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The Psychology Of Games: The Glitcher's Dilemma
by Jamie Madigan [PC, Console/PC]
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March 5, 2010
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[Psychologist and gamer Jamie Madigan writes for Gamasutra about how social dilemmas work in the world of gaming, and how designers can work to diffuse them before everybody gets glitch happy.]
Soon after its release, some players of the online first person shooter Modern Warfare 2 discovered what became known as "the javelin glitch." Someone, somewhere, somehow figured out that through a bizarre sequence of button presses you could glitch the game so that when you died in multiplayer you would explode violently and murder everyone within 30 feet of you, often resulting in a net gain in points.
It wasn't long, though, before the method for creating this glitch spread through the Internet and servers were filled with exploding nincompoops. Just to a Youtube search for "Modern Warfare javelin glitch" and you'll get hours' worth of video explaining how to do it --it wasn't a very well kept secret. In fact, it quickly got bad enough that developer Infinity Ward had to rush out a patch to fix it, presumably screaming "Ack! No! You guys, stop it!" the whole time.
But in the meantime, the javelin glitch presented players with an interesting dilemma assuming they weren't outright bent on griefing: they could either abuse the glitch to boost their own rankings and unlock new perks, or they could abstain and preserve the game's fair play. Of course, the problem is that if they abstain, someone else may abuse the glitch and dominate the match. The middle ground is when everyone glitches, but the resulting pandemonium isn't as much fun as fair play.
Let's simplify the discussion by assuming a two-player deathmatch game between two non-griefers in Modern Warfare 2. Look, I've created a table to summarize the dilemma for you! It's suitable for framing.
So what do you do? Psychologists and economists who study this kind of decision-making call it a "social dilemma." In these situations each person has what's called a "dominating" alternative where they're most likely to win (in this example, abusing the glitch) but most people REALLY want the "nondominating" alternative produced when everyone chooses to cooperate. Especially once the novelty factor wears off.
Back in the 1960s research on these kinds of dilemmas exploded and out of it came what's known as "the prisoner's dilemma," based on an anecdote about getting confessions from two prisoners held under suspicion for a bank robbery. In his book, Rational Choice in an Uncertain World Robyn Dawes summarizes the classic scenario thusly:
"Two men rob a bank. They are apprehended, but in order to obtain a conviction the district attorney needs confessions. He succeeds by proposing to each robber separately that if he confesses and his accomplice does not, he will go free and his accomplice will be sent to jail for ten years; if both confess, both will be sent to jail for five years, and if neither confesses, both will be sent to jail for one year on charges of carrying a concealed weapon. Further, the district attorney informs each man that he is proposing the same deal to his accomplice."
Another table!
What would you do? In this case, both prisoners will probably confess if they're rational about it. Why? Because each prisoner get a better (or no worse) payoff by confessing no matter what the other guy does. Prisoner A thinks, "I don't know what B is going to do, so if I confess it's the best way to keep myself from getting screwed. If he keeps quiet, I go free. If he also confesses, I get 5 years instead of 10." In other words, confessing is the only way to keep the other guy from being able to screw you over. Notice how this mirrors the javelin glitch dilemma.
Now let's take another example from the golden years of PC gaming. In the early days of Starcraft, a strategy called "Zerg rushing" emerged where at the beginning of the match players would quickly build lots of cheap Zerg units to overwhelm opponents before defenses could be constructed. Counter strategies developed for players who could manage them, but for a good chunk of the player base Starcraft became a game of seeing who could Zerg rush faster, which wasn't nearly as much fun as choosing from any other number of play styles or even races. So the dilemma was:
Again, the dominating strategy was to Zerg rush, because if you didn't and the other guy did, you lost, which was worse than any of the alternatives. This despite the fact that what you really both want is a varied, fun game. It's a design issue that still plagues strategy game developers today.
Prisoner's dilemmas and social dilemmas in general can similarly be used to illustrate the reasons for ninja looting in World of Warcraft:
Or you could apply it to "tick throwing" and "fireball trapping" techniques in fighting games. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
What's really more interesting and useful, though, is to look at what psychology has to show us about when people DON'T choose the purely rational option of abusing a glitch or a winning but boring strategy. Generally, people are more likely to do this when:
- They know they will be playing against their opponents in the future and face retribution
- They expect to interact with their opponents outside the game
- They don't expect to remain anonymous
- They don't know how many games will be played with the same person
Under these conditions, many players will adopt a strategy where they cooperate at first (for example, they don't glitch or rush), then if the other player abuses that trust they retaliate in kind. This is known as the "tit for tat" strategy. Some researchers with way too much time on their hands even organized tournaments where people were invited to write computer programs to play iterated prisoner dilemma games, and the programs that adhered to the "tit for tat" strategy tended to do the best.
