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A while back on the evening news I remember hearing about an autistic gamer playing Xbox 360. He worked hard to get a lot of achievements but cheated a few times. I think he got some download like a saved game or something from a friend. So he was labeled a cheater on Xbox Live and was unable to get anymore achievements. Now what I'm getting to is most of us here have probably cheated on a few games now and then in our lives. whether it's codes,memory card downloads with levels,characters or vehicles too hard for us to unlock or FAQ/strategy guides so...

Should one or two cheats go on our permanent gaming records and block us from any or all achievements/trophies in games period? Or could they just block the achievement/trophy from being unlocked until it's unlocked without cheating? I've been diagnosed borderline autistic so this kind of hit's home to me. The gaming world is one place that people like us can socialize but I think that Microsoft kind of bullied this one kid by labeling him cheater they might as well put on his permanent Xbox Live record that he was autistic or worse the r word. I mean other people will probably point out the thing about him being a cheater and that's just another way of making it easy to make fun of him.

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I treasure those who I love that love me in return. <3

No. Cheating and the hax ruin gaming for many people and discourage honest players. The more steps taken by companies to prevent this, the better. We're talking types of cheating that involve hacking games to get the achievements, not left right left right up down up down wiggle controller and pray to Cthulu, but trolololol haxxors. True, it's a case where the coders should have countermeasures or disable achievements if there's cheating, but in-built cheat codes should be removing achievements.

Anything else, well, this has been the legal justification for Action Replay and game hacks, but AFAIK this doesn't cover it when it is affecting something other than the actual work, in this case, the actual achievements database, and the gameplay experience of other players. In both instances such modification could easily fall under anti-hacking or data protection laws if pushed, and having a "cheater" tag may be far better than some alternatives.

What bothers me about the autism story though is not that the kid is autistic, it's that people have been prone to automatically assuming that he should be given a let-off for it. Non-autistic little cheating bastards get their gamer points revoked. Are we to encourage some sort of Autistic Affirmative Action here? No. It's unfair to give any special treatment for someone where there is no justification, and this has no justification other than all the people who think it's a shame.

This post has been edited by Del S on 7th February 2011 11:50

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Yeah, that about covers it.

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

So long as we have publicly reviewable awards for our accomplishments in video games, I can understand trying to enforce the integrity of the bragging rights. However the punishment should fit the crime and these are games, made for our fun and enjoyment, so anything done in relation to making them funner and more enjoyable should be very leniently punished. Striking the achievement from the record and branding them a cheater until they actually do it seems rather sufficient to me, assuming there's an automated detection system capable of doing this.

I agree that people shouldn't get special treatment for the sake of special treatment though, since it's still disruptive to the purpose of the rules, which is in part is to prevent people from being misled. I'm not expert on the manner myself but it seems particularly unnecessary in the case of the autistic since they seem to comprehend rules and the consequences of breaking them.

Quote (Del S)

The more steps taken by companies to prevent this, the better. We're talking types of cheating that involve hacking games to get the achievements, not left right left right up down up down wiggle controller and pray to Cthulu, but trolololol haxxors.

Yeah, screw hackers! They ruin everything for us. Down with Master Zed and his evilest reign of helpfully informative and insightful tyrrany! Fire and brimstone to those who might want to improve their gameplay experience in unsanctioned ways! Okay, okay perhaps that's taking the quotes a little bit too far out of context but I couldn't resist the opportunity.

Quote (Del S)

Anything else, well, this has been the legal justification for Action Replay and game hacks, but AFAIK this doesn't cover it when it is affecting something other than the actual work, in this case, the actual achievements database, and the gameplay experience of other players. In both instances such modification could easily fall under anti-hacking or data protection laws if pushed, and having a "cheater" tag may be far better than some alternatives.

