6 ms·

How games cheat to help players

131 points by DanielRibeiro 15y ago

latch 15y ago
A lot of which is probably what makes us old-timers complain about how easy games are these days. I don't think i ever finished battletoads! On the flip side, someone once commented that games should have a "toddler mode" where anything the player does just adds up more points and won't kill you. Obviously wouldn't work for every game, but I thought it was a brilliant idea.
- wmf 15y ago
  I like the way Jeff Vogel put it: "Make Your Game Easy. Then Make It Easier." http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-then-make-it-easier.html http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-t...
- vacri 15y ago
  Meh, I'm an old-timer and you know what? I don't long for the days where a minor fuckup had you redo a large slab of exactly the same damn thing over and over. There are so many games out there to enjoy these days that there's no point in wasting time to defeat an artifically difficult situation. "Yeah! I defeated Marioclone 239b level 23! I am the man!" just doesn't cut it anymore - bragging rights about mere timesinks are a thing of the past. Sure, some difficulty is nice, but be careful of the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia.
- dagw 15y ago
  I think most current games already strike a good balance with the use of ratings, bonus quests and achievements. Basically anybody is able to complete the game by simply spending 8-40 hours playing, but getting a perfect rating, completing all the hidden quests and completing all the achievements will take the same sort of skill and dedication that those fabled games of old required. As an old-timer with a job and a family I really appreciate being able to enjoy and make progress in games despite only having a couple of hours a week to play.
- eru 15y ago
  > A lot of which is probably what makes us old-timers complain about how easy games are these days. Still there are some who buck the general trend. And I'm not only talking about indie games like Spelunky, but also (among all things!) several games for the oh-so-family-friendly Wii: Donkey Kong, Super Mario, and even Mario Kart on the higher difficulty settings.
wmf 15y ago
In a related vein, Canabalt looks like the simplest game ever but it has similar fudges to play better. http://blog.semisecretsoftware.com/tuning-canabalt http://blog.semisecretsoftware.com/tuning-canabalt
JonnieCache 15y ago
Continuing my theme of posting relevant google tech talks, here is Soren Johnson, the lead designer and AI programmer on Sid Meier's Civilisation, discussing this very subject with specific reference to the evolution of civ's AI over the years. Extremely enlightening, whether you are a gamer or not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI "Artificial intelligence is crucial to any strategy game, providing a compelling opponent for solo play. While many of the challenges of AI development are technical, significant design challenges exist as well. Can the AI behave like a human? Should it? Should the game design be adjusted to accommodate the limitations of the AI? How do we make the AI fun? Should the AI cheat? If so, how much? Do we even want the AI to win? This session suggests some possible answers to these questions using the "Civilization" series as a case study. Ultimately, developers must choose between a "good" AI and a "fun" one, with an understanding of the trade-offs inherent when deciding between the two."
xxdiamondxx 15y ago
Entirely unrelated, but is there a way to find out why this is incompatible with my device? Samsung Galaxy S...its not that old!
- tonyarkles 15y ago
  I've only done a small amount of Android development, but I recall the stock firmware on the Galaxy S to be somewhat buggy with respect to game development. Things would work, but then crash unexpectedly. The solution was to blacklist that firmware version, so that you didn't get a huge pile of bad reviews due to the crashing. I might not be remembering the details exactly, it was about a year ago I was working on this stuff.
teamonkey 15y ago
Another 'cheating' method used in games is to keep the player in a state of flow. For example, in a fighting game combos could become increasingly easier so that the player stays in the zone.
tobtoh 15y ago
> The goal of good handling code isn’t to maintain a “correct” simulation, it’s to provide a fun game. It sucks to miss a jump by three centimeters. That statement really resonated with me. I'm currently playing Battlefield 3 on the Xbox and the number of times I've died because I went to duck into a doorway to avoid enemy fire, only to get halted because the door frame has a 3cm ledge that my battle hardened soldier has difficulty stepping over. It's amazing how a seemingly trivial issue can really drive up the frustration with a game and take away from it's enjoyment.
- digitallimit0 15y ago
  It is honestly baffling to me that DICE has not addressed the "need to press the jump button to get over curbs and small rocks" issue since even their very first game, an issue ironically even more prevalent now with the added details afforded by advancing hardware. I do appreciate the leaps (hah) they've made with their vaulting system, but it too has its own frustrations.
- pantaloons 15y ago
  Reminds me of games with lag compensation. It has been observed that players missing their shots due to lag get incredibly frustrated. The best way to deal with this is to use the latency of the shooter to predict what their bullet would of hit at the time they fired on their screen. This just cleverly shifts the lag from the shooter to the target, but players getting hit by lag compensated shots will rarely notice or care; certainly not as much as a shooter would when their shots miss.
AndyNemmity 15y ago
I run a simulation football game called http://deeproute.com http://deeproute.com So far the biggest mistake I believe I've made is not cheating to help players win. I made a brutally difficult simulation game. We have tons of players quit simply because the game is too hard. Because you are 1 person versus 31 other people, there is only 1 winner, and 31 losers. People don't like this. Compare this to our competitors, and they make losses not exist, and otherwise "cheat" the experience so everyone is above average. The worst player in the games, looks like he is the best. There has to be a happy medium somewhere, and I am the ruthless simulation side of it for now. (Trying to figure out how to change...)
- mey 15y ago
  Think rubber banding, part of the fun for the player is thinking they have a chance. Either by splitting up the players into leagues based skill levels (star craft 2), or fudge the game slightly (or significantly in mario kart's case)