This is why things like playing with people on your friend's list, Steam community group, guild/clan, or a favorite dedicated server is good. And it's one reason why random matches between strangers or pickup groups can be infuriating. Making it easy to submit ratings to the profiles of people you just played also helps resolve these dilemmas to everyone's benefits. It's also the reason that I love the way that Halo 3 lets you remain in a lobby with the people you just played and go straight into another round with them.
People being the complicated beings they are it's not a perfect system, though. Some people are just griefers out to disrupt the game no matter what. Some people won't abuse a glitch out of a sense of honor. Some will value their ranking on a leaderboard more than a sense of fair play for any individual match. But even if none of the bulleted items above is a silver bullet, they help across large numbers of games.
References: Dawes, R. (1988). Rational Choice in an Uncertain World. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Publishers.
[Jamie Madigan, Ph.D. is a psychologist and gamer who explores why players and developers do what they do by studying the overlap between psychology and video games at The Psychology of Games website. He can be reached at jamie@psychologyofgames.com.]
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1. An easy, effective strategy is found that pushes the boundaries of "normal" gameplay.
2. The easiest counter to this strategy is to do it yourself.
When #1 is present without #2, we call it rock-paper-scissors gameplay.
When #2 is present without #1, we call it a high learning curve, or "advanced tactics."
~Wave-dashing in Smash Bros Melee (opens more defensive options for many characters, and some offencive options that some characters rely on to be competitive)
~Snaking in Mario Kart (allows a skilled user to go faster in certain areas of tracks, but at the risk of becoming a more predictable target to attack)
~Focus attack cancelling in Street Fighter IV (allows for quick cancelling to any other move, which increases offensive options)
Of course, many people will just look at my above points and go "yeah, those are all bad things, why would we want to see those in games?". But that is only the opinion of (some) casual gamers, which yes, is resulting effectively in what the article calls "mayhem". For competitive gamers, though, this is more accurately called "deeper strategy".
That said, it's not like all glitches that can exist should exist and be used. I'm not as personally experienced with Modern Warfare 2, but from what I know of it, the javelin glitch really does degrade the competitive experience of the game, and it is good that it was patched out. Zerg rushing, on the other hand, is not a great example. It originally was a big issue near the start of the game, but they patched one of the key buildings you needed to use to be far more expensive, which made the tactic far less viable and and ultimately not broken. Anyone worth their salt can defend against a Zerg rush now if they predict it, and if you can't... well, that's your fault.
An interesting article on the issue I'd suggest reading as a good follow-up (and also provides an excellent counter-view):
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2009/7/7/dr-house-and-the-professor-who-played-to-win
.html
I remember one guy that ALWAYS hit headshots with the pump action shotgun (dunno how, he explained me that it was some bug related to jumping...), no matter the distance in fact. So he would walk around with the weapon, see a person on the other side of the map, and deliver a single bullet, and the person head would explode.
Other guy did the same but with the M16. Seemly this was easier, because I saw lots of it online and on LAN houses.
A college colleague knew how to counter collision hacks, some sufficiently long weapons could fire /INSIDE/ a collision box if you jumped against the box in a certain way, this guy masterfully used that to pick cheaters, it is funny that HE was banned in several servers instead (it happens that several of the cheaters are server ownsers too...)
I saw some speedhack cheat that could empty the entire clip of a pistol in 1 frame (so, instakilling anyone hit, AND making the physics engine launch the body several meters away, this was actually quite funny to see the first time, but later it was annoying, as the guy killed the entire opposing team, making the opposing team mad because of dieing, and his own team mad because they could not play, since the guy also moved faster and could kill everyone before the two teams met).
And the list goes on...
I played on Battle.Net for a grand total of 3 evenings before giving it up completely. Every match was on a map specifically designed to be a Grunt Rush for all players. I tried creating a nice sized map that required all players to start from scratch and actually build a strategy. I sat there for an hour as I watched person after person hop into the waiting screen look at the map and leave.
I still play on occasion but only with friends and family over LAN.
Never had the chance to play over LAN with that game though. Only StarCraft.
The Javelin Glitch on the other hand could be pulled off by anyone - Hold some buttons down and switch some weapons, then get killed and explode. If there was a difficult, timing sensitive maneuver that resulted in the same explosion, and could only be pulled off by skilled players a fraction of the time, the skill gap between noobs and pros would simply be a little greater, and there would be more definition between two different, highly skilled players based on how well they can pull off the explode on death move.
