An Interview with a Cheater 371
Dan writes to mention a post at the Aeropause site. Author Richard was recently given the rare opportunity to interview a cheater, shining a light into the dark recesses of a conflicted mind. The article explores why the cheater cheats, and the great excuses they use to be able to look themselves in the mirror. From the article: "Aeropause: What made you decide to mod your Xbox to gain an unfair advantage in games like Halo 2? Schmuck5000: Modding is not an unfair advantage. There is just as much chance that there will be a modder on the other team. I am there to even things out. Halo 2 is beginning to get old, us modders are just making it more funner."
That old idiom. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Cheaters never lose, and losers never win.
But cheaters are losers.
Ergo, there are no cheaters!
Cheating is natural (Score:4, Insightful)
We, therefore, are instinctually driven to use all resources available to us to give ourselves every advantage we can. Hence, the "temptation" to cheat is an ever-present behavioral drive.
Good sportsmanship is an arbitrary social construct. There is nothing natural about it. It takes an act of self-denial to be a good sport, and to not cheat. Now, this may be ethically and socially superior...it may be the more enlightened path...but it is not natural and as such most people don't walk it.
Re: (Score:2)
There isn't really a point in the whole thing, just someone is bitching on an imaginary cheater. It would however be interesting to see an inter
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It doesn't work.
Apparently part of the modder/cheater mentality is not only to have an advantage over the other players, but to exploit that advantage in the FACE of those who are trying to play an hone
Re:Cheating is natural (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on what you mean by the "old days." Humans are social animals and always have been (as far as we know). Generally speaking, individuals cooporate in a social situation. It pays to play by the rules within the group (which may include *lawful* competition). In a group, you're more likely to be killed for "cheating" (theft, for example) than get a survival advantage. It is therefore the norm for humans to obey the rules of the social group. "Cheating" is a deviation... an aberation that ultimately hurts the stability of the social group.
Cheating may, however, still be natural in the sense that it is an evolutionary carryover from a time when the animal that humans eventually evolved from was not social/cooporative. But as far as being human goes, it is not "natural."
Social contructs are no more or less arbitary than any other survival adaptation such as tool making. We make physical tools. We make social constructs. Same basic purpose: survival.
-matthew
Ladies and Gentlemen: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's no real argument being made, there's a factual assertion. Credibility of a witness making a factual assertion is a very valid consideration.
Re:Ladies and Gentlemen: (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:anti-cheating engine (Score:2, Insightful)
It also got me thinking about what an anti-cheating engine would look like...
Honestly why don't companies like bungie simply run a CRC on any downloaded content, or record the downloaded date server side and compare it with the modified date client side. I honestly don't know much about cheating online but as someone who has modded Xbox consoles I would imagine the cheating comes from modifying the extra content that was downloaded from Xbox live and sits
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because it's not that simple. Think of the code that gets run.
Calculate CRC
check CRC to answer
if not equal jump to OMG_HACKER
if equal jmp to PLAY_GAME_PLEASE
All a hacker has to do is find any location in 'Calculate CRC' and put a single instruction 'JMP PLAY_GAME_PLEASE', and he's bypassed your CRC check. So now you have to pu
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
punkbuster et al rely on a seperate executable checking the state of another executable, which is a slightly better situation, but it ends up in a situation like bf2 where the 'validating client data' stage of loading a game takes as long as loading the content & connecting to a server, if not longer.
modder
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You don't know what you're talking about.
I don't cheat because I don't play online games because I can't stand f-ing cheaters, okay?
That said, you're just wrong. I've modded about a dozen Xboxes. None of them using a modchip, all done in software. When I am finished modding an Xbox:
1) You can connect and play on Xbox live.
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, not everyone cheats.
Strange.
On another note, did you guys read the forum posts following the article? I particularly enjoyed the furor subsequent to the "Cheaters_Mother" posts.
-stormin
Re: (Score:2)
I know what he means (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. This is why I carry $1000 in Monopoly money in my underpants at all times.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
You'd be better off carrying $10,000 and a pile of get out of jail free cards.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Naw, dog. I'm from the ghetto, that stretch of slum land from Go to Jail. A grand will buy you crack, a lap dance, a few forty ounce bottles of malt liquor, and your own chain of Flag Inns.
