3 ms·

We generally call that cheating, not hacking, but whatever.

sp332 11y ago
True, however: That healing-wine hack isn’t cheating, say Jordan Wiens and Rusty Wagner, the two former Raytheon security researchers who created Pwn Adventure. In this World of Warcraft-style game, hacking the game is the game.
Torn 11y ago
Engineering the cheats and modifying the game client yourself is hacking
- cmdrfred 11y ago
  To be honest this doesn't seem to be hacking or cheating, as the 'hack' is an intended part of the gameplay.
EC1 11y ago
It certainly results in cheating, but the process is hacking.
- barkingcat 11y ago
  I'd argue it's not actually cheating if the game is meant to be played in such a fashion.
  - EC1 11y ago
    If the goal of the game is to cheat, you're still cheating. It just happens to be the main mechanism of the game.
    - mburns 11y ago
      If you are using the game as it is intended, you are by definition not cheating.
    - BenTheElder 11y ago
      The goal of the game is to 'hack' it to win. There's nothing dishonest about playing the game as intended.
barkingcat 11y ago
That's the point of this game (according to the article) - the hack is the game, the cheat is the side effect but it's part of the game - so you have to hack to play the game.
0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
If there was ever a time to not care about words and meanings this is it (or split infinitives). Also, Knuth[0] likes to play this way https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7159934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7159934 too. [0] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/ http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/
cbd1984 11y ago
'Cheating' is not playing the game the way your competition regards as fair. It's getting an unfair advantage by using techniques that your opponents wouldn't use. Consider this: Imagine a fighting game which is unbalanced. 'Unbalanced', here, means that one character is so inherently better that using it is a victory condition in itself; maybe it can spam a really effective move without giving the opponent a chance to retaliate. Whatever the details, the person who chooses that character is guaranteed a victory assuming they play to win. In that case, the community of people who play that game would effectively ban the character to make the game as it is played more balanced. Anyone who picks that character would be unable to find opponents, and everyone else would restrict themselves to the characters which offer both players a chance to win. My point is, in that not-entirely-contrived scenario, doing something the game software allows is cheating because it is something the game community has agreed to be cheating. Cheating has little to do with what the un-hacked code allows. In fact, in this case, hacking the code to remove the unbalanced character (or, more likely, to make that character unavailable on the selection screen) would remove a possible cheat, making the hacked version less amenable to cheating. David Sirlin wrote a book called "Playing To Win" which touches on a lot of what I just talked about. He was actually lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix, Puzzle Fighter HD Remix, and Kongai: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/ http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/

sp332 11y ago

True, however: That healing-wine hack isn’t cheating, say Jordan Wiens and Rusty Wagner, the two former Raytheon security researchers who created Pwn Adventure. In this World of Warcraft-style game, hacking the game is the game.

Torn 11y ago

Engineering the cheats and modifying the game client yourself is hacking

cmdrfred 11y ago
To be honest this doesn't seem to be hacking or cheating, as the 'hack' is an intended part of the gameplay.

EC1 11y ago

It certainly results in cheating, but the process is hacking.

barkingcat 11y ago
I'd argue it's not actually cheating if the game is meant to be played in such a fashion.
- EC1 11y ago
  If the goal of the game is to cheat, you're still cheating. It just happens to be the main mechanism of the game.
  - mburns 11y ago
    If you are using the game as it is intended, you are by definition not cheating.
  - BenTheElder 11y ago
    The goal of the game is to 'hack' it to win. There's nothing dishonest about playing the game as intended.

barkingcat 11y ago

That's the point of this game (according to the article) - the hack is the game, the cheat is the side effect but it's part of the game - so you have to hack to play the game.

0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago

If there was ever a time to not care about words and meanings this is it (or split infinitives). Also, Knuth[0] likes to play this way https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7159934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7159934 too. [0] http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/ http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/

cbd1984 11y ago

'Cheating' is not playing the game the way your competition regards as fair. It's getting an unfair advantage by using techniques that your opponents wouldn't use. Consider this: Imagine a fighting game which is unbalanced. 'Unbalanced', here, means that one character is so inherently better that using it is a victory condition in itself; maybe it can spam a really effective move without giving the opponent a chance to retaliate. Whatever the details, the person who chooses that character is guaranteed a victory assuming they play to win. In that case, the community of people who play that game would effectively ban the character to make the game as it is played more balanced. Anyone who picks that character would be unable to find opponents, and everyone else would restrict themselves to the characters which offer both players a chance to win. My point is, in that not-entirely-contrived scenario, doing something the game software allows is cheating because it is something the game community has agreed to be cheating. Cheating has little to do with what the un-hacked code allows. In fact, in this case, hacking the code to remove the unbalanced character (or, more likely, to make that character unavailable on the selection screen) would remove a possible cheat, making the hacked version less amenable to cheating. David Sirlin wrote a book called "Playing To Win" which touches on a lot of what I just talked about. He was actually lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix, Puzzle Fighter HD Remix, and Kongai: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/ http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/