Why Do People Cheat In Board Games
The games companies are investing more money into stopping the use of cheats, with huge waves of bans coming in, but this fails to address the root cause of why these people cheat in the first place and as Ariely says: the threat of getting caught is not great at dissuasion. The games companies are investing more money into stopping the use of cheats, with huge waves of bans coming in, but this fails to address the root cause of why these people cheat in the first place and as Ariely says: the threat of getting caught is not great at dissuasion.
Ukie member Intorqa brings technology and expertise from across media monitoring, social listening and threat intelligence to the world of gaming, offering measurement and analysis aimed at making it fair and secure for everyone.
In this article Intorqa ask the question, why does anyone cheat at anything? From taking a few extra notes from the monopoly board, to video games. Why do people cheat:
- At sport
- In Exams
- On their taxes
- At video games
Are they linked and can that explain the recent surge in cheating at online gaming?
According to research by the Information Solutions Group and PopCap games, when it comes to social video games — yes, they are linked!
PopCap looked at the habits of more than 1,200 adult consumers in the US and the UK. They found that 48 percent of those cheaters who admit to doing so in video games, also admitted to cheating in real life; that makes them 3.5 times more likely to be dishonest in the real world than non-cheaters.
'48% of cheaters in video games admitted to cheating in real life'
According to the survey 54 percent of men are likely to cheat, compared to 46 percent of women.
A separate study by the University of Texas used data from extra-marital dating site Ashley Madison to investigate four study groups. They found that even after adjusting for age, gender and cultural variables, those with histories of professional misconduct were significantly more likely to use the Ashley Madison website; suggesting a strong correlation between ‘cheating’ in professional and personal lives.
Interestingly the data used for this study was only available due to cheating — a hack on Ashley Madison in 2015 exposed data from over 30 million users.
So people who cheat often don’t just cheat in one area of life. What drives them?
Dr. Dan Ariely has done some highly regarded and often cited analysis into this, as part of his broader contribution towards behavioral economics. This includes the well researched book: ‘The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty’. One of the takeaways is that, as humans, we’re dishonest if there is material gain or glory to be had. Dishonesty is also contagious, and we’re wired to convince ourselves that we didn’t cheat.
'Over the past decade or so, my colleagues and I have taken a close look at why people cheat, using a variety of experiments and looking at a panoply of unique data sets - from insurance claims to employment histories to the treatment records of doctors and dentists. What we have found, in a nutshell: Everybody has the capacity to be dishonest, and almost everybody cheats - just by a little. Except for a few outliers at the top and bottom, the behavior of almost everyone is driven by two opposing motivations. On the one hand, we want to benefit from cheating and get as much money and glory as possible; on the other hand, we want to view ourselves as honest, honorable people. Sadly, it is this kind of small-scale mass cheating, not the high-profile cases, that is most corrosive to society.' - Dan Ariely
So ‘people’ don’t cheat. We cheat.
A bleak outlook but one that explains why cheating is so rife across so many avenues of life. An early anecdote from Ariely’s aforementioned book, taken from Ira Glass’s “See No Evil” show, explains how at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, ‘gift shops were run like lemonade stands’ and allowed punters to put cash into a cashbox and take change. They sold $400,000 worth of merchandise a year but of that amount about $150,000 disappeared each year. After investigating they discovered it wasn’t one or two thieves. The vast majority of people were in fact taking advantage of the situation and were justifying their actions to themselves.
'almost everybody cheats - just by a little.'
He further showed that the chance of getting caught did not impact the behaviour, with two separate groups — one which could destroy evidence of their cheating and one which could not — seeing similar amounts of cheating in different contexts.
So the thing that prevents us from cheating as much as possible? Supposedly only our own morality.
Jason Chapman highlights two main drivers for gamer’s cheating but to simplify it: everyone is driven by the rewards of cheating, just we will go to different lengths to get there. The platitudes and wealth now on offer in games are a more powerful driver to overcome that morality than they have ever been.
There have been three main drivers acknowledged for centuries, according to Daniel H. Pink, writing in his book ‘Drive’:
- Basic needs
- Rewards
- Sanctions
But he argues that intrinsic motivation is another and far more powerful driver. When researchers asked students what their motivation was and then followed up many years later they found that those with financial targets were no more contented. Larger and more intrinsic goals were shown to be more motivating than money could be. As a book, it is well worth a read, but to take a line from it: “the inner drive for perfection leads to passion and dedication”.