New for XBox 360 (Score:4, Funny)
You to can make ur games much more funner then before! Plug in yer haxx and away yous go! Cal Now!
Weeeoooeeeoooeeooo... (Score:2, Funny)
Here come the Slashdot Spelling and Grammar Police..
"I am there to even things out. Halo 2 is beginning to get old, us modders are just making it more funner."
Re:Weeeoooeeeoooeeooo... (Score:5, Funny)
See kids: IF YOU cheat at Halo 2 OR become a Slashdot Editor, your grammar skills *will* slip.
(There's a moral here, but damned if I could figure it out!)
Re: (Score:2)
Cheat or cheater (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Cheat or cheater (Score:5, Funny)
Whereas a cheater's sort of like a leopard.
Correct. It's very similar to the other Southern Appalachian big cat, the lyin'.
Really lame interview (Score:5, Informative)
Boh the interviewer and interviewee appear to be relatively idiotic. This interview might have been marginally interesting if they had interviewed someone more on the cutting edge of cheating -- someone who actually creates the mods, or develops new cheating modalities.
Re:Really lame interview (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with parent, the interview is stupid, it is just one person whining because the 'cheater' beat him. I agree that what would be interesting is to interview the developers of the cheats.
However, the reason why the people develop cheats is just because there is demand for cheats. So in a sense this cheater has a point, there is people who wants to cheat, it has been like that since the GameGear times of the NES (or before).
My first cheat was with the Price of Persia game on the PC, I remember looking the PRINCE.SAV file on Xtree Gold and editing it in Hex mode (without knowing what it was, just hacking my way trough it) to have more lives and time. Oh, and to bypass the manual letter verifiaciton =o)
Re:Really lame interview (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it would be very interesting to ask technical as well as moral questions to the people who enable cheaters to cheat, but this interview gave us insight into why a person would cheat in the first place.
I would also like to add that there is a strong difference between cheating at a single player game, and having fun figuring out the save system, and cheating at multiplayer. When you're cheating by yourself, whether it be because you enjoy reverse-engineering the save file or because you simply want to advance faster, it has no impact on anybody else.
Cheating at multiplayer is an annoyance for everybody. The interviewee clearly demonstrates that there is no technical challenge to what he is doing. He's not doing it because he wants to understand how the game works. He's doing it because he's not very good at the games he likes to play and he wants to win, to the frustration of everybody else.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It's impossible for a cheater to win. People who face cheaters get irritated because they completely ruin the game, not because they're such potent adversaries.
Even when you aren't getting shot by magic bullets from adversaries who can track you and shoot you through walls, once cheaters have permeated a domain you can
Re: (Score:2)
I found the rationalization interesting personally. He honestly thinks the game is more fun playing by different rules... I've never heard of anyone that liked rules which worked against them. He also assumes that the other players DON'T want to play by the same set of rules, whic
Re:Really lame interview (Score:5, Insightful)
They want to be bully's and the only way the can bully people is to use a "tool" to get over whatever is preventing them from bullying without the "tool".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You are wrong, I created and released an aimbot for a certain FPS game and I had a girlfriend at the time. It's amazing people still don't understand what a griefer is. It never mattered to me if I won or lost, just as long as I pissed someone off, and got a laugh out of it.
Al
Re:Really lame interview (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really lame interview (Score:5, Insightful)
Other posters said it sounds like sociopathic tendencies. It's not a tendency, you are a sociopath.
"It's amazing people still don't understand what a griefer is."
That's practically the definition of a sociopath. A person who does not think or feel the same genuine emotions the rest of society does, but you firmly believe everyone else's brain is wired up the way yours is.
People with normal minds do not play games for the disenjoyment of others, don't understand why someone would want to, and wouldn't enjoy it if we tried. Your thoughts and behavior are equivilant to someone going to medical school so they can cut people with a scalpel. (i.e. Someone who wants to end up with half a dozen bodies hanging in their basement.) You've chosen a course of action for exactly the opposite reason most people do, but you think it's strange the rest of us don't seem to understand or empathize.