Although from a legal perspective it doesn't matter, I rather dislike antihacking and data-protection laws like the DMCA anticircumvention measures because they preempt methods used to achieve otherwise legitimate objectives with DRM protected content and does so without even phasing their intended targets, to prevent already illegal or readily remediable things. Since the ToS to a service such as xBox Live or the Playstation Network can be treated as a legally binding contract, I verily much doubt they'd have upholding their authority to regulate the members of their subscription based services in a court of law. (Except hopefully the Other O.S. lawsuit, since I believe it to be a case of false advertising protected enacted through means of economic duress involving not only PSN, but Bluray playback capability and other hardware features.That's another topic though...)

Granted the fact that I dislike it doesn't actually matter legally speaking but I'm hoping such laws are eventually repealed.

This post has been edited by Tonepoet on 8th February 2011 00:34

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Role reversal at its finest.

Quote (Tonepoet @ 7th February 2011 17:10)

Yeah, screw hackers! They ruin everything for us. Down with Master Zed and his evilest reign of helpfully informative and insightful tyrrany! Fire and brimstone to those who might want to improve their gameplay experience in unsanctioned ways! Okay, okay perhaps that's taking the quotes a little bit too far out of context but I couldn't resist the opportunity.

It's not in context at all near or far as a matter of fact, unless you can get xbox achievements through those hacks in some manner I'm not aware of.





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Arts

Farts

Twarts

Perhaps they can. Action Replay and Game Genie were mentioned, which most certainly aren't developer sanctioned cheats. If anybody wants to use such a device on their console games in any way at all, say to spice them up after they've otherwise become lackluster, they may unlock some obscure trophy they never bothered with during the natural progression of the game. Sure perhaps it's not quite the instant achievement unlock that one would naturally first think of but it's only scarcely any better since it's still illegitimately obtained.

Unless there are nonpunitive countermeasures I haven't yet heard of only way to avoid this circumstance aside from not using the device, might be to actively avoid anything remotely resembling the event so long as they have the cheats activated. This is doable but it detracts from the experience and difficult if you're absent minded to boot. It's not even like you can delete the trophies from the list yourself, at least assuming we follows the PSN model, so once it's done you can't take it back.

Sure it's not quite a tool capable of examining a game in the scope that Master Zed has laid out with access to the raw hex code but these sorts of cheats may allow access to some otherwise hidden content for documentation. No-clip or flight for instance could take you to an area of the map that'd be normally inaccessible and codes used to unlock hidden characters early might reveal one or two who'd been cut from the roster.

Also the primary purpose of these things have always been for fun up 'till now, since all achievements were publicly documented by either word of mouth, possession of the save file or maybe through video capture devices, which either the honor method or in the case of video capture, would reveal something's amiss. This shows it's not as if everybody's cheating simply to gain the ability to show off and brag about something they never even did. The people who used to simply goof to just goof off might not be able to now thanks to trophies?

This post has been edited by Tonepoet on 8th February 2011 01:12

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Role reversal at its finest.

I think he should lose those achievements, personally, and be made to get them honestly. By the way, what does the fact that he's autistic have to do with any of this?

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"When we think there's no hope left, we keep looking until we find some!" - Claire Farron

Quote (Smash Genesis @ 2nd March 2011 20:34)

I think he should lose those achievements, personally, and be made to get them honestly. By the way, what does the fact that he's autistic have to do with any of this?

You... do know that is a mental illness you're speaking of, right?

I'm just saying, courtesy towards a person who can't function in public would be appreciated.

What are we really talking about here? Is there money to be won by achievements? Who cares who cheats and who doesn't? They're games. Remember? Fun?

This post has been edited by BlitzSage on 3rd March 2011 01:02

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Praise Be To Helix!

Quote (BlitzSage @ 2nd March 2011 20:02)

Quote (Smash Genesis @ 2nd March 2011 20:34)

I think he should lose those achievements, personally, and be made to get them honestly. By the way, what does the fact that he's autistic have to do with any of this?

You... do know that is a mental illness you're speaking of, right?

I'm just saying, courtesy towards a person who can't function in public would be appreciated.

What are we really talking about here? Is there money to be won by achievements? Who cares who cheats and who doesn't? They're games. Remember? Fun?