If someone in Smash Bros Melee who was skilled enough to wave dash all the time was fighting someone who isn't aware of wave dashing at all, chances are the wave dasher would be better than the other player, even if wave dashing wasn't used once in the match. If, for some reason the non-wave dashing player was better than the other player, the other player would have a slight ability advantage until the opponent figured out how to wave dash.
I don't point this out to nitpick, but to point out that a lot of these sorts of issues are not nearly as extreme as people think. People get beaten down by some "Cheap" strategy, and instead of changing their own strategy they simply assume that the "cheap" strategy is unbeatable.
This doesn't apply to actual glitches, like the javelin glitch, which is why it's a little irritating to see "Cheap Strategies" grouped together with "Balance Destroying Game Glitches" as if they were the same issue.
One issue with most online play is the inability to establish these house rules and enforce them. But even if your game had admins or control disabling all annoying features, there are still aspects of the game itself which can be abused. In many online fps games the optimal strategy may be to camp in a dark corner and wait for the enemy to pass by. I know I've sat through countless counterstrike matches where the final two players are camping on opposite side of the map. While this may be enforced by being able to ban or badger the culprits, it nonetheless ruins the fun of the game.
So how much blame should we put on the game designers? Not all of it. No matter how many things you put in place balance gameplay or to avoid unfun gameplay, there will always be those out there who find ways to circumvent it or ignore it. There are those who strive to have fun while playing a game and there are those who strive to win. A game should have both be one in the same.
I banged out some notes of my own on this a while back (http://flatfingers-theory.blogspot.com/2005/01/mmorpgs-jerks-and-evolution-of.ht
ml ), but "less anonymity = fewer jerks" is the short version. I think Axelrod's work helps explain why Facebook games, with their virtual elimination of anonymity, wind up with an order of magnitude more players than even the most popular monolithic online games.
Otherwise, very nice article.
But that was a bug. Now, if we were talking about something that used valid gameplay (or real life) rules then that's a different discussion. For instance, in COD4, you could get killed while cooking a nade. The nade you were holding would still be active after you died so you could blow up whoever killed you (this was also something you could do in Action Quake but there you were effectively holding the trigger on the nade). This wasn't a glitch (or at least, it wasn't perceived as one) since you could essentially have that happen in real life. Did people like it? No but it was more of a "whatever" rather than a "you haxor" type of thing.
The real question is, if there's a legitimate gameplay device that gives you a big advantage in gameplay but isn't a glitch/bug--it's more of a balance issue that wasn't discovered in testing--what should/would the average gamer do? I think you've got some responses above that can answer that but it's also the usual human nature question. What kind of person are you? Are you the "honorable" type that would rather not use underhanded methods to win (i.e. you're the British striding across the open field with your redcoats during the Revolutionary War) or are you the type that wants to win whatever the cost (i.e. you use guerilla tactics and pick off those redcoats from the trees)? Is either inherently wrong or bad? Not necessarily. If you're in a position where you have no choice (outgunned/outnumbered), wouldn't you consider THAT to be an unfair advantage and thus grounds for your use of whatever tactics are necessary to stay alive and/or win?
Personally, I go with honorable (though I don't stride down the middle of the field...I'll still use the shadows and surprise you) but that's also because I can hold my own, skill-wise. Many of the people I've seen glitching or hacking (sorry IW, but IWNET and all is a complete failure when it comes to hacking) tend to have no skill...thus the reason they're hacking.
Maybe the real question is: is there a way to apply game design in such a way that multiplayer environments with players with varied skill levels can play together or get separated based on those levels of skill? IWNET was supposed to do this but it doesn't seem to be turned on. :) But maybe a simple solution would've been to just let people flag themselves or even vote on others skills. I mean, you've got to introduce some sort of buffer since you've got people who just get spitful when they run into someone with more skill. But, just like you can choose your difficulty level in single player, why not let people flag themselves and let the game group them together?
It's like swimming. My wife swims in a Masters swimming group. When they're doing their workouts, they swim in lanes based on their relative skill/speed. The elites have their lane, the beginners have theirs. If you put a beginner in the elite late, the beginner will essentially get their ass handed to them (the elites will lap them and disrupt their work out). Similarly, in a multiplayer match, someone with limited skills will get run over by those who have them. If you want to get better, you can step up a level but you take the chance that you'll be frustrated as you slowly improve your skills.
And, as for glitchers/cheaters/exploiters, just keep the tools that have been around for years now that have worked: banning and kicking is still an effective way of causing problems for these guys, especially if you do it right. If you tie it into the system I mentioned above, people could get flagged for excessive kicks and bans from servers/games. Blacklisting hackers? Nice...