This inner drive, that dedication towards perfection could help to explain why we cheat to get there, and - just as Ashley Madison highlighted the infidelity that technology had enabled - video streaming platforms such as Twitch have highlighted the lengths to which people will go to cheat at online and competitive video games. Search for ‘aimbot’ within Youtube and thousands of videos will appear of legitimate players being wiped out by impossibly fast and accurate opponents.
Beyond that, the sellers of these cheats will come up in the same search, offering you a glimpse of what their ‘add-on’ will do as a way to market and promote their service.
Aimbots, wallhacks, ESP — they are rife in the gaming industry and a company making these cheats can take home $1.25 million a year. This isn’t a victimless crime, either — Irdeto’s research estimates that nearly $29 billion of revenue is at stake.
Video game perfection is an impossibility for all but a handful of people involved — never before has the playing field been so big and the crowd so large. Fortnite has 78 million players in a month, with Battle Royale-style games, in which up to 100 players fight it out at one time. Coronavirus has only amplified the importance of this playing field, with Steam reaching record users in 2020.
The intrinsic rewards for being ‘great’ are clear, with games companies ready to put the weight of their media presence behind their top players.
Why Do People Cheat In Board Games Free
The clearest parallel is Olympic athletics where thousands of athletes across the world compete for one medal a year. And the cheating there is rife.
'the inner drive for perfection leads to passion and dedication'
Unlike the Olympics you also do not have to inject or ingest highly potent cocktails of drugs into your body to cheat: cheating is a simply a few mouse-clicks away.
It is easier to justify, too — opponents are often strangers on the other side of the world. Where they are ‘known’ to you, well: they’re probably cheating too.
The contagion that Ariely spoke of can cause a viral spread of cheats. Those who feel cheated against turn to these very methods to try and level the playing field. In a digital world full of replays, as well as lobbies of players throwing accusations around, it is easy to see how this effect can take over. If you can’t beat them, join them.
'nearly $29 billion of revenue is at stake.'
A study by Schurra and Ritov showed that when there’s competition between players, cheating tends to take place, but even more interestingly they broke that cheating down into multiple different sections.
The takeaway? Those accustomed to winning were more likely to cheat, and those who were winning because of a desire to be better than others more likely to cheat than those who wanted to get better at something.
Why Do People Cheat On Spouse
Olympics or League of Legends, those who carry on playing long enough to win are going to be more susceptible to cheating.
Add in the addictive nature of so many competitive video games, and you create an environment where cheating to achieve success is a hugely effective driver, perfectly achievable with low risk, and easily justifiable.
The game industry has also already normalised a world where instead of playing to become good at a game you can pay the developer for extra lives, better weapons or to unlock new abilities. Is it any wonder that we would rather spend £20 to a developer offering every feature under the sun, when the game itself is pushing ads for a £10 lootbox with random content in order to improve the experience?
The rewards may be monetary for those playing competitively in esports competitions (that is certainly the case for the hackers that create these cheats too), but for players? That only accounts for a small minority.
A game which has the draw to pull in millions of players and pit them against each other already has a hugely intrinsic driver for cheating, and becoming the best. And when games companies create an environment which accepts that trading money for ability is an acceptable exchange, is it any wonder we are in this situation?
With the morality now so much easier to justify by the nature of the adverts they get on their phone, the floodgates may have been opened.
The games companies are investing more money into stopping the use of cheats, with huge waves of bans coming in, but this fails to address the root cause of why these people cheat in the first place and as Ariely says: the threat of getting caught is not great at dissuasion.
Some of these changes are simple — if games companies could stop normalising cheats by offering their own, for example. Some are more complicated, given the competitive format. It starts by understanding the communities of these games more, as well as the salesmanship and marketing that is taking advantage of them. Taking advantage of our drive to encourage us to cheat and to help justify our actions. We can then start to understand what triggers can encourage the behaviour we want to see in ourselves instead, and move away from the current state of play. We need to push for fairness in gaming.
Read more articles from Intorqa here.
About Intorqa
Intorqa is a start-up offering a new way to help game developers and publishers reduce cheating and other exploits on their games. We do this through automated monitoring of the web, dark web and social media to highlight risks earlier and give internal or 3rd party anti-cheat teams, much more time to take action and reduce impact on a game.
We are currently at beta stage and looking for key partners to collaborate with us in our testing and help us optimise our offering.
Reach out to andrew.hogan@intorqa.com to find out more.