5 ms·

Open Letter to Online Game Developers: Allow Bots

16 points by aerique 15y ago

Hyena 15y ago
What's the actual advantage to the game? Why would a company want to create a research server for people to perfect their bot programming?
- aerique 15y ago
  One never knows what could come out of it. At the least they sell a couple of hundred or thousand extra accounts. People are ingenious. I can imagine bot hunting parties or a person trying to crash a bot. It would be extra time spend in the game for the companies. edit: btw good question, thanks!
  - possibilistic 15y ago
    I really like this idea. I don't have much time for gaming anymore, but something like this would be a selling point for me. I could write such a game off as an academic exercise. There are a lot of AI/ML techniques you'd have to know or become familiar with. I imagine the competition to build the best bot at any given task, or best all-around bot, would be quite intense. Someone please make this game.
    - iambot 15y ago
      I reckon Notch's games[1] would be the perfect fit, for zones like the OP mentions. A place for the "little Coder" to learn ML/AI etc [1]: Minecraft or 0x10c etc.
  - famousactress 15y ago
    Agreed. I don't really play games anymore, but this is something I'd do. Also, I'd imagine it's possible it'd help the companies with things like their bot detection schemes.. the checkbox gives them something of a control group.
    - millzlane 15y ago
      someone could make a Game specifically for bots.
  - mukyu 15y ago
    Having actually played games where bots are not allowed, I have done both of those things or similar (killing bots, making them get stuck in loops, getting the killed, teleporting them or otherwise making them get stuck, .. just about anything to screw with them) and seen plenty of people doing them. I do not see how making bots legitimate would really be a factor in this type of behavior.
- ajuc 15y ago
  I can think of 2 aventages - you don't need to waste effort fighting bots anymore, and you can encourage some players that wouldn't want to play your game otherways. Is this worth it is another question.
  - millzlane 15y ago
    After the bots are perfected, what will stop users from using them in game along side unsuspecting players? No one. The developer has not put much effort into fighting bots anymore. And now that the AI is so real, there would be no way they would catch bots gaming the system.
    - ajuc 15y ago
      If we get strong AI thanks to that, I wouldn't worry about breaking some games. Bigger problem for humanity would be where to hide Sarrah Connor :)
ShockaZulu 15y ago
Bots break games, period. They break game play, economies, immersion, etc. If you want to sand box them in a special server fine, but don't even think of unleashing them on the general population.
- ajuc 15y ago
  Bots break games that consist of doing the same thing over and over , are easily scriptable, and depends on false achievement to addict players (you've just wasted an hour clicking here and there repeatedly - have a cookie). So no big loss there. Actually - bots make such games interesting and demanding again.
millzlane 15y ago
Why not just create a personal bot trainer? There are lots more ways to accomplish what you need without developers allowing you to use bots. The idea is silly really, it's like asking Infinity Ward and DICE to make Aimbot/wallhack servers for people to practice their AI skills. This would ruin gaming experience for those who don't participate in botting or AI programming. For what? A couple thousand sales? It's not worth the headache.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  aimbots and wallhacks aren't AI though - they're cheats.
  - millzlane 15y ago
    Bots that farm, hunt, gain xp ect. while your are away are cheats. Automated actions with no effort from the player is cheating.
    - anthonyb 15y ago
      Then the game is too simple. Rather than hunt down bots, they should make a more interesting game. The bots are a symptom, not a problem in themselves.
      - gyardley 15y ago
        Too simple for whom? I know I've been interested in and enjoyed many games that could be effectively botted - including some where you farm / hunt / gain XP. Saying that these games are 'too simple' and shouldn't exist sounds a little arrogant, no?
        anthonyb 15y ago
        Most of the games which end up fighting tooth-and-nail trench warfare against bots are just boring games. I don't think expressing that opinion is arrogance, per se. Take games like minecraft or first person shooters like TF2, for example - there isn't a bot problem there for the most part (cheaters perhaps, but not bots), but farm and grind games like WoW or Farmville are rife with it. This is because WoW and Farmville are fundamentally pretty boring, but people want the shiny loot at the end.
anthonyb 15y ago
My personal take on this is that if your game is going to suffer because of bots (assuming that they're not cheating bots, and are bound by the same rules as the players) then your game is broken and/or stupid, and the choices that your players are making are too simple. Remember the Sid Meier quote about games being about making interesting choices? EDIT: Since I'm getting up and downvoted willy-nilly, here's my blog entry where I go into more detail (using Farmville as the example): http://blog.oarsum.com/post/255516489/cheating-and-game-design http://blog.oarsum.com/post/255516489/cheating-and-game-desi...
