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B. Paul, Editor, Bonusgambler.com
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Online gaming's cheating heart
Rick Cortese knew he was in a dicey neighborhood, so he made sure he locked his doors before he went to sleep. But crooks still managed to loot his home, sucking valuable possessions right through the walls.
The theft happened in the virtual world of "Ultima Online", one of the first popular online role-playing games, but it was a headache nonetheless and an example of the kind of cheating likely to thwart game publishers as they try to push more customers online.
Although online worlds such as "Ultima Online" and "EverQuest" account for only a small chunk of the game industry today, it's a profitable chunk, accounting for $210 million in revenue last year. Game publishers and analysts expect the segment to grow significantly in the next few years--to as much as $1.8 billion in 2005, by some estimates. That's because online games based on popular franchises such as "The Sims" and "Star Wars" will start cropping up to lure mainstream consumers into the arena.
Game companies are looking to subscription fees from online players as a major source of recurring revenue in the near future, with leading games publisher Electronic Arts predicting that 400,000 subscribers will be paying about $15 a month for "The Sims Online" by the end of its current fiscal year.
But those subscribers may not stay around if the new virtual worlds are full of the cheating and hacking that has marred previous online games. A small but fractious minority in online gaming circles, cheaters can suck the fun out of a game by introducing homemade characters with unauthorized powers, making it impossible for opponents to win or even survive. They can also quickly pollute the social atmosphere critical to many games.
"The cheaters are real fiction breakers, to say the least", said Cortese, a Los Gatos, Calif., chemist. "Nothing like fighting a guy that has a cheated character with twice your stats to put you off of a game. A lot of the third-party cheat programs gave people such a huge advantage it pretty much killed the (player vs. player) experience in the game for most people".
Matt Pritchard, a game developer at Ensemble Studios, best known for its "Age of Empires" series of strategy games, said cheating will become a particularly important issue as players without much online gaming experience enter the market.
"Cheaters get their kicks out of ruining the experience for other people", Pritchard said. "The people who are going to be most turned off by that are the newcomers. The hardcore gamers kind of know the lay of the land; they know if they have a problem, they can just find a server. But if you've got a 12-year-old girl going online to play 'The Sims', and somebody figures out a way to destroy the character she's spent a lot of time developing--she's not coming back.
"If the average person goes out there and they have a bad entertainment experience, why are they going to continue to pay $9.95 to experience this crappy world?" Pritchard said.
Game publishers are obviously listening. At the recent E3 trade show in Los Angeles, one of the gaming industry's major shindigs, the issue made itself felt. A presentation for Xbox Live, Microsoft's online service for its game console, stressed hack-proof servers. And announcements surrounding upcoming PC games such as "Star Wars Galaxies" and "The Sims Online" discussed security measures that are being built into the games.
Michael Gartenberg, research director for research firm Jupiter Media Metrix, said security will be an important selling point in convincing consumers to invest the time and money such games will require.
"We're going to see a lot of investment in systems with military-grade security", Gartenberg said. "Protecting the integrity of players who invested significant time and money in these games is going to be very important. Nobody wants to pay a certain amount of money each month just to be killed off by a troll the minute they log in".
Source: BonusGambler.com Editors' Choice
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