Cheaters begone!
As the gaming industry becomes larger, a fun player experience becomes a more and more sought after characteristic. Cheating is a potential drain on the experience of the consumer at large and therefore there is also some potential gain in the research of how these behaviors come to be and spread. Researchers from the University of Florida and British Columbia have recently published regarding this topic, using their findings I will explore possible solutions to the problem of cheating and how it applies to our class.
The most classically common solution to this problem I would say is to try and make it impossible. Whenever it is reported that there is a flaw in a game’s security, tighten it up and make sure it can’t happen again. How might this strategy affect the population of cheaters that play your game? A cheater develops an unfair strategy, it spreads to more individuals in this population, and then the security is updated and the strategy is no longer feasible. Perhaps some of these people will be driven away by this, but it is more likely I think that the majority will stay and some might even be more motivated by this. While surely this strategy to limit cheating should be used, it cannot solve the problem in and of itself.
A more effective and long term solution has to do with the social backbones of your game, why do people play it? Take some of the modern games in the competitive gaming scene. There is huge drive to become an elite player of these games, not only because of the status this might bring, but because of the massive cash prizes! Cheating exists, but for the majority of the player base, the motivation for playing is to improve, and why cheat when you can only consistently improve and win money through fair playing. Furthermore, players of high skill play mainly with other players of high skill, so there can never be a hugely negative effect felt from the smaller population of hackers, if they become more skilled through the use of their cheating they will gain connections in the games network and be quickly exposed; and as discussed in the linked article, exposed cheaters lose their place in the social network, losing friends in the process.
http://www.cse.usf.edu/dsg/publications/papers/cheating_TOI.pdf