

Open Letter to Online Game Developers: Allow Bots - aerique
http://aerique.blogspot.com/2012/04/open-letter-to-online-game-developers.html

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millzlane
Why not just create a personal bot trainer? There are lots more ways to
accomplish what you need without developers allowing you to use bots.

The idea is silly really, it's like asking Infinity Ward and DICE to make
Aimbot/wallhack servers for people to practice their AI skills. This would
ruin gaming experience for those who don't participate in botting or AI
programming. For what? A couple thousand sales? It's not worth the headache.

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anthonyb
aimbots and wallhacks aren't AI though - they're cheats.

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millzlane
Bots that farm, hunt, gain xp ect. while your are away are cheats. Automated
actions with no effort from the player is cheating.

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anthonyb
Then the game is too simple. Rather than hunt down bots, they should make a
more interesting game. The bots are a _symptom_ , not a problem in themselves.

~~~
gyardley
Too simple for whom?

I know I've been interested in and enjoyed many games that could be
effectively botted - including some where you farm / hunt / gain XP.

Saying that these games are 'too simple' and shouldn't exist sounds a little
arrogant, no?

~~~
anthonyb
Most of the games which end up fighting tooth-and-nail trench warfare against
bots are just boring games. I don't think expressing that opinion is
arrogance, per se.

Take games like minecraft or first person shooters like TF2, for example -
there isn't a bot problem there for the most part (cheaters perhaps, but not
bots), but farm and grind games like WoW or Farmville are rife with it. This
is because WoW and Farmville are fundamentally pretty boring, but people want
the shiny loot at the end.

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gyardley
'Boring' is subjective. There are millions upon millions of people who
genuinely enjoy Farmville or WoW. I personally can't wait for Diablo III to
come out, which will almost certainly be farm & grindy.

There exists a subset of games with large, engaged audiences and a user
experience that is weakened by the presence of bots. The appropriate thing to
do in this situation is ban bots. Whether you're interested or not in that
subset of games is irrelevant.

~~~
anthonyb
Boring, but addictive. Without the brain-hook of watching your stats go up,
would you still be that interested in playing Diablo?

Just think of all of the other types of games that might be made instead of
the umpteenth iteration of UO/Everquest/WoW/Diablo. UO was released 15 years
ago, and we still have the same fundamental game.

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ShockaZulu
Bots break games, period.

They break game play, economies, immersion, etc. If you want to sand box them
in a special server fine, but don't even think of unleashing them on the
general population.

~~~
ajuc
Bots break games that consist of doing the same thing over and over , are
easily scriptable, and depends on false achievement to addict players (you've
just wasted an hour clicking here and there repeatedly - have a cookie).

So no big loss there.

Actually - bots make such games interesting and demanding again.

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Hyena
What's the actual advantage _to the game_? Why would a company want to create
a research server for people to perfect their bot programming?

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aerique
One never knows what could come out of it. At the least they sell a couple of
hundred or thousand extra accounts.

People are ingenious. I can imagine bot hunting parties or a person trying to
crash a bot. It would be extra time spend in the game for the companies.

 _edit: btw good question, thanks!_

~~~
possibilistic
I really like this idea. I don't have much time for gaming anymore, but
something like this would be a selling point for me. I could write such a game
off as an academic exercise.

There are a lot of AI/ML techniques you'd have to know or become familiar
with. I imagine the competition to build the best bot at any given task, or
best all-around bot, would be quite intense.

Someone please make this game.

~~~
iambot
I reckon Notch's games[1] would be the perfect fit, for zones like the OP
mentions. A place for the "little Coder" to learn ML/AI etc

[1]: Minecraft or 0x10c etc.

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Fizzer
The main reason I don't allow bots in my game is cost. In my game, the speed
at which the game advances is only limited by the speed of the players, and
bots can play thousands of times faster than a human.

Just a few aggressive bots could easily double my hosting expenses, and right
now I'm not even profitable just with humans playing it. Bots can't offset
their cost by being shown ads like humans can.

~~~
aerique
Hey, I see in your profile that you're the creator of warlight!

I hope it will get picked for the AI Challenge some time.

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jmsduran
Thinking out loud and putting all realistic implications aside, for farm and
grind games like World of Warcraft, it would be very interesting to see an
anti-bot policy turned into an actual game mechanic; one that pits the noble,
rule-abiding players against the evil bot cartel by offering achievements,
bounties, or rewards for successfully reporting or disrupting bots.

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anthonyb
My personal take on this is that if your game is going to suffer because of
bots (assuming that they're not cheating bots, and are bound by the same rules
as the players) then your game is broken and/or stupid, and the choices that
your players are making are too simple.

Remember the Sid Meier quote about games being about making interesting
choices?

EDIT: Since I'm getting up _and_ downvoted willy-nilly, here's my blog entry
where I go into more detail (using Farmville as the example):
[http://blog.oarsum.com/post/255516489/cheating-and-game-
desi...](http://blog.oarsum.com/post/255516489/cheating-and-game-design)

~~~
reitzensteinm
That's an incredibly broad statement, even leaving aside FPS games.

MMOs NEED the filler content that can be botted through because otherwise they
just wouldn't have the content level to sustain hundreds of hours of gameplay.
It's all about pacing, like a feature film versus a TV show.