  - AndyNemmity 15y ago
    I agree with you, but here's my core problem. My gameplay involves 32 human players playing against each other in football for a title that only one can win. Each season takes a month. That's 32 shades of grey, with 31 of those shades being losses. How do you rubber band that? I'm about to build a facebook app for our game, and I'm trying to brain storm solutions to this problem. The only answer I have so far is make 32 team leagues, with 16 fairly inept CPU players. But not indicate they are CPUs, so that humans believe they are beating 31 other humans, even though the reality is they are beating 15. This cuts my problem by a lot, but adds overhead, and removes a lot of the challenge.
    - gujk 15y ago
      If your players are mutually anonymous, have the worst player play against multiple other teams each week, soaking up the losses. Each player gets their own Potemkin village where half their opponents are actually copies of the worst player. Now you have 1 loser instead of 31.
andrewfelix 15y ago
Back in the early 90's when platform games were all the rage I was always confused as to how a platform game that looked great could get a bad score in the magazines I read. For example the SNES game Blues Brothers looked better than a lot of other platformers and it sounded like it had similar mechanics to Mario Bros. So how could it possibly get a low score? I think this article might be the answer to that question.
gujk 15y ago
It is interesting how games differ from sports or academic contests. In sports, losing is OK because it makes you work harder to become stronger or smarter. In games, losing (or winning) is almost pointless because getting better at the game doesn't make you better at anything else in your life; so the value is in feeding some emotional or anesthetic aspect.
- tstyle 15y ago
  Professional gamers would disagree with you
- megablast 15y ago
  Academic results are adjusted all the time. Sports, there is no way to adjust those results. If you lose a game, you lose. There is no fudging anyone can do to avoid that. You are setting up a strawman.
- wlievens 15y ago
  That probably only applies to single player games. You can compare single player games to movies: you can't "lose" in a movie. Multi-player games are more like sports, in which case losing has a different meaning.
shabble 15y ago
There was a bit I'm reminded of in the write-up on the Crash Bandicoot series,[1] where they mention 'Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment.[2] Essentially, fail enough times at a given point, and it gets a little bit easier (sloppier timings, more power-ups nearby, etc) until you get past it. "Good player, bad player, everyone loved Crash games. They never realized it is because they were all playing a slightly different game, balanced for their specific needs." Reminds me a lot of what I'm sure was a Mariokart64 behaviour - that the powerups you received were directly proportional to your race position, giving everyone behind you much better options to ruin your day. [1] http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games-archive/ http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games-archive/ [2] http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/07/making-crash-bandicoot-part-6/ http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/07/making-crash-ban...
- v21 15y ago
  Yeah, Mario Kart is infamous for it's rubber banding. It's possibly a case study in going too far - it's prominent to the point that almost all players notice it. And it's frustrating to get spammed with blue shells when you're in the lead and not be able to do anything about it. Ideally, as the article says, you'd never notice.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    And it's frustrating to get spammed with blue shells when you're in the lead and not be able to do anything about it. I wouldn't say anything; a decent strategy for when you see someone else with a shell is to slow down to 2nd place and let the new 1st get hit (which will then put you on 1st again). Timing is essential, though.
    - gumbo72 15y ago
      This.
bprater 15y ago
Cool. I just bought the game to support the author in taking the time to write this article. I think we all remember early video games when being pixel perfect in landing a jump was enough to pull our hair out.
jamesu 15y ago
Also interesting is this deconstruction of Super Mario World's camera logic. I never noticed so much thought was put into something as trivial sounding as camera movement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCIMPYM0AQg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCIMPYM0AQg
- eru 15y ago
  We can only say that today, because we forgot about the other early third-person 3d games that had horrible camera movement.
exolab 15y ago
I bought the game to see how you implemented that. The game is 99 cents. Before the second(!) level, I am asked to buy a blade. Turns out a) I have to buy money to buy a blade (WTF?! Either you charge for the game or the in-app purchases) b) I cannot close the buying menu without buying anything c) It is completely unclear to me how the practice blade is different from a "real" blade You talk about how you detect players' intentions. My intention was to buy a game for 99 cents. Not for 10 bucks. Seriously...
- exolab 15y ago
  And then I get the vanilla sword for free after lv.2? Dude, you are confusing me. What would have happened if I had bought that sword after lv. 1?
  - exolab 15y ago
    And now, after lv. 3, I think I understand your approach. IMHO you should explain that buying for cash is an alternative for the lazy. Still I think that if you go down the IAP road, you should only ever charge for additional content (e.g. the next 50 levels), and not for power ups for the game. Just my 2 cents (sorry, couldn't help it).
jeffem 15y ago
Developers really need to understand their users and implement these cheats intelligently or they create frustrations of their own. As an example, I played a football game that obviously had some type of tackling assistance. When I dove to tackle someone, my defenseman wouldn't dive to the spot I was aiming at, but instead try to orient himself to the ball carrier. The developers probably thought that this was helping people with their "misaimed" tackles, but it was actually causing me to miss them. When I dive, I'm aiming for a spot where I think the runner will be, not where he is at the moment I hit the button. I've seen these types of things enough that I'd approach the idea of implementing a cheat much more cautiously than other features.

