Why so many people cheat in online games

[ez4u]

Medal of dishonour: why do so many people cheat in online video games?

[Javaness2]

That's a good read. I hadn't realised quite what an industry cheating was in these online games. I hope it doesn't become this endemic in Go anytime soon. I've been playing Wordox a little again, that's a Scrabble - Othello combination, and the change in the depth of people's vocabulary compared to how it was when I played at university is pretty evident to me. I felt just like quitting a few weeks ago after a pretty bad streak.

For Go players, I suppose one of the key pleasures of this game is being able to create something beautiful on the board. Equally though, there is the undeniable kick we get out of winning. I was just reading last night about the latest Pandanet League cheating scandal. I guess we will start to move there.

[John Fairbairn]

I welcomed this link, too - thanks, Dave - and it answered a lot of my questions. I also felt curiously relieved that I am not a freak for not cheating, but in fact am one of 93%. I was also tickled to learn new terms: impression management and griefing.

But I still have a couple of unanswered questions, and now some new ones. One new one is that if cheating is built into our neurosystems for evolutionary reasons, what is it that makes 93% of us not (or very rarely) cheat? (Fear of being caught, I'd guess, but I don't know.)

Still unanswered questions include what makes people with low self-esteem think that cheating gives them high esteem. I can think of feasible explanations (e.g. getting revenge on an unfair world) but I am just guessing and can't weigh the likelihood of one explanation against another.

Also, I'm intrigued by what seems to be a parallel "esteem" phenomenon. Courtesy of lockdown (again), I have watched things I'd never normally dream of watching on Youtube. Apparently, one common theme in martial arts at the moment is for people like taiji masters to challenge MMA fighters. They end up getting the manure kicked out of them.

But it turns out that these are fake, self-appointed masters (cheats, in other words) who have deluded not just their pupils but themselves. It is the reaction in China that intrigues me. Rather than be smugly pleased that the fake got his come-uppance, it seems that the majority reaction is to condemn the MMA expert. He is seen as trashing an ancient and respected traditional Chinese art and so is anti-Chinese.

Another of my still unanswered questions. If it's true that 93% of people never or rarely cheat, that doesn't seem to square with reports that there is a massive amount of cheating on chess servers. The only rational explanation of that (if true) seems to be that the non-cheaters simply avoid server play and let the naughty boys play by themselves in the increasingly squalid sandpit. If so, we can expect a similar pattern in go, presumably.

What that seems to amount to is that non-cheaters, i.e. the vast majority of go players already face a situation where (because of the internet rather than cheating) they have increasingly few places to play face-to-face and will now (because of cheating) end up having nowhere to play online either. And lockdown may also have changed - and will increasingly change - many habits in favour of outdoor activities.

Is go therefore dying? Or at least having a few too many senior moments? That seems borne out by other facets of go activity such as this forum. If you strip away from L19 all the posts about AI, the amount of posts about ordinary go that we saw a few short years has shrunk to near invisibility - and is on a downward trend even for those who want to stay active in the old way. Why bother posting if no-one's reading?

[RobertJasiek]

As to not cheating, just a short answer: 1) ethics, 2) laws, 3) joy in achievement of one's own thinking.

Motivations for cheating include: 1) money, 2) emulated pride when making others believe how allegedly strong one is. For the latter, I have seen an example: During a private meeting of a few go players, somebody claimed to have won an impressive percentage. Later, I found the results of the tournament revealing his lie.

For cheaters, their cheating motifs have higher priority than the non-cheating motifs.

[jlt]

Apparently, one common theme in martial arts at the moment is for people like taiji masters to challenge MMA fighters. They end up getting the manure kicked out of them.

This reminds me of a story I read some 25 years ago. I forgot the exact details. At that time, people didn't talk about MMA, but the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) was becoming increasingly popular, and was dominated by the Gracie family who practiced Brazilian jiu-jutsu and claimed that their martial art was the best, since they could beat everyone else. One Wing Chun master disagreed, and kept arguing against the other party until one from the jiu-jutsu camp proposed to settle the dispute on the octagon. The wing Chun master reply was like "nono, why would I accept the challenge, the octagon is not a real fighting condition and the rules favor your discipline; for instance attacking the eyes is forbidden, whereas Wing Chun has a half a dozen techniques for attacking the eyes".

[SelmaAdam]

Apparently, one common theme in martial arts at the moment is for people like taiji masters to challenge MMA fighters. They end up getting the manure kicked out of them.

This reminds me of a story I read some 25 years ago. I forgot the exact details. At that time, people didn't talk about MMA, but the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) was becoming increasingly popular, and was dominated by the Gracie family who practiced Brazilian jiu-jutsu and claimed that their martial art was the best, since they could beat everyone else. One Wing Chun master disagreed, and kept arguing against the other party until one from the jiu-jutsu camp proposed to settle the dispute on the octagon. The wing Chun master reply was like "nono, why would I accept the challenge, the octagon is not a real fighting condition and the rules favor your discipline; for instance attacking the eyes is forbidden, whereas Wing Chun has a half a dozen techniques for attacking the eyes".

Developers should find a way to disconnect these players

[afibigidea]

It seems to me that there is a scam in all areas of life. It's just that there are a lot of scammers in online games because they think they won't be punished.