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From: hapgood@pobox.com (Fred Hapgood)
Subject: Software steroids
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Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 05:48:11 GMT
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Can online games  survive?  With online, as opposed to
face-to-face, a player never knows whether the other guy might
not be using software to enhance his performance.   There is no urine
test for software steroids.  Chess players don't know if their
opponent might not be running some high-level program in another
window (this is already a serious problem for online chessplayers).
By the same token neither do Quake players know whether the other guy
might not have written some kind of software helper to map the terrain
or figure the odds that the other guy is out of ammo or whatever.  

Is it possible to imagine an online game that is not vulnerable to
this kind of fixing?  Games of chance can still be played online.  And
I can imagine games like corewar where writing the software is the
point  right from the beginning.  But these two exceptions aside,
isn't online gaming dead in the not-so-long run?  And if not, why not?

I would appreciate references to further discussions of this problem,
if anyone knows of any.

Fred
software
--
www.pobox.com/~hapgood
world.std.com/~fhapgood
