OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

[Happy29]

I hope you don't teach your children that philosophy.

Well haven't you played sports in your life, weather it be high school college, or whatever level it may be? What's some of the first things the coaches teach you? It's where those grey areas are in the rules and how to exploit them to your advantage over your competitor. It's not cheating it's exploiting the rules to your advantage.

[wudl83]

Re: OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

Well haven't you played sports in your life, weather it be high school college, or whatever level it may be? What's some of the first things the coaches teach you? It's where those grey areas are in the rules and how to exploit them to your advantage over your competitor. It's not cheating it's exploiting the rules to your advantage.

What? You must live in a strange area. My sports coaches never tried to teach me some things like that lol

[Aggies67]

It's not cheating it's exploiting the rules to your advantage.

Then why did you write:

If you're not cheating you're not trying.

[bkrich83]

Re: OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

Is anyone surprised by this? Trying to exploit games or flat out cheat has permeated online gaming since it's inception. Whether it's Madden, or Halo, or COD, people are always trying to take the easy route when playing games. It's perfectly acceptable among a large part of the online gaming community.

It's crap like this, why I don't even bother with contests like this, or play others online. I'd rather just enjoy the game, for what it was intended to be, than spend my time trying to find holes in the AI, or limitations to the game, or loopholes.

It's obvious these people played the game in a way that was not in the spirit of the contest. They simply didn't care or didn't know any better.

Either way, this is a big who cares for me

[Yeats]

Re: OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

Well haven't you played sports in your life, weather it be high school college, or whatever level it may be? What's some of the first things the coaches teach you? It's where those grey areas are in the rules and how to exploit them to your advantage over your competitor. It's not cheating it's exploiting the rules to your advantage.

Hard to understand why you're now trying to defend that first statement of yours, lol. Nobody is taught to cheat by their coaches. (Other than by Greg Williams, ha!) And if they are, then that's one seriously f'd up coach.

[geisterhome]

Re: OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

think cheating sucks when its abt such a amount of money, but hey this just reflects the society we are living in!

[Happy29]

Then why did you write:

It's an old saying in racing.

[Iceman87GT]

Caley Roark,

It may not have been mentioned in the rules (which was a definite oversight by 2K), but messing with the opponent's line-up destroys the integrity of the score.

The score was directly tied to the opponent's line-up for that day, not upon which team you faced. So playing the Red Sox without Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Justin Pedroria in the line-up should not get the same amount of points as facing a line-up with those players. Unfortunately the difficulty was set based upon the MLB Today line-ups, meaning if you could manage to alter them at any point without voiding your entry your game against a deflated Red Sox line-up would get you just as much point as a game against the actual line-up.

Basically had the Red Sox actually gone with a line-up without those 3 players in real life the difficulty would have been significantly lower. It's not 'creative thinking' it's straight up cheating, you can't choose your opponent's line-up in real life. And its ridiculous to suggest that someone who plays against a line-up missing 3 of their best hitters should get as many points as someone who accomplished the same thing against a line-up with the 3 best hitters.

There's no grey area here, 2K screwed up by not ensuring it was impossible to alter the MLB Today line-ups or at the very least not having dynamic difficulty ratings if changes were made, but those who compromised the integrity of the score are just as guilty. I'm tired of people who exploit rules or game glitches getting a pat of the back because they found a way to exploit the system. Its not creative, its not smart its straight up dirty. Our culture has shifted dramatically in the wrong direction, we should all be condemning these people yet there are far too many people who either don't care or are evening commending them.

[CPRoark]

Caley Roark,

It may not have been mentioned in the rules (which was a definite oversight by 2K), but messing with the opponent's line-up destroys the integrity of the score.

The score was directly tied to the opponent's line-up for that day, not upon which team you faced. So playing the Red Sox without Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Justin Pedroria in the line-up should not get the same amount of points as facing a line-up with those players. Unfortunately the difficulty was set based upon the MLB Today line-ups, meaning if you could manage to alter them at any point without voiding your entry your game against a deflated Red Sox line-up would get you just as much point as a game against the actual line-up.

Basically had the Red Sox actually gone with a line-up without those 3 players in real life the difficulty would have been significantly lower. It's not 'creative thinking' it's straight up cheating, you can't choose your opponent's line-up in real life. And its ridiculous to suggest that someone who plays against a line-up missing 3 of their best hitters should get as many points as someone who accomplished the same thing against a line-up with the 3 best hitters.

There's no grey area here, 2K screwed up by not ensuring it was impossible to alter the MLB Today line-ups or at the very least not having dynamic difficulty ratings if changes were made, but those who compromised the integrity of the score are just as guilty. I'm tired of people who exploit rules or game glitches getting a pat of the back because they found a way to exploit the system. Its not creative, its not smart its straight up dirty. Our culture has shifted dramatically in the wrong direction, we should all be condemning these people yet there are far too many people who either don't care or are evening commending them.

Thanks for the clarifications. What's still unclear to me is whether the line-up changes were made via some kind of exploit or simply by using the menus. Did it require some kind of code, pausing at the right time, or swapping controllers? Or, could you just pause the game before the first pitch and fiddle with the line-ups?

There's a key difference in those two things, for me. One requires some outside technical knowledge and circumventing the way the game functions. The other is a natural function of the game that anyone could have found and used.

You are correct that you can't choose your opponent's line-up in real life., but neither can a pitcher choose his opponent. Looking at the leader board, there are a lot of Halladay's vs Cubs and Pirates. I guess my point is we can't apply real world situations to what is simply a virtual recreation.

While not a true mirror, look at really competitive video games like StarCraft, old school arcade games, or fighting games. The most skilled players have memorized frames of animation and event times down to the second. This doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the game, but has become a staple of those competitive arenas.