131 points by DanielRibeiro 15y ago

latch 15y ago

A lot of which is probably what makes us old-timers complain about how easy games are these days. I don't think i ever finished battletoads! On the flip side, someone once commented that games should have a "toddler mode" where anything the player does just adds up more points and won't kill you. Obviously wouldn't work for every game, but I thought it was a brilliant idea.

wmf 15y ago
I like the way Jeff Vogel put it: "Make Your Game Easy. Then Make It Easier." http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-then-make-it-easier.html http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/11/make-your-game-easy-t...
vacri 15y ago
Meh, I'm an old-timer and you know what? I don't long for the days where a minor fuckup had you redo a large slab of exactly the same damn thing over and over. There are so many games out there to enjoy these days that there's no point in wasting time to defeat an artifically difficult situation. "Yeah! I defeated Marioclone 239b level 23! I am the man!" just doesn't cut it anymore - bragging rights about mere timesinks are a thing of the past. Sure, some difficulty is nice, but be careful of the rose-coloured glasses of nostalgia.
dagw 15y ago
I think most current games already strike a good balance with the use of ratings, bonus quests and achievements. Basically anybody is able to complete the game by simply spending 8-40 hours playing, but getting a perfect rating, completing all the hidden quests and completing all the achievements will take the same sort of skill and dedication that those fabled games of old required. As an old-timer with a job and a family I really appreciate being able to enjoy and make progress in games despite only having a couple of hours a week to play.
eru 15y ago
> A lot of which is probably what makes us old-timers complain about how easy games are these days. Still there are some who buck the general trend. And I'm not only talking about indie games like Spelunky, but also (among all things!) several games for the oh-so-family-friendly Wii: Donkey Kong, Super Mario, and even Mario Kart on the higher difficulty settings.

wmf 15y ago

In a related vein, Canabalt looks like the simplest game ever but it has similar fudges to play better. http://blog.semisecretsoftware.com/tuning-canabalt http://blog.semisecretsoftware.com/tuning-canabalt