Sociopath (Score:3, Insightful)
"They bitch and morn about how I cheated but they could have modded their box just like mine."
How about "They bitch and moan about how I broke into their houses and stole their stuff, but they could have lots of stuff too if they just broke into other people's houses and stole theirs." [insert random grammatical mistakes for added authenticity]
This is about the basic trust and respect for other people that makes society a decent place to live. Saying "it's OK that I'm an asshole b
Abusing social trust is for children and loonies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not for you to decide how much someone else's time is worth.
Why should others have to inconvenience themselves to accommodate your antisocial behaviour? If, IRL, you came across a group of people playing [football, rugby, Ultimate...] would you feel justified in running around and disrupting their
Re: (Score:2)
athletes use same excuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there's a difference between recreational gaming and professional sports, however. Professional sports are ALL about winning (unfortunately, IMO -- it sets a bad example). Look at the famous quote by Vince Lombardi -- "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."
Recreational gaming is about competition, win or lose -- and the fact that some people are willi
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
interesting
Interview the Enabler Please (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the people who write the code or make the hardware for the mods? You know, the people that actually do all the work? I want to talk to these people who probably don't even use it all that much but just consider it a challenge and then get bored after the challenge is overcome. Game Genie & Game Shark are popularized commercial versions of this but it's not online play. I wish I could talk to the people that reverse engineer the packets sent out using something like Burp or a networking tool that gives them speed hacks. These people work for it while I don't even think their end goal is really to cheat. I kind of have the feeling that they enjoy the cat and mouse game that appearantly Blizzard has won (after rounds of losing) but Xbox Live has lost.
I investigated writing a program that read the memory from video and tried to interpret it using heuristics on what to do in casewise instances. While it might work for some games (like Tetris), 3D emersion worlds like WoW or online play are much much more difficult. If people are out there and writing these 'bots' that are pretty highly sophisticated, I'd love to hear from them and ask them real questions (not "Do you have a girlfriend?").
By the way, the article has a picture of Steve Martin as "The Jerk" and it's pretty obvious they were interviewing an idiot and doing a radio talk show host job of making him look like a poser.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You're new here aren't you?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not a cheater though, I just wrote it to see how easy it really is to defeat punkbuster. Aside from the testing I did with some friends on live servers, I don't put it to use...takes all the fun out of the game.
Obviously this isn't sophisticated at all, but I thought I would share it wi
Re: (Score:2)
For Galaxies, I did it purely for the profit - sorry, but people paying $1000 and up for Jedi characters was too good to pass up at the time. I spent maybe 100 hours on the automation p
The subject was then told that (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
He has a great future (Score:2)
I think he has a great future in front of him. As we are continually told, life
is a competition. The point is to win and not to winge about how it wasn't fair
when you loose.
Besides which, it is only a game that we are talking about. If you are worried about people cheating, I would suggest chess or scrabble. Much harder to cheat at these.
Phil
Re: (Score:2)
You, sir, have never played Scrabble against my friend's grandmother then.
Possible ways to cheat:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The you're an idiot and don't understand the meaning of competition. Competition implies that there are rules being followed.
Want to play without rules? Great. Come and play a game of poker in my neck of the woods and cheat. Please don't winge (whatever that is) about the lack of working knees when you get caught (ie: lose).
L
Oboy! News for Nerds!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Man that guy's got balls! None can stop our XBox-modding overlords.
Thanks
The Worst Part... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
There are some people in the world that are in the upper 0.01% for gaming. They're not cheating - they really are just that good. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference.
I used to run all of the gaming servers for a (now defunct) gaming clan and I was often called upon to jump into a game and check out someone in person to see if they were cheating. Automated tools like PunkBuster et al. can be tricked and fooled; The best way to catch a
Re: (Score:2)
Rare Opportunity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Regardless, the amount of cheating that exists online now is the reason I only play online with people I know, on locked servers. The rest of the time it is single player stuff. When I play a game I play to have fun, and cheaters make games very UN-fun.
