Turn Your FPS Skills Into Cash 109
Game|Life is posting about a new agreement between Valve and an outfit called Tournament.com that will allow for an official Counter-Strike/Half-Life 2 Multiplayer game competition service. It sounds a lot like online poker tournaments, where players ante into a pot and the winner walks away with the results. "Another option is a perpetual, ongoing game that players can drop into at any time. If you get killed, you lose $1. If you kill another player, you get $1. When your virtual 'wallet' is out of money, you're done playing. Until you add some more funds with a credit card or PayPal, that is. For now, Tournament.com is strictly small stakes. Entry fees for the example tournaments were $3.60 for each of six players, with an $18 pot split between first, second, and third place. Company representatives said they're considering high-roller tournaments, but want to make sure the service has been fully field-tested, and potential cheating methods blocked off, before big money starts getting thrown around." One of the findings of the SOE White Paper was that some people are perfectly happy making money off of their gaming hobby. How long before we see similar livelihoods via this service?
Great idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
This has the very real potential to ruin public servers.
Re:Great idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't seem like people need any incentive to do that now...Although yeah this will just make it 100x worse. This is a problem on the poker sites too - and only the really greedy and/or stupid ones get caught.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Great idea. (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, nothing's easier than seeing through a bluff when you know your opponent's hand.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Great idea. (Score:4, Informative)
But, it's trivial to write a program that for example:
And that is ignoring outrigth cheating, such as playing 2 people in a team on one table, without letting the other players know you're a team. That's an advantage because a) it doubles your available information and b) your chances of having the best hand is double, but your losses won't be, because you can make sure that only the one with the best hand bets high. (should be done in moderation lest it be suspicious)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Remembers precisely every game that was played, so knows exactly which cards are left in the deck. (good players do this too, more or less anyways)
Fine idea for black jack... except for that fact that they tend to use 5 or 6 deck chutes and only use around 20% of the available cards before shuffling... and fairly useless in poker as they shuffle the deck after every hand. granted you have a slight advantage by knowing the rough percentages based on what is left after seeing the community cards, but the number of times I have seen a 95% chance of winning hand lose on the final card...
Re:Great idea. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
But, it's trivial to write a program that for example:
* Remembers precisely every game that was played, so knows exactly which cards are left in the deck. (good players do this too, more or less anyways)
That's not how poker works. The deck is shuffled after each hand.
However, there's still a good reason to track every hand you've played: to collect statistics on everyone you've played with. There's software available right now that does this, analyzing your saved hand histories to tell you how often each person bets or raises, how likely they are to fold at each stage of the game, how many starting hands they play, and so on. You can then use that information during play to decide not to play a marginal h
Redundant? (Score:2)
Why was the parent modded redundant? Browsing at +1, its the first comment on the page...
Re:Redundant? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
If the users are anything like regular CS players though they'll just keep paying in to get ripped off by cheaters while complaining about all the cheating.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Collusion a problem too (Score:1)
On the contrary (Score:3, Interesting)
Great idea actually (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I play for fun. I earn my money at a stressful job.
I come home and play for fun and to de-stress. I actually meet some
people online in games and it's very community building. Kinda like
old pickup games at the ball yard or the hoops court.
Of course, I'm still one of the old timers that still play HL.
HL2 deathmatch is still insane. CS is always good, but sometimes I just want
to plink away and not worry about total 'one shot one kill' every time.
Let the obsessive wankers and professionals pla
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Add to that the fact that the newest hacks are almost impossible to detect unless the player is seriously stupid.
Anyone who takes part in this needs to be slapped up side the head.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, whatever. I don't like the game, but unless you were born in the late 90s I don't see how you can say "most generic FPS ever". CS popularized the concept of the squad-based mission-oriented team PvP with the realism level turned up to "guns are innacurate at full auto and you die if you get shot a couple times". Q3Arena or UT are what I'd call "generic FPS".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Premise might be simple... (Score:2)
Simple game + real opponents = huge following
Re: (Score:2)
The only game to come close to CS was bf1942 but then EA baught it and turned that whole franchise to stinking crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Not too many servers have it running, but it's a really nice balance between the two. Forcing people to get X kills with each weapon before moving up also makes it interesting and it's a great way of f
Lawmakers get their pens ready (Score:3, Insightful)
Stand by for an amendment to the current port security bill [smh.com.au]
Re: (Score:2)
Fund, not fun.
Sorry, I got caught up in the FP rush.
Re: (Score:2)
Look at the money in Dave and Busters. They have some high end prizes there just for tickets. Sure they have no "cash" value, but I can see some people in counter strike getting enough points to buy that iPod or TV.
Hell, in a way, there is more money in doing that. You buy points and never give them cash back:P Like those damn gift cards.