JonnieCache 15y ago

Continuing my theme of posting relevant google tech talks, here is Soren Johnson, the lead designer and AI programmer on Sid Meier's Civilisation, discussing this very subject with specific reference to the evolution of civ's AI over the years. Extremely enlightening, whether you are a gamer or not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJcuQQ1eWWI "Artificial intelligence is crucial to any strategy game, providing a compelling opponent for solo play. While many of the challenges of AI development are technical, significant design challenges exist as well. Can the AI behave like a human? Should it? Should the game design be adjusted to accommodate the limitations of the AI? How do we make the AI fun? Should the AI cheat? If so, how much? Do we even want the AI to win? This session suggests some possible answers to these questions using the "Civilization" series as a case study. Ultimately, developers must choose between a "good" AI and a "fun" one, with an understanding of the trade-offs inherent when deciding between the two."

xxdiamondxx 15y ago

Entirely unrelated, but is there a way to find out why this is incompatible with my device? Samsung Galaxy S...its not that old!

tonyarkles 15y ago
I've only done a small amount of Android development, but I recall the stock firmware on the Galaxy S to be somewhat buggy with respect to game development. Things would work, but then crash unexpectedly. The solution was to blacklist that firmware version, so that you didn't get a huge pile of bad reviews due to the crashing. I might not be remembering the details exactly, it was about a year ago I was working on this stuff.

teamonkey 15y ago

Another 'cheating' method used in games is to keep the player in a state of flow. For example, in a fighting game combos could become increasingly easier so that the player stays in the zone.

tobtoh 15y ago

> The goal of good handling code isn’t to maintain a “correct” simulation, it’s to provide a fun game. It sucks to miss a jump by three centimeters. That statement really resonated with me. I'm currently playing Battlefield 3 on the Xbox and the number of times I've died because I went to duck into a doorway to avoid enemy fire, only to get halted because the door frame has a 3cm ledge that my battle hardened soldier has difficulty stepping over. It's amazing how a seemingly trivial issue can really drive up the frustration with a game and take away from it's enjoyment.

digitallimit0 15y ago
It is honestly baffling to me that DICE has not addressed the "need to press the jump button to get over curbs and small rocks" issue since even their very first game, an issue ironically even more prevalent now with the added details afforded by advancing hardware. I do appreciate the leaps (hah) they've made with their vaulting system, but it too has its own frustrations.
pantaloons 15y ago
Reminds me of games with lag compensation. It has been observed that players missing their shots due to lag get incredibly frustrated. The best way to deal with this is to use the latency of the shooter to predict what their bullet would of hit at the time they fired on their screen. This just cleverly shifts the lag from the shooter to the target, but players getting hit by lag compensated shots will rarely notice or care; certainly not as much as a shooter would when their shots miss.

AndyNemmity 15y ago

I run a simulation football game called http://deeproute.com http://deeproute.com So far the biggest mistake I believe I've made is not cheating to help players win. I made a brutally difficult simulation game. We have tons of players quit simply because the game is too hard. Because you are 1 person versus 31 other people, there is only 1 winner, and 31 losers. People don't like this. Compare this to our competitors, and they make losses not exist, and otherwise "cheat" the experience so everyone is above average. The worst player in the games, looks like he is the best. There has to be a happy medium somewhere, and I am the ruthless simulation side of it for now. (Trying to figure out how to change...)

mey 15y ago
Think rubber banding, part of the fun for the player is thinking they have a chance. Either by splitting up the players into leagues based skill levels (star craft 2), or fudge the game slightly (or significantly in mario kart's case)
- AndyNemmity 15y ago
  I agree with you, but here's my core problem. My gameplay involves 32 human players playing against each other in football for a title that only one can win. Each season takes a month. That's 32 shades of grey, with 31 of those shades being losses. How do you rubber band that? I'm about to build a facebook app for our game, and I'm trying to brain storm solutions to this problem. The only answer I have so far is make 32 team leagues, with 16 fairly inept CPU players. But not indicate they are CPUs, so that humans believe they are beating 31 other humans, even though the reality is they are beating 15. This cuts my problem by a lot, but adds overhead, and removes a lot of the challenge.
  - gujk 15y ago
    If your players are mutually anonymous, have the worst player play against multiple other teams each week, soaking up the losses. Each player gets their own Potemkin village where half their opponents are actually copies of the worst player. Now you have 1 loser instead of 31.