Catching them can be a problem. I'm happy the some companies are taking steps towards anti-cheating measures, but ultimately the cheaters are going to win. They control the software running on their hardware and they can modify it as they see fit.
PunkBuster was a good example of this. A server with PunkBuster running required all client connecting to be running a PunkBuster client, which reported to the server various bits of information such as video drivers, what processes are running, if something might be modifying the game's memory, etc. But, after a while, it was useless because the client software was hacked to make the cheater player seem legitimate.
Anti-cheat software is like a lock on a door: It only keeps the honest people out.
Re:Rare Opportunity? (Score:5, Insightful)
if you want to "interview a cheater" it is very easy to find them.
To successfully find out what cheats were out there I had to get on those boards and become a member and all that stuff. Trust me, "skill" can easily be downloaded for almost any game out there.
The cheaters get all angry and stop playing if they cant cheat, cause the game "aint fun" because they losing or they expect someone else is cheating against them when they lose.
We are teaching our kids that the only way to have fun is to win, and if you are second place it just means your the first loser and all of that.
Kids arent learning that the POINT of the game is to show how good you are at it versus someone else, when you are cheating you arent really playing the same game and your rules are better in your favor. Its completely pointless.
Contradiction... (Score:2)
later...
I used to cheat on Halo 2 too! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
What they want to be known as, and what they're likely called, are probably two different things.
If one (or more) people are cheating, then whatever they're doing, it isn't playing a game any longer; it's more like theft of time, effort, energy, and so on from the one(s) NOT cheating. Reading about all the mods, cheats, hacks, bots, and everything else available for online games is the ma
Cognative Dissonance (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope I spelled that right...
But man, it's amazing this guy can't put two of his responses together:
Ok, ignoring for the moment that they did do that (they put it on a freakin' console, for one), even ignoring that banning cheaters is an "anti-cheating engine" of sorts, when asked how game designers should stop cheaters (since he suggested that they do), he says:
So, damned if they do, and damned if they don't.
Still, this has got to be my favorite quote:
Funny, I think this guy cheats (not hard!) because he's a jealous pussy who wishes he had the ability to play fairly.
I call BS. The people I know who can play a game "very well" -- some of them could be tournament-level if they practiced just a bit more -- would all much rather play fair. Oh, they have fun with new cheats and exploits, for about 10 seconds, and we're talking about things like Warthog jumping. The rest of the time, they are the ones who will be winning anyway, by knifing the aimbotter in the back.
But I suppose it's like trying to teach a Ferengi about honor, or a Klingon about restraint, or a Trekkie about the Real World. He'll always cheat, and he'll always suck, and nothing I say will change that.
Re: (Score:2)
Bad grammar, imaturity, poor spelling..... (Score:5, Funny)
Bad grammar, immaturity, poor spelling...Quick Taco! You've found a new Slashdot editor!
Wow.. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Complete with Strongbad as the interviewer.
You just made my day.
Twink (Score:4, Insightful)
Also interesting is the similarity in attitude. Anyone posting anti-twink messages generally gets called a "loser" and more offensive terms and is labeled as jealous because they can't get the funds to twink. The cheater says the equivalent, calling people who complain about cheaters some nasty things while saying they are envious because they can't cheat or aren't "smart" enough to.
There's also the classic "If they (being the game creators) didn't want me to cheat (or twink) they would have built an anti-cheat engine (equipment based team selector)" argument. As well as the "I have 1337 skills and even without cheats I'll pwn you" argument.
While there are certainly mature people who do things like twinking because they are bored or because they enjoy fighting other twinks, I think it's obvious (especially if you've ever fought them) that the vast majority are without skill and make up for it with whatever advantage can be afforded to an unskilled moron. If everyone actually cheated, they'd stop playing because they wouldn't be able to win.
The fact that the cheater is 24, lacks a girlfriend (quite defensive about it too), and quotes a hideous translation from a dub of a mainstream cartoon show doesn't lend us to have faith in his intelligence.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't get mad at the person who ran around an FPS map gathing weapons, ammo, and armor before opening up on you, or do you expect them to only fight with the default handgun?