He's not being asked to function in public. It's a game. Everything Del S said I agree with; furthermore, achievements DO give a sense of pleasure, and, well, achievement to the player. I agree that autism should have nothing to do with it; if he's not capable of playing the game honestly, then he either should play it single-player or not at all. I'm all about Autism Awareness, but wouldn't treating them differently sort of defeat the purpose of the equal rights thing?

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Squenix games completed:

FFIII
FFIV
FFVI
FFVII
FFIX
FFX
FF Tactics: Advance 2
Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest 8
Dragon Quest 11
Super Mario RPG

^Definitely. Beyond that, just because he's autistic doesn't mean he can't function. One of my closest friends is autistic, and you wouldn't know unless you were outright told.

This post has been edited by Smash Genesis on 3rd March 2011 21:25

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"When we think there's no hope left, we keep looking until we find some!" - Claire Farron

Quote (Smash Genesis @ 3rd March 2011 17:25)

^Definitely. Beyond that, just because he's autistic doesn't mean he can't function. One of my closest friends is autistic, and you wouldn't know unless you were outright told.

There are different levels of autism. And if achievements give personal satisfaction, why do you care if I cheat? How does that take from your personal enjoyment?

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Praise Be To Helix!

Quote (BlitzSage @ 4th March 2011 00:11)

Quote (Smash Genesis @ 3rd March 2011 17:25)

^Definitely. Beyond that, just because he's autistic doesn't mean he can't function. One of my closest friends is autistic, and you wouldn't know unless you were outright told.

There are different levels of autism. And if achievements give personal satisfaction, why do you care if I cheat? How does that take from your personal enjoyment?

It's really not that difficult to understand. If you have to work hard to attain the achievement, say, spend countless hours collecting items, searching for rare monsters, killing impossibly hard bosses or what have you to get the achievement, it's infinitely more satisfying when it's done. By that same token, it cheapens the experience to someone who put in the work if you can simply cheat, receive the achievement and have the same reward. That's only if we're limited to the instance of this situation. I shouldn't need to justify why cheating, say, online when playing with others ought to be punished.

What do I care? Well, if we're going to have gamer scores and achievements at all, they should be honest and reflect their namesake. Cheating, indisputably, is not so. What's the point in having them at all if you can just magically give them to yourself? If you're going to cheat at all, then any reward system should be disabled. It should be limited to the single player instances and kept isolated. You want to noclip around the map, spawn monsters to your heart's content, turn on aimhacks or unlock the full set of weapons or inventory or whatever, fine. Do it privately. (because any sort of code, hack, glitch or cheat in multiplayer or online is potentially game breaking and might ruin the experience for honest players.)

This post has been edited by Dragon_Fire on 4th March 2011 06:22

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Okay, but there was a goat!

Quote (BlitzSage @ 3rd March 2011 23:11)

And if achievements give personal satisfaction, why do you care if I cheat? How does that take from your personal enjoyment?

They do give personal satisfaction. However, they're also a matter of public record. All of the (two) achievement systems with which I am familiar, XBL and Steam, make it very easy to see the achievements that other gamers have achieved.

If you want to take the achievements and make them purely personal, yeah, cheat to your heart's content if that's what makes you happy. But they're not personal in the real world of gaming as we know it today. There are lots of gamers who, for better or for worse, do use the achievements as talking points or as a measuring stick. In that case, yeah, a cheater is going to take away from other people's personal enjoyment; in fact, nobody posting here even knows if this kid is one of those gamers.

I'm kind of reiterating what DF says here, I realize. Nobody really cares if the kid, or any kid, or any grownup, cheats at games. However, we also aren't the ones that made the achievement system what it is. In a perfect world, games would be able to detect cheats and shut off the achievement and/or gamerscore layer until the cheats were disabled - a number of games on Steam do this already. But, since that doesn't happen on XBL, developmental disability or not you have to play by the rules that everyone else has. If he plays games online against other people to make these achievements, that goes double.