andrewfelix 15y ago

Back in the early 90's when platform games were all the rage I was always confused as to how a platform game that looked great could get a bad score in the magazines I read. For example the SNES game Blues Brothers looked better than a lot of other platformers and it sounded like it had similar mechanics to Mario Bros. So how could it possibly get a low score? I think this article might be the answer to that question.

gujk 15y ago

It is interesting how games differ from sports or academic contests. In sports, losing is OK because it makes you work harder to become stronger or smarter. In games, losing (or winning) is almost pointless because getting better at the game doesn't make you better at anything else in your life; so the value is in feeding some emotional or anesthetic aspect.

tstyle 15y ago
Professional gamers would disagree with you
megablast 15y ago
Academic results are adjusted all the time. Sports, there is no way to adjust those results. If you lose a game, you lose. There is no fudging anyone can do to avoid that. You are setting up a strawman.
wlievens 15y ago
That probably only applies to single player games. You can compare single player games to movies: you can't "lose" in a movie. Multi-player games are more like sports, in which case losing has a different meaning.

shabble 15y ago

There was a bit I'm reminded of in the write-up on the Crash Bandicoot series,[1] where they mention 'Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment.[2] Essentially, fail enough times at a given point, and it gets a little bit easier (sloppier timings, more power-ups nearby, etc) until you get past it. "Good player, bad player, everyone loved Crash games. They never realized it is because they were all playing a slightly different game, balanced for their specific needs." Reminds me a lot of what I'm sure was a Mariokart64 behaviour - that the powerups you received were directly proportional to your race position, giving everyone behind you much better options to ruin your day. [1] http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games-archive/ http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games-archive/ [2] http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/07/making-crash-bandicoot-part-6/ http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/07/making-crash-ban...

v21 15y ago
Yeah, Mario Kart is infamous for it's rubber banding. It's possibly a case study in going too far - it's prominent to the point that almost all players notice it. And it's frustrating to get spammed with blue shells when you're in the lead and not be able to do anything about it. Ideally, as the article says, you'd never notice.
- icebraining 15y ago
  And it's frustrating to get spammed with blue shells when you're in the lead and not be able to do anything about it. I wouldn't say anything; a decent strategy for when you see someone else with a shell is to slow down to 2nd place and let the new 1st get hit (which will then put you on 1st again). Timing is essential, though.
  - gumbo72 15y ago
    This.

bprater 15y ago

Cool. I just bought the game to support the author in taking the time to write this article. I think we all remember early video games when being pixel perfect in landing a jump was enough to pull our hair out.

jamesu 15y ago

Also interesting is this deconstruction of Super Mario World's camera logic. I never noticed so much thought was put into something as trivial sounding as camera movement. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCIMPYM0AQg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCIMPYM0AQg

eru 15y ago
We can only say that today, because we forgot about the other early third-person 3d games that had horrible camera movement.

exolab 15y ago

I bought the game to see how you implemented that. The game is 99 cents. Before the second(!) level, I am asked to buy a blade. Turns out a) I have to buy money to buy a blade (WTF?! Either you charge for the game or the in-app purchases) b) I cannot close the buying menu without buying anything c) It is completely unclear to me how the practice blade is different from a "real" blade You talk about how you detect players' intentions. My intention was to buy a game for 99 cents. Not for 10 bucks. Seriously...

exolab 15y ago
And then I get the vanilla sword for free after lv.2? Dude, you are confusing me. What would have happened if I had bought that sword after lv. 1?
- exolab 15y ago
  And now, after lv. 3, I think I understand your approach. IMHO you should explain that buying for cash is an alternative for the lazy. Still I think that if you go down the IAP road, you should only ever charge for additional content (e.g. the next 50 levels), and not for power ups for the game. Just my 2 cents (sorry, couldn't help it).

jeffem 15y ago

Developers really need to understand their users and implement these cheats intelligently or they create frustrations of their own. As an example, I played a football game that obviously had some type of tackling assistance. When I dove to tackle someone, my defenseman wouldn't dive to the spot I was aiming at, but instead try to orient himself to the ball carrier. The developers probably thought that this was helping people with their "misaimed" tackles, but it was actually causing me to miss them. When I dive, I'm aiming for a spot where I think the runner will be, not where he is at the moment I hit the button. I've seen these types of things enough that I'd approach the idea of implementing a cheat much more cautiously than other features.