Re:Lawmakers get their pens ready (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why redemption machines are so prominent in what's left of the arcades. Some kid who can play Tekken for 5 hours on two quarters because he spends his off-time practicing at home doesn't make arcade operators much money. I suspect applying the redemption methodology to online gaming could be a big money winner for companies if they implement it right.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not so sure since this is not really a game of chance and you are not playing against the "house" but other players.
That may be true, but your argument could also justify why No Limit Hold'em (NLH) shouldn't be a problem either. Poker is not a game of complete chance, there is a lot of skill involved:
*Knowing how much to bet based on how aggressive the table
*Knowing how to calculate pot odds
*Reading the other players based on their bests
*Knowing what hands to play and how aggressively
*And so on...
In games such as No Limit Hold'em (NLH) you are no
Re: (Score:1)
I agree with this argument in terms of poker for the most part (I used to play online a lot), but there is a significant chance element. One of the main factors in the poker craze was seeing some amateur win the big tournament over the world's top pros. I don't think poker would be as popular as it is if the best player always won, but that kind supports the view that poker is gamblin
Bots (Score:2, Interesting)
As a computer scientist, I'm fascinated by the research potential of creating AI with for-profit motives. It even has some turingtest-esque features. "Did you just get fragged by billy or Stanfords KillBot version 3.2?"
Re: (Score:1)
New Strategy (Score:5, Funny)
Find 3 or more players close together.
Run into the middle of them.
Detonate grenades killing everyone around (including myself).
1) I lose $1.
2) I gain $4.
3) Profit!!
*NOTE* Shouting "Leroy Jenkins" is an optional embellishment.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
New Strategy-First Person Bomber. (Score:2, Funny)
Run into the middle of them.
Detonate grenades killing everyone around (including myself).
"
I think the Iraqi's have a patent on it.
Re: (Score:1)
Bunch of FPS haters... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'll admit I don't know what the guy is talking about with the
Re: (Score:1)
But what concerns me is, this is just another excuse to never leave the comfort of your computer chair... ever!
Make their way? (Score:2)
After
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
If your typical CS tournament has six players each forking over $3.60 to play with top three receiving a tiered payout, we'll assume first place gets $9.00, second place gets $5.40, and third place gets their money back at $3.60. Assuming the cheat allows you to win every game that's $9.00 a whack. If each tournament lasts an average of 20 minutes, that's $27.00 per hour. If you play for eight hours a day, five days a week, we now have a worthless no-good cheater making $1,080 a week p
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The port security bill banned the funding of off-shore, online gambling. Since this could be considered gambling, if it's not already covered under that bill, it is likely to be amended to include it if it gets enough attention.
Actually, this is not gambling (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I wonder what Freud would think about it... (Score:2)
Cheating is a HUGE problem with games - proof!? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are, even now, dozens of "hacks" that work with counterstrike - the most inventive give on screen itinerary information about players (which you can see through translucent walls) a la Deux Ex!
Allow me to ramble...
COD similarly suffers from cheaters. A sponsored (paid!) COD2 player was recently "discovered" cheating after a commercial hack manufacturer had their website's database exposed via a phpbb (iirc?) vulnerability. The happy-hacker was an admin at a gaming forum and compared the email addresses gleened from the site to ones registered on his forum... and tada, one of the biggest names in COD2 was a known cheat user... he even PAID $200 for it. (private cheats are almost always undetected)
Anti-cheat techniques often fail. VAC (now VAC2) - the Vale AntiCheat plugin - is notorious for being easy to sidle past. Other commercial varients such as Punk Buster either no longer support the games you want to play, or offer only a small degree better detection than the game manufacturer.
I was on a COD2 server last night, and Punk Buster kicked in doing a check, and the number of players went down from 20 to 3.
I may be wrong here, but the BF2 patches, compared to the release client, have seriously stepped up the anti-cheat detection. Alt-tabbing out of the game or running background processes on a single processor machine can make BF2 unbreakable as PunkBuster threads kick in to scan the system.
Most attempts at tracking and hashing memory have failed - there's too much ram on PCs nowadays! Without OS-level write handlers its very hard to track subversive programs. And I'm not even going to mention game-based "hacks" such as enabling the alpha channel on Valve textures (vtf files have a
Then there's always the driver. Seeing as there are so many ogl implementations and extended vendor drivers (ie: NGO drivers for nvidia hardware etc) it would be impossible to market a game that requires signed drivers!
Lets talk about the UK counter-strike scene for a sec...
C4U - See For Yourself - were, by all means, a talented clan. However, they fielded two known AND CAUGHT hackers for some time, Kritical, and Willzooo (less the l33tisms in their handles). I went to the UKs biggest lan event a few weeks back, as a gamer, only to find in none other than the counter-strike tournament, Kritical and Willzooo... To make my disgust worst, they were PLAYING for the UKs formost and successful sponsored team - Team Dignitas! http://www.team-dignitas.org/ [team-dignitas.org] - they're sponsored by Intel and Creative, and I can assure you these guys get a monthly salary for playing computer games (not to mention the hardware)...
