Cheating in OS games?

[Jan Ekholm <chakie@infa.abo.fi>]

Hi,

I've read the discussions here about online games and cheating, and it is
very interesting reading.

One thing I've been wondering about is wether it is worth at all to think
about cheating in an Open Source game in the initial phases? Obviously
there has to be resons for these kinds of ideas.

Well, a person or a team that starts today to build an Open Source game
that is supposed to be played online is facing a huge task. Adding in a
requirement that it should be impossible to cheat adds a tremendous amount
of work for no real benefit in the initial stages. The developers focus on
something that is totally irrelevant until the game has become fairly
successful, and thus more or less guarantee that the project never reaches
1.0. If the game is never finished all the anti-cheating measures were
just wasted work. If the game actuall gets finished *and* someone actually
plays it *and* someone actually bothers to try to figure out cheats *then*
it's time to think about anti cheating measures.

IMHO developers should focus on the game, leaving all these tuning issues
for later. It's far too easy to focus on totally irrelevant things when
there is a game to get done. Nobody will care if your game has a nice
effect or something else if there is no game to begin with.

I'd actually consider it a measurement of success that someone would
bother to create a cheat for something I had done. That would mean that
the game is more or less mainstream and actually has an audience,
something very few OS games actually has.

Comments and/or flames?

-- 
     "I name you... Esmeralda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre!"
                                      -- Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum