Not long after SOCOM 2 for the PS2 was released and being played almost non-stop online, there was many a gaming magazine article discussing the problem with cheating online. Apparently, a few so-called gamers took it upon themselves to input codes for invincibility and unlimited ammo and such, and owned the competition. Needless to say Sony stepped in and put a stop to that, as well they should have. But it must be noted that online cheating was not a new thing when SOCOM 2 hit the market; just the most recent instance of it. Veterans of Blizzard’s classic Diablo will well remember talk of users downloading “trainers,” programs that allowed you to jazz up your character with inflated stats and powerful weapons while playing online with others. I myself experimented with such. It was ridiculously easy to do. Fire up Diablo, hop on Blizzard.net and join a game. Hit Alt + Tab on the keyboard, open the trainer, and then hack until your heart is content. Maximize the screen Diablo is in and revel in your new-found awesomeness. If I recall my history correctly, Blizzard did little to moderate this. It was up to individual users to boot off people that they suspected of cheating.
Even more recently, Halo 2 players have generated quite a stir. The thing is that these gamers are not cheating; they are exploiting. For example, one of the tactics employed by players was to find a spot with an extremely high altitude and snipe at their opponents. These sniping positions were often found by jumping on your teammate’s head and then using the height advantage to scale even higher. This was only one instance cited, and many online gamers were furious. There was no shortage of ill sentiment towards gamers that employed these tactics, and there were calls for a way to hold those gamers accountable.
By the way, video games are officially cooler than professional sports because they allow you to jump on your teammate’s head. Try doing that in the NBA and see what happens.
Obviously cheating in multiplayer games should not be allowed, but what of exploitation? Should clever gamers who have figured out faults in level design be penalized? Should gaming teams who have figured out who to use the mistakes in a game’s programming to their advantage face being reprimanded?
Of course, there is an easy answer to this question that is neither “yes” nor “no.” And that answer is “better game development.” If developers made sure that there were absolutely no faults in the game code, no loopholes in the rules, then exploitation would be a thing of the past. No more playing leap-frog to reach a nearly unreachable sniping position, because there are no nearly unreachable sniping positions. But this seems awfully hard on the developers. I am no programmer, but I’m familiar enough with the game development process to know that writing code is tedious work. Gamers should be a little more forgiving when a glitch is left in a game, even if it allows other gamers to not necessarily cheat but to use the system to their advantage if you will. Besides, there’s a world of difference between a glitch fest like Enter The Matrix or Pirates of the Caribbean and merely being able to ride on your teammate’s shoulders like a monkey.
And for Sony or Microsoft to police the online activities of every gamer at every moment to make sure that no one is using the rules (or lack thereof) to their advantage would require a sizable staff dedicated to just moderating games, or at least extremely complicated software and updates to weed out every little instance of a gamer being able to bend the rules; in other words, higher costs for the company and even more so the gamer. And if a developer doesn’t let a game out of the door unless it is certified glitch-free, that means a longer development process and hence, higher costs.
While I’m sure more attention will be paid to games before they hit the market, and the teeth on a developer’s and a play-tester’s combs will grow ever finer, I doubt we will ever see a game is completely glitch-proof in every way. The only solution may be for more hardcore gamers to accept the fact that gamers can (and will) exploit the game itself if it means a win; hardcore gamers may want to adapt these tactics themselves.
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