Hacker/mod cheaters should be banned and are really only showing their lack of skill at playing the game.
Re: (Score:2)
You actually believe him that he's 24? I'm guessing he's about 15, though other people think he's a lot younger than that.
Also, I wonder what the chances are that he was intentionally saying things to get a reaction out of people.
Wait? (Score:3, Funny)
Kobayashi Maru (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Schmuck5000: your day will come.
Re: (Score:2)
He probably used protomatter in his code too!
In related news... (Score:3, Funny)
--Rob
Legit? (Score:2)
Habitual (Score:2)
It's obvious he cheats on his English tests, too. Most foreigners I know speak English better than he does.
so dont play (Score:2)
Guy claims he wont stop cheating if no one else does and he is evening out the playing field
Guy claims he can own the battlefield without cheating
Guy claims that people who whine about him cheating should mod their own xbox
Guy claims that everyone wants to cheat and he just had the nuts to do it
Guy is a whiny little bitch who cant play for shit. He makes up excuses to why he should cheat, claiming the otheres are , and therefore they are ag
I sense a disturbance in the force... (Score:5, Funny)
... as if millions of grammar nazies cried out in terror, and were silenced.
"more funner" indeed.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
* My head a'splode! *
Bah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Online cheaters are below contempt. I don't care what their motivation is. You don't go and purposely ruin others people's fun. It's just "not done". I don't care if your retarded, doing it for kicks, have some half decent self invented excuse or whatever, you just don't. Hell, I've ended real life friendships when I learned they were cheating (in various ways) and couldn't convince them it's just not done.
The arguments presented in the article are just beyond sanity. "I tend to ignore those people, they bitch and morn about how I cheated but they could have modded their box just like mine.", "How can they complain about people like me. They should have built a anti-cheating engine in the game to prevent it.", "Anyone reading this is simply jealous of the fact that I have enough nuts to cheat and play the game the way I want to.", "why should I stop if no one else does"
It's all about the morals and values. Hell, I could've been fairly rich if I didn't hang on to it. Many players of various games have used tools (mods, extensions, cheater-finding, etc) I've made daily. I could've taken most of their accounts if I wanted, selling them on ebay, and in some cases just exchanging it for real world cash (in case of real-cash-economy games). And believe me, there's lots and lots of cash in that. Morals and values...
Saddest thing is, we are most likely to see this guy grow up to be president of some company that earns millions by ripping other people of or otherwise cheating them (spammers anyone?). Fuck that.
why people cheat (Score:4, Insightful)
The software used (Score:5, Informative)
It was around 4am with no admins on the server, so they were being quite blatant about their cheating. I believe they were using the wallhacks and aimbots offered from MSXSecurity [msxsecurity.com]
Check out the videos:
http://media.putfile.com/MSX-Aimbot [putfile.com]
http://media.putfile.com/MSX-Video2222 [putfile.com]
http://media.putfile.com/pwnage5580 [putfile.com]
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-36491411
Unfortunately, I must be honest, these hacks actually DO make cheating look kind of fun. Like you are a mutant with super-human powers.
I would like to see a team of cheaters going up against another team of cheaters though - that would be strange and pointless gameplay I would think.
They are like Flamebaiters (Score:2)
I like to cheat at games... (Score:2)
Anyone playing World of Warcraft ever looked up thottbot.com
Anyone playing World of Warcraft ever had a 60 show their 40 through a tough area
Anyone playing World of Warcraft install mods to allow them to heal better in raids
Anyone playing World of Warcraft go into battle grounds against noob 60s in full epic regalia and prete
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I disagree with this. To some point this is probably true but from another aspect I think that cheaters do it to fulfill some level of self-esteem. Having your name high on the kill/death ratio list is a big thrill. For some unfortunate gamers it may be as close to success as they've ever been in their lives.
If this weren't true than how can you explain cheat codes in single player games? Surely most gamers are aware enough to
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Worst typo ever (Score:2)
Worst typo I've ever seen around here lately!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Note to Self (Score:4, Funny)