Look, I feel for the kid, it sucks that something he was proud of (regardless of how he got it) got taken from him. But being ignorant of the rules doesn't usually make you immune from them in other situations, so even if people think his condition should give him a pass, what sort of lesson does that teach this kid, or all the other kids out there who would think that it's okay for them, too?

I already don't play XBL games online most of the time because of the cheaters. I'm not a big fan of starting to let people justify it - I'm not going to make a judgment on whether any level of autistic spectrum deserves an exception, I'm just saying I don't like the idea of justifying cheating.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (R51)

If you want to take the achievements and make them purely personal, yeah, cheat to your heart's content if that's what makes you happy.

If people want to take the achievements and make them purely personal, I don't think they have the option to do so, do they? I mean, I haven't seen an option to turn the achievements profile off on steam or my Playstation, temporarily disable them or independently delete them.

Quote (R51)

But being ignorant of the rules doesn't usually make you immune from them in other situations, so even if people think his condition should give him a pass, what sort of lesson does that teach this kid, or all the other kids out there who would think that it's okay for them, too?

While I'm in agreement with the general sentiment, I think it should be added that leniency can be afforded to the general public in some situations caused by an understandably simple misunderstanding.

However to that I must further add that unfortunately, this isn't exactly a situation where such leniency can be afforded because it's contrary to the purpose of the system to give profiled awards to people who hadn't actually earned them. It problematically causes further misunderstanding and I don't think there's a much lesser degree of action that prevents that.

Quote (BlitzSage)

You... do know that is a mental illness you're speaking of, right?
[several posts later]
There are different levels of autism.

I dunno if it means he's unable to adhere to the rules or not. I hear that one of the characteristics of Autism is repetitive focus on a key behavior or interest, which may notably include compulsive rule following. Also it's implicit that to play a game and cheat at it, you at least need mental facilities about him to comprehend its rules to begin with.

This post has been edited by Tonepoet on 5th March 2011 00:10

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Role reversal at its finest.

I hate coming to topics like this late, because pretty much everything to say has been said, short of my own personal opinion.

That being said, I am not a fan of cheating. For me, I revel in the challenge of completing the game as presented, competing with its hardest difficulty and mastering it, to say to myself, "Yeah, I did that without any crutches."

It's for reasons like that that my first playthroughs of any Final Fantasy were done on my own, and the same goes for most games. I'll only revisit with a walkthrough upon completing it to the best of my ability without help, to see what I've missed.

But I've got to say, sometimes, you just want to load up Turok 2, enter the cheat for all weapons, and unleash hell for about 20 mins. until you get bored with being stupid powerful and want the challenge back... Yeah, I'm throwing back to old days.

Anyways, I agree with what's being said about cheating if you want to on your own time - that's fine. Games are their to be enjoyed, so enjoy them as you will.

Cheating online deserves a manner of virtual crucifixion, in my opinion, because I feel no one has the right to ruin another person's experience. Same goes with griefing in Minecraft.

I mean, think of walking down the street, taking an ice cream cone from a kids hand and smashing it on the ground, stepping on it, then MAYBE rubbing its face in it for extra measure. Where does that become fun? Maybe for some people, but for most reasonable folks, that sounds ridiculous...

Anyhow, I don't think they should be too overly lenient. Some for his condition, sure, but not a full pardon. I've worked with autistic folks before, and they're pretty together and they definitely understand right from wrong once you've explained it to them. They may seem simple, but even the simple will do what's right when told it's right.

Soo... I think that's all my two cents and hopefully didn't offend anyone!

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Games on the Go
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy: Four Warriors of Light
Baldur's Gate

Too much to play, so little time!

Greg

Quote (Tonepoet @ 4th March 2011 18:57)

Quote (R51)

If you want to take the achievements and make them purely personal, yeah, cheat to your heart's content if that's what makes you happy.

If people want to take the achievements and make them purely personal, I don't think they have the option to do so, do they? I mean, I haven't seen an option to turn the achievements profile off on steam or my Playstation, temporarily disable them or independently delete them.