- antiterra 15y ago
  Too simple for what? Plenty of first person shooters are enjoyable and serve their purpose as entertainment, and any added complexity to hand-eye coordination would give a bot an advantage. Even an example of the genre that allowed for extensive team-based strategy would be unbalanced by a bot that automatically aimed and fired (even in a non-cheating way.) Basketball can be a very cerebral game, with a ton of so-called interesting choices. Yet, if the opposing team is made up of simple minded players that never miss a shot, you've got your work cut out for you.
- reitzensteinm 15y ago
  That's an incredibly broad statement, even leaving aside FPS games. MMOs NEED the filler content that can be botted through because otherwise they just wouldn't have the content level to sustain hundreds of hours of gameplay. It's all about pacing, like a feature film versus a TV show. To be honest, I think you're starting from Farmville, which basically isn't a game, and extrapolating from there.
  - anthonyb 15y ago
    It's not especially broad, and you can apply the same line of thinking to other games like Starcraft. APS uber alles and all that... FPSes are somewhat different, but they tend not to have bot problems because FPSes are fun to play, and don't involve grinding. Even then, most of the modern FPSes have some randomness and you can't shoot with pixel perfect precision, so bots wouldn't necessarily have an advantage there. But yeah -- filler content? botted through? Why would you pay money for a "game" like that? I certainly wouldn't. Even the free-to-play WoW clones are too tedious to play.
Fizzer 15y ago
The main reason I don't allow bots in my game is cost. In my game, the speed at which the game advances is only limited by the speed of the players, and bots can play thousands of times faster than a human. Just a few aggressive bots could easily double my hosting expenses, and right now I'm not even profitable just with humans playing it. Bots can't offset their cost by being shown ads like humans can.
- aerique 15y ago
  Hey, I see in your profile that you're the creator of warlight! I hope it will get picked for the AI Challenge some time.
ebbv 15y ago
It's arguable whether there's any type of multiplayer game that doesn't get ruined by bots. As an example, bot chess players are known to be extremely good, so they aren't ruining the game by making it too easy for the human player; but if a human is playing a multiplayer chess game, it's probably because they want to play other humans. So by a bot being on there, it's ruining it. Not only that, but if there are enough bots, then they're going to end up playing each other which is a waste of resources. So my point here is, bots can ruin ANY game even ones where the bots are as good or better than most human players at the game and not simply doing something dumb and repetitive. Now, there's the reality which is that the only time you have bots on a large scale in a multiplayer game is when there's something to be gained by their use. Whether it's purely farming the game for the benefit of a player while he's at work so he's at an advantage when he comes back compared to people who did not run bots all day or whether it's someone doing it for actual profit; neither is good for the health of the game. Regular players are then being pushed further down the in game economy and scale of power unless they run bots themselves. And again, there's the issue of wasting resources. For games that don't charge a monthly fee, the proprietors of bots are clearly abusing the system and misappropriating resources of the game developer that's running the servers. Bots should be stopped with every means possible on every game. And when people are caught running them they should be permanently banned for life, IMHO (not just until they buy another copy of the game in question, which is often how this is handled.) If you want to make a game that allows bots openly, go for it. I don't think you'll see much success, though.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  > Now, there's the reality which is that the only time you have bots on a large scale in a multiplayer game is when there's something to be gained by their use. ...and the game is too tedious to play. Isn't that a sign of a problem with your game - when people would rather script it than play it? There used to be gangs of players in Ultima Online who would go around hunting down farmers and botters. A pity they didn't put the same sort of energy into demanding a better play experience.
  - ebbv 15y ago
    > ...and the game is too tedious to play. That is not true at all. In fact, the opposite is true, because the bots only rise up as a problem on a popular game. If the game was so boring nobody wanted to play it, then nobody would care about the results of botting. No, bots are a problem not because the game is "too boring", but because people naturally want to abuse the system and gain advantage via automation. Whether that advantage is purely in the game, or results in real world cash.
jmsduran 15y ago
Thinking out loud and putting all realistic implications aside, for farm and grind games like World of Warcraft, it would be very interesting to see an anti-bot policy turned into an actual game mechanic; one that pits the noble, rule-abiding players against the evil bot cartel by offering achievements, bounties, or rewards for successfully reporting or disrupting bots.