If any of you have watched A Beautiful Mind, you'll remember that John Nash established an economy off of his game theory that for the best result 'everyone' must do what is best for themselves AND others. Adam Smith presented an economy that in short says the best outcome for 'you' is to survive as the fittest. These two economies are opposites and will sway gamers' ability to make moral decisions in multiplayer sessions depending on which of the two developers have designed their games to allow.
1) John Nash suggests that playing by the rules allows gamers to get the most out of the game as designed. This may or may not include glitches but let's consider that the game is bug free.
2) Adam Smith suggests that playing in however fashion gamers can to win allows them to get the best result for their experience with the game as is.
Please note: I would put utilizing glitches in the same category as 'allowing individual players to avoid teamwork', which suggests they're not doing what is best for themselves and others in the same breath. Therefore, the allowance of this by the developer's design decision and the follow through in behavior of gamers in the game comes under Smith's economy.
Nash places the emphasis upon developers to establish a game that channels gamers to play according to the rules equally and support each other. This does also mean that a game cannot have glitches because utilizing glitches would be unbalanced and unequal treatment to others. It wouldn't even be fair to say 'designed glitches' that allow 'fair balancing' in the game play, because these would have to simply be a balancing feature in the game play that everyone is aware of. See Smash Bros. where a winning player character gains a higher risk of being kicked. It is clearly not a glitch but a balanced design decision.
Smith places the emphasis upon the gamer's morality to play as they see fit for their own benefit. Glitches or not, and however you might classify the decision to Zerg rush, each player is allowed to and is almost encouraged to exploit the game play because the developer is either silent on the 'unbalanced issues' or 'allows for the hardcore mastery feature' in the game. This is why I have established that avoiding teamwork is part of this economy and is in fact a glitch because it doesn't consider the best for others. See Left 4 Dead where a player character runs ahead of the team, reduces the capability of the team dynamic and becomes susceptible to death without resuscitation.
A game where no teamwork is required, such as a 1 on 1 RTS for example, is still effected by either economy. If two gamers sit down to play C&C to the Nash rules, one player might say to the other [or naturally allow] to build up plenty of resources to battle it out for the best game play experience. If two gamers sit down to play the same game again to the Smith rules, one player might Zerg rush and kill the game play experience within several minutes leaving the losing player to the discretion of their emotional response - probably most likely boiling blood. But hey, the developer allowed the winning Smith economist to do so, and therefore it is their right.
I am not suggesting that either of these ways are right or wrong, seeing that we are talking about gamers competing against each other in a game. A developer may very well want to allow certain types of freedom and decision making at the discretion of the gamers within, or completely control the competitive environments according to the boundaries that the rules provide. From a democratic point of view, a fair game restricts players to an even amount of in-game abilities, leaving them to their natural skills to use those in-game abilities to win, which many will argue is the definition of multiplayer game play. What matters is that the developer has defined what gamers should expect out of their design decisions. For example, "As the game's developer, we expect that you can exploit these features and see where they lead you to whatever end" or, "As the game's developer, we expect that gamers can play well within the rules and enjoy the outcome of their efforts." Define the game, and execute the decision as designed.
So the questions are: What do you as a developer want to design? And what kind of decisions do you want your gamers to make for the game and other gamers?
Here's an idea to consider: "The ends never justifies the means used to obtain it." It has a corollary, too: "Everyone must always think of the welfare of others over one's own selfish interests." This forces freedom and equality. Of course, this is not what we have, but it's a worthy ideal, anyway.
In general, I'd say that what is enjoyable (or aesthetically attractive, or other choices of preference) is subjective to each individual, so there really isn't any sort of general approach that works. Heck, as far as I am concerned, most FPS games nowadays have really gone down in quality because way too much focus is being placed in multiplayer rather than actually telling a story through single player. Funny thing is that excellent FPSes like Half Life and Deus Ex are still considered the be the best of their genre over the past decade or so. I think that perhaps the developers and/or publishers are sort of missing the point in this case. If they really want to make a multiplayer game, then do so from the outset and either forget the single player (do not market a single player experience at all) or offer a separate single player product at a greatly reduced price (to match the greatly reduced content of today's FPSes).
That's just an example that I observe, though. ^_^
Having to unlock weapons/attachments/perks may encourage some to play more, but it takes the casual gamer (who can actually win too) and makes the game frustrating as hell. If I were still 16 years old and had 8 hours + a day to play it would be fun, but I can not afford that with a family and children. Honestly, being defeated solely because another has invested enough time to 'earn' a heartbeat sensor, where when I kill them and take their 'bling' they are defeated several times in a row proves to me the flawed system. I love the play itself, but truly COD:MW2 failed to even the battlefield. This in it's own right allows players to gain incredible advantages over others.
Where's my FAL? oh, way down the line...