So there you have it. Cheating is interlaced within the gaming community, ex-cheaters who have been banned from competitions and ridiculed by the community are forgotten about in only a matter of months, and later find themselves paid to play games.
There is no incentive not to cheat. It is ludicrous to bet on something where you cannot tell if someone is cheating or not.
Matt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PunkBuster [wikipedia.org]
http://www.ggl.com/index.php?controller=News&meth
http://www.ukterrorist.com/news/wilzooo_hax/ [ukterrorist.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Interesting comment about BF2. I play BF2142 quite a lot, I dont cheat and I actually have a rather positive kill to death ratio. I therefore assume that noone is cheating in that game.
I figured EA fixed the cheat problem in the Battlefield series but yeah, HL-based games seem.. well hell, I have not played them in a million years.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For some people the game is beating the anti-cheating software not playing the original game and they will always beat any system.
It would be fairly easy to create a physical robot aim-bot (either video camera and mechanical fingers, or more likely hard-wired into the SVGA+PS2 ports).
Anything short of physical torments on stock machines is going to allow aim-bots, and even then you have drugs, intimidation, an
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Unlike MMORGs which are controlled almost entirely by server side user agents, first person shooters very vulnerable to cheating.
Why not control first-person shooters server-side too? Sounds like a question of:
-not sending information the player could not know
-not allowing the player to determine any physics, except the user inputs.
I do not know what this means for quality of play on an bad/less then good connections though. (btw i hate how some first-person shooters dont have a maximum rotation rate of vision, it is silly)
awesome. (Score:2)
CS players don't need encouragement to camp, they are already camper than Graham Norton in a gay bar.
Nah (Score:1)
Hardcore.
Better idea: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Enter some paintball tourneys. You like playing an FPS? Paintball is the ultimate FPS thrill.
Good advice :) Oddly enough, I don't like FPS but I'd like to play Paintball on a regular basis. I've only played against my co-workers so far and I've done far better than in FPSs :) plus yes, you get to exercise. We played in one of very few paintball places in my country, and we rented the equipment, is good equipment as expensive as I've heard it is? What I did find expensive was ammo, I was forced to save it :(
Re: (Score:2)
Depending on where you play, you can usually get
Re: (Score:1)
I am a decent FPS player but a middling paint-ball player. My style in both is to run out with guns a blazin'. Works OK for FPS, but not for paint-ball.
The other problem I have with paint-ball is the cost to play at a range since they make you buy their ammo. Ouch! I'd play privately but I dont have 20 male friends with guns.
Re: (Score:1)
Exercise! Great now I have to quit paintball. Thanks alot!
Re: (Score:2)
The secret to my success... (Score:2)
Better way (Score:4, Funny)
1) Be female and sort of good looking.
2) Be sort of good at a popular multiplayer FPS.
3) Get boatloads of sponsorship to play in tournaments.
4) Profit!
(No, there is no step between 3 and 4.)
No thanks... (Score:3, Informative)
However with that said.... cheaters are abounds in CS:S. Wall hacks, aimbots, etc. With an online tournament there are far too high risks of cheating. People won't use aimbots but they will wall hack, and just use that to avoid dying, rather than racking up the kills (if they are smart). You can be smart and not get detected, people just chalk it up to your being 'good', but in fact I know so many players who people think are just 'good' that have later been banned with VAC after they clamped down on the cheaters.
Anyway, until they can guarantee cheaters to not play, then I have no interest in playing. So I guess I'll never be playing.
Sounds horrible (Score:2)
Old concept (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
In poker, on any given day, an average player can beat the best player in the world. Online poker also had a several year run of fresh meat due to all the TV shows and media attention. Many players dropped out, but there was even more to replace them. I have heard it said that at poker to be profitable you don't have to be the best player at any given table, you only have to be better than a couple of the other players.
I have heard this argument before about why you will never see large buy-
Re: (Score:1)
1. Players can only make money in games 'ranked' at their level or higher and can only lose money in games lower than their rank. They can join a low rank game just to make people suffer, but it will cost them in the end.
2. Li
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Players who are on a streak are often times dependent on whos on the server and how the t
Title... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Won't Work. (Score:1)
When that happens, even the top players will on average lose more money than they make, since the playing field should be somewhat balanced (W
Like gambling (Score:2)
I guess that's why Vegas turned to dust long ago.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Even in UT or Quake, you can be a noob, get quad damage and somehow manage to kill a good player who had his back on you. Every game has a *bit* of luck involved, but the chances of a noob getting lucky every single round is astronomical.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, they might kill sometimes, but they won't get more kills than deaths, specially with all the good players around trying to get money from the system. I never seen a real noob do well playing against experts...