16 points by aerique 15y ago

Hyena 15y ago

What's the actual advantage to the game? Why would a company want to create a research server for people to perfect their bot programming?

aerique 15y ago
One never knows what could come out of it. At the least they sell a couple of hundred or thousand extra accounts. People are ingenious. I can imagine bot hunting parties or a person trying to crash a bot. It would be extra time spend in the game for the companies. edit: btw good question, thanks!
- possibilistic 15y ago
  I really like this idea. I don't have much time for gaming anymore, but something like this would be a selling point for me. I could write such a game off as an academic exercise. There are a lot of AI/ML techniques you'd have to know or become familiar with. I imagine the competition to build the best bot at any given task, or best all-around bot, would be quite intense. Someone please make this game.
  - iambot 15y ago
    I reckon Notch's games[1] would be the perfect fit, for zones like the OP mentions. A place for the "little Coder" to learn ML/AI etc [1]: Minecraft or 0x10c etc.
- famousactress 15y ago
  Agreed. I don't really play games anymore, but this is something I'd do. Also, I'd imagine it's possible it'd help the companies with things like their bot detection schemes.. the checkbox gives them something of a control group.
  - millzlane 15y ago
    someone could make a Game specifically for bots.
- mukyu 15y ago
  Having actually played games where bots are not allowed, I have done both of those things or similar (killing bots, making them get stuck in loops, getting the killed, teleporting them or otherwise making them get stuck, .. just about anything to screw with them) and seen plenty of people doing them. I do not see how making bots legitimate would really be a factor in this type of behavior.
ajuc 15y ago
I can think of 2 aventages - you don't need to waste effort fighting bots anymore, and you can encourage some players that wouldn't want to play your game otherways. Is this worth it is another question.
- millzlane 15y ago
  After the bots are perfected, what will stop users from using them in game along side unsuspecting players? No one. The developer has not put much effort into fighting bots anymore. And now that the AI is so real, there would be no way they would catch bots gaming the system.
  - ajuc 15y ago
    If we get strong AI thanks to that, I wouldn't worry about breaking some games. Bigger problem for humanity would be where to hide Sarrah Connor :)

ShockaZulu 15y ago

Bots break games, period. They break game play, economies, immersion, etc. If you want to sand box them in a special server fine, but don't even think of unleashing them on the general population.

ajuc 15y ago
Bots break games that consist of doing the same thing over and over , are easily scriptable, and depends on false achievement to addict players (you've just wasted an hour clicking here and there repeatedly - have a cookie). So no big loss there. Actually - bots make such games interesting and demanding again.

millzlane 15y ago

Why not just create a personal bot trainer? There are lots more ways to accomplish what you need without developers allowing you to use bots. The idea is silly really, it's like asking Infinity Ward and DICE to make Aimbot/wallhack servers for people to practice their AI skills. This would ruin gaming experience for those who don't participate in botting or AI programming. For what? A couple thousand sales? It's not worth the headache.

anthonyb 15y ago
aimbots and wallhacks aren't AI though - they're cheats.
- millzlane 15y ago
  Bots that farm, hunt, gain xp ect. while your are away are cheats. Automated actions with no effort from the player is cheating.
  - anthonyb 15y ago
    Then the game is too simple. Rather than hunt down bots, they should make a more interesting game. The bots are a symptom, not a problem in themselves.
    - gyardley 15y ago
      Too simple for whom? I know I've been interested in and enjoyed many games that could be effectively botted - including some where you farm / hunt / gain XP. Saying that these games are 'too simple' and shouldn't exist sounds a little arrogant, no?
      - anthonyb 15y ago
        Most of the games which end up fighting tooth-and-nail trench warfare against bots are just boring games. I don't think expressing that opinion is arrogance, per se. Take games like minecraft or first person shooters like TF2, for example - there isn't a bot problem there for the most part (cheaters perhaps, but not bots), but farm and grind games like WoW or Farmville are rife with it. This is because WoW and Farmville are fundamentally pretty boring, but people want the shiny loot at the end.

anthonyb 15y ago

My personal take on this is that if your game is going to suffer because of bots (assuming that they're not cheating bots, and are bound by the same rules as the players) then your game is broken and/or stupid, and the choices that your players are making are too simple. Remember the Sid Meier quote about games being about making interesting choices? EDIT: Since I'm getting up and downvoted willy-nilly, here's my blog entry where I go into more detail (using Farmville as the example): http://blog.oarsum.com/post/255516489/cheating-and-game-design http://blog.oarsum.com/post/255516489/cheating-and-game-desi...

