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Playing the game: cheating, loopholes, and virtual identity

Published: 01 September 2004 Publication History

Abstract

A broad range of interactive and distributed systems are essentially virtual worlds; these include examples such as multiplayer games, and even operating systems. They enable the formation and maintenance of virtual societies, which must be healthy in order to be prosperous and useful. We describe properties, inspired by writings on law and psychology, that we use to define the notion of fairness, which is an essential characteristic of a healthy society. By using multiplayer gaming as a running example, we discuss how a fair virtual society will interact with its real-world counterparts, and outline how one might choose to detect and deal with transgressors who violate rules designed to enable fair interaction and prohibit cheating. This is a conceptual paper, and raises a number of issues and problems that must be considered when designing virtual worlds. Our aim is to develop guidelines for the design of fair virtual societies.

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A. Park. Battle.net cracks down on cheating.again. Gamespot News, http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/diablo2/news_2871872.html, June 2002.
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M. Pritchard. How to Hurt the Hackers: The scoop on Internet cheating and how you can combat it. Information and Security Bulletin, February 2001.
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W. Williams. Fairness: Results Versus Process. Ideas on Liberty, October 1998.
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Cited By

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  • (2020)A Cheating Mood: The Emotional and Psychological Benefits of Cheating in Single-Player GamesProceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3410404.3414252(58-70)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2020
  • (2012)L'agencement de la triche. Aborder la triche dans les MMORPG comme un imbroglioRéseaux10.3917/res.173.0235n° 173-174:3(235-269)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2012
  • (2012)Behaviour-Based cheat detection in multiplayer games with event-bProceedings of the 9th international conference on Integrated Formal Methods10.1007/978-3-642-30729-4_15(206-220)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2012
  • Show More Cited By

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society
ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society  Volume 34, Issue 2
September 2004
ISSN:0095-2737
DOI:10.1145/1052791
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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 September 2004
Published in SIGCAS Volume 34, Issue 2

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Cited By

View all
  • (2020)A Cheating Mood: The Emotional and Psychological Benefits of Cheating in Single-Player GamesProceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3410404.3414252(58-70)Online publication date: 2-Nov-2020
  • (2012)L'agencement de la triche. Aborder la triche dans les MMORPG comme un imbroglioRéseaux10.3917/res.173.0235n° 173-174:3(235-269)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2012
  • (2012)Behaviour-Based cheat detection in multiplayer games with event-bProceedings of the 9th international conference on Integrated Formal Methods10.1007/978-3-642-30729-4_15(206-220)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2012
  • (2009)Cheating Behaviors in Online GamingProceedings of the 3d International Conference on Online Communities and Social Computing: Held as Part of HCI International 200910.1007/978-3-642-02774-1_61(567-573)Online publication date: 15-Jul-2009
  • (2008)Detecting and Controlling Cheating in Online Poker2008 5th IEEE Consumer Communications and Networking Conference10.1109/ccnc08.2007.198(848-853)Online publication date: Jan-2008

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