Well, sure. I think I mention later in the post that there are some things that would happen in an ideal world, and you can't exactly shut them off in the gaming world we have now. But you can still do it for personal reasons, you just have to accept the responsibility of doing so.

That's why I say that the systems should shut down achievements any time a cheat is detected. Unless the achievements and scores are private, there's really no middle ground; cheated scores shouldn't be listed next to scores that can be proven legit.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

True you do say that, albeit it's usually a phrase reserved for things that cannot be so I figured you meant some sort of failure proof system.

I'm merely talking about a system that would allow somebody to be a little more honest through selectiveness and I don't see it as being too difficult to implement. Does anybody have any clue why we don't have an 'off the record' option or the ability to manage personal logs like the sort you might find standard on other online social venues, say like on I.M. clients? That doesn't seem too hard. Even if cheating's not exactly high on the developer's priority list, it'd be nice to have a little privacy for the sake of playing particularly embarrassing games.

Quote (Perigyn)

I mean, think of walking down the street, taking an ice cream cone from a kids hand and smashing it on the ground, stepping on it, then MAYBE rubbing its face in it for extra measure. Where does that become fun? Maybe for some people, but for most reasonable folks, that sounds ridiculous...

Eh... that's assault, not deception. This is more like when Bart Simpson converted his D into an A by drawing lines down the bottom to try and convince Homer to let him go to Kamp Krusty.

This post has been edited by Tonepoet on 5th March 2011 14:18

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Role reversal at its finest.

Quote (Tonepoet @ 5th March 2011 15:06)

True you do say that, albeit it's usually a phrase reserved for things that cannot be so I figured you meant some sort of failure proof system.

I'm merely talking about a system that would allow somebody to be a little more honest through selectiveness and I don't see it as being too difficult to implement. Does anybody have any clue why we don't have an 'off the record' option or the ability to manage personal logs like the sort you might find standard on other online social venues, say like on I.M. clients? That doesn't seem too hard. Even if cheating's not exactly high on the developer's priority list, it'd be nice to have a little privacy for the sake of playing particularly embarrassing games.

I've read everything in this thread and I still don't know what you mean. What do you mean by selectiveness and honesty? I don't see the point in making achievements private. The whole idea is to have medals or awards for efforts you've put into games, and to take pride in some of them, or just for fun. Removing the public display is the equivalent of taking off the CoN awards and making them private for people to ask about. It would make them irrelevant. Coming in the top three CoNCAA is good in itself, but if we're talking about an award for it there's no point unless it's public. There might as well be no medal.

The best outcome I think would be for the game itself to reward the player for achievements, which is something that already happens in a lot of cases and is always the best way, although it doesn't happen enough. If there is an award other than an achievement medal, I think more people would care about getting it legitimately. The problem, I believe, is the quality of the award. I'm not convinced that people care enough about them. So if the achievement medal is just an extra award, not the entire point of the effort involved, it will mean more to the player.

Like (I think) everyone here, I agree that cheating in multiplayer is really poor behaviour.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.

Quote (Tonepoet @ 5th March 2011 09:06)

Does anybody have any clue why we don't have an 'off the record' option or the ability to manage personal logs like the sort you might find standard on other online social venues, say like on I.M. clients?

Because the point of these achievements is not to be personal. They wouldn't exist at all if not for sharing, and yes, bragging. That's why I say that you can try to earn them for personal reasons, but if you're going to cheat to do it, you still have to live with the public consequences. I guess the answer to your question, why don't they do it, is because they shouldn't have to care as developers. On Xbox, though, you can avoid this by never playing online, though this of course limits your ability to get game updates or play XBLA titles.

I realize I probably haven't been crystal clear in my posts here, but all I'm really trying to say is this: play however you want, but nobody really has an excuse to play in a way that violates the rules as set forth. If this kid, for any reason, wasn't capable of comprehending the rules, then it is the responsibility of the parents or other responsible party to protect him from the rules proactively, not to complain and cry unfair when the punishment comes down.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?