antiterra 15y ago
Too simple for what? Plenty of first person shooters are enjoyable and serve their purpose as entertainment, and any added complexity to hand-eye coordination would give a bot an advantage. Even an example of the genre that allowed for extensive team-based strategy would be unbalanced by a bot that automatically aimed and fired (even in a non-cheating way.) Basketball can be a very cerebral game, with a ton of so-called interesting choices. Yet, if the opposing team is made up of simple minded players that never miss a shot, you've got your work cut out for you.
reitzensteinm 15y ago
That's an incredibly broad statement, even leaving aside FPS games. MMOs NEED the filler content that can be botted through because otherwise they just wouldn't have the content level to sustain hundreds of hours of gameplay. It's all about pacing, like a feature film versus a TV show. To be honest, I think you're starting from Farmville, which basically isn't a game, and extrapolating from there.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  It's not especially broad, and you can apply the same line of thinking to other games like Starcraft. APS uber alles and all that... FPSes are somewhat different, but they tend not to have bot problems because FPSes are fun to play, and don't involve grinding. Even then, most of the modern FPSes have some randomness and you can't shoot with pixel perfect precision, so bots wouldn't necessarily have an advantage there. But yeah -- filler content? botted through? Why would you pay money for a "game" like that? I certainly wouldn't. Even the free-to-play WoW clones are too tedious to play.

Fizzer 15y ago

The main reason I don't allow bots in my game is cost. In my game, the speed at which the game advances is only limited by the speed of the players, and bots can play thousands of times faster than a human. Just a few aggressive bots could easily double my hosting expenses, and right now I'm not even profitable just with humans playing it. Bots can't offset their cost by being shown ads like humans can.

aerique 15y ago
Hey, I see in your profile that you're the creator of warlight! I hope it will get picked for the AI Challenge some time.

ebbv 15y ago

It's arguable whether there's any type of multiplayer game that doesn't get ruined by bots. As an example, bot chess players are known to be extremely good, so they aren't ruining the game by making it too easy for the human player; but if a human is playing a multiplayer chess game, it's probably because they want to play other humans. So by a bot being on there, it's ruining it. Not only that, but if there are enough bots, then they're going to end up playing each other which is a waste of resources. So my point here is, bots can ruin ANY game even ones where the bots are as good or better than most human players at the game and not simply doing something dumb and repetitive. Now, there's the reality which is that the only time you have bots on a large scale in a multiplayer game is when there's something to be gained by their use. Whether it's purely farming the game for the benefit of a player while he's at work so he's at an advantage when he comes back compared to people who did not run bots all day or whether it's someone doing it for actual profit; neither is good for the health of the game. Regular players are then being pushed further down the in game economy and scale of power unless they run bots themselves. And again, there's the issue of wasting resources. For games that don't charge a monthly fee, the proprietors of bots are clearly abusing the system and misappropriating resources of the game developer that's running the servers. Bots should be stopped with every means possible on every game. And when people are caught running them they should be permanently banned for life, IMHO (not just until they buy another copy of the game in question, which is often how this is handled.) If you want to make a game that allows bots openly, go for it. I don't think you'll see much success, though.

anthonyb 15y ago
> Now, there's the reality which is that the only time you have bots on a large scale in a multiplayer game is when there's something to be gained by their use. ...and the game is too tedious to play. Isn't that a sign of a problem with your game - when people would rather script it than play it? There used to be gangs of players in Ultima Online who would go around hunting down farmers and botters. A pity they didn't put the same sort of energy into demanding a better play experience.
- ebbv 15y ago
  > ...and the game is too tedious to play. That is not true at all. In fact, the opposite is true, because the bots only rise up as a problem on a popular game. If the game was so boring nobody wanted to play it, then nobody would care about the results of botting. No, bots are a problem not because the game is "too boring", but because people naturally want to abuse the system and gain advantage via automation. Whether that advantage is purely in the game, or results in real world cash.

jmsduran 15y ago

Thinking out loud and putting all realistic implications aside, for farm and grind games like World of Warcraft, it would be very interesting to see an anti-bot policy turned into an actual game mechanic; one that pits the noble, rule-abiding players against the evil bot cartel by offering achievements, bounties, or rewards for successfully reporting or disrupting bots.