Which is why I said you were "mostly right" except for that one small implication. Meaning I agreed with 99.9% of your post. ;)
Even in UT or Quake, you can be a noob, get quad damage and somehow manage to kill a good player who had his back on you. Every game has a *bit* of luck involved, but the chances of a noob getting lucky every single round is astronomical.
Here I have to disagree, quite strongly. I'm slightly above-average at UT, meaning I can join a public server and usually be at or near the top. If I were to go 1 vs 1 against the worst players on these servers, they would never get a single frag off me. Not one. But then someone else joins the server who totally blows me away. I can't kill him, even once. And then there's the nex
Blood Toll, been there, done that (Score:2)
Oh, the humanity! (Score:3, Interesting)
Quick story: A few years ago, was playing Quake 3, Weapons Factory Arena mod, at a friends place. I discovered that when you turned on Player Name Labels, if you passed your crosshairs over an area that you could shoot through but couldn't see through (like a curtain over a window), the player name would pop up when you went over them, even though you couldn't actually see them.
So, I did what any good sniper would do. I found a hole to hide in, pointed my gun at the window, and waited for labels to start popping up. A few shots later I had the exact height for headshots.
Some chucklehead started running in there. I shot him. He ran back. I shot him again. He tried to sneak back in. I shot him again. All headshots. He started doing nothing but running from the spawn point to this room, trying to find a way to avoid me. He'd duck, he'd run back and forth, he'd bunnyjump. All the while he was cursing me, accusing me of cheating, and going completely rabid and foamy-mouth. I must have headshotted him 50 times before the timer ran out.
I thought it was hilarious. I'd found a small
Now, if he lost a buck every time I nailed him... I'd really feel bad. Sure, it's his fault, but still, $50 lost and you don't understand how you lost it? That would suck.
Also brings to mind the old Descent days. We used to play v1 multiplayer in the university LAN. It was awesome 8 of us rippin it up. Thanks to my ability to think 3D (vs most of the other guys who all thought in terms of "flat"), I was the resident sniper, hanging nose down over doorways with homing missiles ready, jumping out of pits or corners in the ceiling, and of course, hiding out while they all fought, and then wiping out the winner.
All perfectly acceptable in a winner-take-all game for fun. But if I mega-missile someone up the ass because they went blasting through a doorway without looking, and then nail everyone who comes for their loot, and then nail the respawns who come looking for a powerup... well, it just doesn't sound as fun when there's serious money to be lost for everyone.
We've all had those days when we just can't accept that we're losing, and we have to keep trying (I did that yesterday in WoW... stupid spider queen). And while that's all fine when it's for fun, or when there's a 1-time bet on it... if you suddenly have a crappy night and are $200 in the hole because of it... I just wouldn't want to be the cause of that. Whether they deserved it or not.
quake 2 / 3 (Score:2)
Peer review stops cheating. But it's not perfect. (Score:3, Insightful)
99% of the time you'll be able to tell if someone is a cheater. Usually that's because they have a tell-tale sign. Maybe they seemed to just know someone was coming around a blind spot every time. Maybe you aren't totally sure they're cheating but then you see that they have a reaction time that seems instant. No human has an instant reaction time. In fact, it's usually measured in hundreds of milliseconds, and certainly not tens.
Often you can tell because the person has absolutely amazing aim and yet their normal mouse movements when there's nobody or nothing to aim at are erratic and disorganized. And on top of that these people usually have trouble navigating the tougher terrain and jumps in an FPS... which is weird because they have incredible hand-eye for aim but not so for jumps. This is almost NEVER the case for a truly skilled player. Their jumps and other forms of acrobatics are usually spot on.
The thing is, it's usually not just one sign. It's a bunch of them together that tell you to watch somebody with a lot more scrutiny. Often you'll reach a consensus amongst the other players and then the suspected cheater will be booted or banned.
And of course on the other side of this coin is the fact that most players can recognize real skill.
Does this stop 100% of cheaters? No... but it really does stop the majority. Sometimes it hurts non-cheaters who are really just very skilled. I'm not bragging, but I've been booted for cheating several times when I wasn't cheating. But that's usually when I go to a new server and nobody knows who I am. Which is where reputation comes into play. Once a server community gets to know you they remember you and know you're skilled. Of course, even then sometimes they boot you. But then we're not talking about cheating anymore, we're talking about jealousy and envy, and that's a different thing entirely.
TLF
Re:Peer review stops cheating. But it's not perfec (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
All this talk about FPS games makes me want to pick one up again. I've been in WoW gridlock for two years. And now that Blizzard has completely lost their sense of class direction and development, maybe it's time to cancel my three accounts!
Server Performance (Score:1)
PurePressure.com (Score:1)
Bad idea (Score:2)