and logic to un-trusted peer machines, rather than using trusted centralised servers. Cheating is a major concern for online games, as a minority of cheaters can potentially ruin the game for all players. In this paper we present a review and classification of known cheats, and provide real-world examples where possible. Further, we discuss counter measures used by C/S game technologies to prevent cheating. Finally, we discuss several P2P architectures designed to prevent cheating, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses

An Analysis of Expressed Cheating Behaviors in Video Games

A series of 50 responses regarding reasons for cheating behavior in video games were provided by undergraduate students. These responses were sorted into a series of 13 categories by raters to investigate the most common reasons provided for cheating. An analysis of inter-rater agreement as well as frequency of category representation is provided. The most common outcomes were that players cheat to progress in a game as well as to gain advantage over others. The discussion compared this study’s results to an existing cheating taxonomy

The Cheating Assemblage in MMORPGs: Toward a sociotechnical description of cheating

This paper theoretically and empirically explores cheating in MMORPGs. This paper conceptualises cheating in MMORPGs as a sociotechnical practice which draws upon a non-linear assemblage of human actors and non-human artefacts, in which the practice of cheating is the result or the outcome of an assemblage. We draw upon the assemblage conceptualizations proposed in [16] and [8] and on empirical data taken from a pilot study we have conducted during the period September-November 2008 and from an ethnography we are conducting in the MMORPG Tibia (http://www.tibia.com) since January 2009. This game in particular was chosen because CipSoft, the company that develops the game, launched an anti-cheating campaign at the beginning of 2009