To be honest, I think you're starting from Farmville, which basically isn't a
game, and extrapolating from there.

~~~
anthonyb
It's not especially broad, and you can apply the same line of thinking to
other games like Starcraft. APS uber alles and all that...

FPSes are somewhat different, but they tend not to have bot problems because
FPSes are fun to play, and don't involve grinding. Even then, most of the
modern FPSes have some randomness and you can't shoot with pixel perfect
precision, so bots wouldn't necessarily have an advantage there.

But yeah -- filler content? botted through? Why would you pay money for a
"game" like that? I certainly wouldn't. Even the free-to-play WoW clones are
too tedious to play.

~~~
reitzensteinm
The alternative to filler content isn't a better game, it's no game at all.
You couldn't make a game like World of Warcraft where the content was all too
interesting and varied, so that bots wouldn't work and you wouldn't want them
to anyway.

WoW is already one of the most complex pieces of engineering in the world.
It's the gaming equivalent of arguing for the Sufficiently Smart Compiler.
Strictly speaking games would be better off without it, sure. But you might as
well be arguing in favor of fusion power - free energy! No nuclear waste! Etc.

Bots absolutely devastate FPS games. They have bot problems and they're not
solved by the games being fun, they're solved by policing by admins. Even if
the game has randomness, by god, have you ever seen a bot play? Take a look at
this (jump half way through).

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huz5ZROt0j8>

A single slice has Headshot! Avenger! Longshot! Execution! Longshot! Headshot!
One Shot Kill! Headshot! as quickly as they can come on the screen. A newbie
is lucky to get one of those every couple of minutes. An experienced player
would _not_ be able to defeat that bot. And this is _typical_ of FPS bots.

And what about chess? If computers get much better, one of the most
interesting games the world has ever known is going to be ruined (in places
where bot detection is not possible).

Maybe other people are learning from your insights, but I've been a full time
independent game developer for 7 years (and by that I mean, if the games
aren't fun, I don't eat) and I'm left scratching my head.

~~~
anthonyb
That's really just wallhacking and aimbotting - not really an AI as such. I
wouldn't be surprised if there was a human doing the pathfinding with a 'shoot
them in the head' button. If your FPS allows you to shoot with pixel perfect
precision from across the map, rather than a more realistic 'in a general
area', or if it's sending information that you shouldn't be allowed to have,
then of course people are going to bot it. That's a hack/cheating, and should
be banned, but it's more effective to make your game unbottable and not
sending information that the player shouldn't know.

WoW is not really that complex or difficult - maybe from a scaling point of
view, but you just have to look at all of the clones that have sprung up to
realise that it's not that hard. Botting there derives from wanting a shiny
sword of whatever like my friend Bruce, but I can't be bothered grinding the
same mob over and over for three months hoping that it'll drop.

I play a game called World of Tanks which has a cone of fire mechanism (as you
hold the gun still your accuracy improves), along with needing to take cover,
work with teammates, help spot enemies, etc. Movement is also pretty slow,
especially for the larger tanks.

Bots in that game routinely get spotted and reported, not because they're
headshotting people from across the map, but because they're shit - they're
just not capable of the strategy or tactics required (eg. they'll leave fields
of fire open, won't move when spotted, won't take advantage of terrain, will
be out of position, etc.) It's a far more interesting game than "run around
like an olympic sprinter and headshot people from the hip".

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ebbv
It's arguable whether there's any type of multiplayer game that doesn't get
ruined by bots. As an example, bot chess players are known to be extremely
good, so they aren't ruining the game by making it too easy for the human
player; but if a human is playing a multiplayer chess game, it's probably
because they _want_ to play other humans. So by a bot being on there, it's
ruining it. Not only that, but if there are enough bots, then they're going to
end up playing each other which is a waste of resources. So my point here is,
bots can ruin ANY game even ones where the bots are as good or better than
most human players at the game and not simply doing something dumb and
repetitive.

Now, there's the reality which is that the only time you have bots on a large
scale in a multiplayer game is when there's something to be gained by their
use. Whether it's purely farming the game for the benefit of a player while
he's at work so he's at an advantage when he comes back compared to people who
did not run bots all day or whether it's someone doing it for actual profit;
neither is good for the health of the game. Regular players are then being
pushed further down the in game economy and scale of power unless they run
bots themselves.

And again, there's the issue of wasting resources. For games that don't charge
a monthly fee, the proprietors of bots are clearly abusing the system and
misappropriating resources of the game developer that's running the servers.

Bots should be stopped with every means possible on every game. And when
people are caught running them they should be permanently banned for life,
IMHO (not just until they buy another copy of the game in question, which is
often how this is handled.)

If you want to make a game that allows bots openly, go for it. I don't think
you'll see much success, though.

~~~
anthonyb
> Now, there's the reality which is that the only time you have bots on a
> large scale in a multiplayer game is when there's something to be gained by
> their use.

...and the game is too tedious to play. Isn't that a sign of a problem with
your game - when people would rather script it than play it?

There used to be gangs of players in Ultima Online who would go around hunting
down farmers and botters. A pity they didn't put the same sort of energy into
demanding a better play experience.

~~~
ebbv
> ...and the game is too tedious to play.

That is not true at all. In fact, the opposite is true, because the bots only
rise up as a problem on a popular game. If the game was so boring nobody
wanted to play it, then nobody would care about the results of botting.

No, bots are a problem not because the game is "too boring", but because
people naturally want to abuse the system and gain advantage via automation.
Whether that advantage is purely in the game, or results in real world cash.

