Dec 29, 2021 07:32 PM
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211...d-to-cheat
EXCERPT: . . . But, despite attempts in both professional and amateur games alike to stop it, cheating is more common than we might think. Surprisingly, it can also be a good thing. Whyville, created in 1999 as an educational game for children aged eight and over, might seem like an unlikely place to investigate cheating.
[...] "When I heard that this game was for tween girls, I asked the developers, 'Oh, so you probably don't have any problems with cheating,’" says Consalvo. She had good reason to believe this was the case. Most of the research on cheating at that point focused on men, she says – it was thought that men cheated more than women.
But the developers of Whyville noticed something unusual – here was a game where 68% of the audience were female aged 8-13, but in which cheating was rife. Like many games, there were cheat codes and walkthrough guides. But players also hacked each others' accounts or set up secondary accounts to scam their way to more clams, found Yasmin Kafai, a professor of learning at the University of Pennsylvania, US, and Deborah Fields, at Utah State University, US.
Consalvo was also captivated by another kind of cheating in the game – something she had rarely seen elsewhere. Using the chat function, some of the girls were manipulating the clam market by conspiring to drive up the value of their goods. Groups of girls would publicly say how rare or sought-after a particular upgrade was, and how much they would be willing to pay, to trick other players into overpaying for their goods. Consalvo calls this a kind of "social arbitrage", a form of market manipulation.
"That's brilliant, right?," says Consalvo, of the ingenuity of the girls. "You never can predict who is going to be doing what in a game, there will always be something new and interesting coming along."
Why were they cheating? In her book, Consalvo describes an idea called "gaming capital". Being good at a game brings a social cachet that elevates you within the community. Good players want to maintain their statuses and be sought out as experts.
"There's this knowledge that you get from deep play of a particular game… and that's something that you can share with other folks," says Consalvo. "The idea is that you have a kind of cultural capital."
But to maintain this status, sometimes players might need to cheat. Curiously, it might be the case that better players feel the need to cheat more than players who are worse than them. The fear of losing something appears to be a greater motivator to cheat than the lure of a gain.
This might be because the loss a player feels in a game is real. It hurts to have your gaming capital taken away from you, even if what you are losing are Monopoly dollars or Whyville clams.
The idea of cheating to maintain status might be supported by evidence from other areas... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: . . . But, despite attempts in both professional and amateur games alike to stop it, cheating is more common than we might think. Surprisingly, it can also be a good thing. Whyville, created in 1999 as an educational game for children aged eight and over, might seem like an unlikely place to investigate cheating.
[...] "When I heard that this game was for tween girls, I asked the developers, 'Oh, so you probably don't have any problems with cheating,’" says Consalvo. She had good reason to believe this was the case. Most of the research on cheating at that point focused on men, she says – it was thought that men cheated more than women.
But the developers of Whyville noticed something unusual – here was a game where 68% of the audience were female aged 8-13, but in which cheating was rife. Like many games, there were cheat codes and walkthrough guides. But players also hacked each others' accounts or set up secondary accounts to scam their way to more clams, found Yasmin Kafai, a professor of learning at the University of Pennsylvania, US, and Deborah Fields, at Utah State University, US.
Consalvo was also captivated by another kind of cheating in the game – something she had rarely seen elsewhere. Using the chat function, some of the girls were manipulating the clam market by conspiring to drive up the value of their goods. Groups of girls would publicly say how rare or sought-after a particular upgrade was, and how much they would be willing to pay, to trick other players into overpaying for their goods. Consalvo calls this a kind of "social arbitrage", a form of market manipulation.
"That's brilliant, right?," says Consalvo, of the ingenuity of the girls. "You never can predict who is going to be doing what in a game, there will always be something new and interesting coming along."
Why were they cheating? In her book, Consalvo describes an idea called "gaming capital". Being good at a game brings a social cachet that elevates you within the community. Good players want to maintain their statuses and be sought out as experts.
"There's this knowledge that you get from deep play of a particular game… and that's something that you can share with other folks," says Consalvo. "The idea is that you have a kind of cultural capital."
But to maintain this status, sometimes players might need to cheat. Curiously, it might be the case that better players feel the need to cheat more than players who are worse than them. The fear of losing something appears to be a greater motivator to cheat than the lure of a gain.
This might be because the loss a player feels in a game is real. It hurts to have your gaming capital taken away from you, even if what you are losing are Monopoly dollars or Whyville clams.
The idea of cheating to maintain status might be supported by evidence from other areas... (MORE - missing details)