If 2K is laying that much money on the line, I think they should have prepared for users to milk every ounce of advantage out of the system.

Thanks to your post, I have a clearer understanding of how the scoring worked and completely agree that a player who beat the Red Sox with their lineup intact should have a better score than those who did it against bench players. That's a scoring issue, and the fault still lies with 2K (I think we both agree on that).

However, the act of exploiting a game's inherent shortcomings, to me at least, doesn't constitute cheating. Just like Steve Weibe memorized the fireball patterns in Donkey Kong, a player figuring out how to face a weaker line-up isn't necessary breaking the rules. However, if Steve hacked his board or a 2K player tweaked software, that's a whole different story. That's the part of the story I haven't been able to get a clear answer on.

We need to see this contest as a video game, not compare it to real life baseball. However, I completely agree that it is a shame that the scoring is broken and that 2K hasn't done anything to fix it.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

Hypothetical:

Rubik's Cube announced a $5 million award for the first person to successfully figure out it's puzzle. Contestants have one month from the date of entry to complete the cube. Once completed, a photo must be emailed to the company's official website.

Rules:

1. Contestants have 30 days to submit their photo of their completed puzzled via email. A completed cube consists of each side being the exact same color (I.E. One side must be red, one side must be blue, one side must be yellow, and one side must green).

2. The cube must be an official Rubik's product, thus the brand name must be included in the photograph along with a copy of the product's receipt if requested.

3. There is no limit on how many players can compete on one cube.

4. All entries will be evaluated by Rubik's and can be disqualified for any reason based on the discretion of our judges.

So I go to the store. I buy an official Rubick's Cube, a surgical quality knife, and some Gorilla glue.

Within 20 minutes, I've dissected all of the colored tape on the cube, and placed all of the like colors on their respective sides of the cube. I take a photo of the cube and email it to Rubik's. And I saved my receipt.

Nowhere in the rules does it explicitly say that the cube needs to be contorted to be finished. Though I knowingly went against the spirit of the competition, I technically didn't break the officially designated entry requirements.

We're talking life changing money here. Not to mention the integrity of a popular company. How someone at 2K didn't immediately (A) aknowledge that their rules should be clearer BUT (B) at least include a fine print rule that expressly stated that they could disqualify ANY participant for ANY reason is repulsive.

Note: To be fair, a fine print rule like this MAY exist. I'm not sure. If it does, try should use it.

Heads should roll over this. People should be fired.

It's irrelevant to me whether or not the rule forbade lineup switches. The point is that the participant in question knowingly made the adjustment, and the scoring system was broken enough to NOT factor in the actual lineups used. Under no circumstances should players using adjusted lineups be allowed to enter the final round UNLESS somehow their scores are recalculated.

Wow...this story really has me riled up.

[CPRoark]

Hypothetical:

Rubik's Cube announced a $5 million award for the first person to successfully figure out it's puzzle. Contestants have one month from the date of entry to complete the cube. Once completed, a photo must be emailed to the company's official website.

Rules:

1. Contestants have 30 days to submit their photo of their completed puzzled via email. A completed cube consists of each side being the exact same color (I.E. One side must be red, one side must be blue, one side must be yellow, and one side must green).

2. The cube must be an official Rubik's product, thus the brand name must be included in the photograph along with a copy of the product's receipt if requested.

3. There is no limit on how many players can compete on one cube.

4. All entries will be evaluated by Rubik's and can be disqualified for any reason based on the discretion of our judges.

So I go to the store. I buy an official Rubick's Cube, a surgical quality knife, and some Gorilla glue.

Within 20 minutes, I've dissected all of the colored tape on the cube, and placed all of the like colors on their respective sides of the cube. I take a photo of the cube and email it to Rubik's. And I saved my receipt.

Nowhere in the rules does it explicitly say that the cube needs to be contorted to be finished. Though I knowingly went against the spirit of the competition, I technically didn't break the officially designated entry requirements.

We're talking life changing money here. Not to mention the integrity of a popular company. How someone at 2K didn't immediately (A) aknowledge that their rules should be clearer BUT (B) at least include a fine print rule that expressly stated that they could disqualify ANY participant for ANY reason is repulsive.

Note: To be fair, a fine print rule like this MAY exist. I'm not sure. If it does, try should use it.

Heads should roll over this. People should be fired.

It's irrelevant to me whether or not the rule forbade lineup switches. The point is that the participant in question knowingly made the adjustment, and the scoring system was broken enough to NOT factor in the actual lineups used. Under no circumstances should players using adjusted lineups be allowed to enter the final round UNLESS somehow their scores are recalculated.

Wow...this story really has me riled up.

I'm completely in agreement with you (and others) on the end result. Beating the Red Sox with their line-up intact should score higher than one without their stars.

Let me throw out another hypothetical, one that actually grounded a little in reality. When I was a kid, Topps release "Gold Cards," which were premium cards with fancy embossing and extra glossiness. One year, each pack had a scratch off ticket. It was a picture of the field, with a scratch-off at each of the bases.

If I recall, the goal of the game was to find three matching symbols before your scratched off the one that was different. If you did, you won whatever prize was under another scratch off field. Pretty much like an instant lottery ticket.

Anyway, some kid on my bus found out that by holding a flashlight against the back of the card it became easy to see the differing symbol. Suddenly, everyone was winning the prizes (which I think were mostly free packs of cards).

Suppose a company ran a similar contest today, with higher stakes...say, $1,000,000. And, by accident, you find that holding the ticket up to light reveals the matching symbols. Would you do it?

I suppose an ethics professor would suggest that the morally correct thing to do would be to abstain from entering the contest, since you had discovered a loophole not covered in the rules. You aren't defacing the ticket or being fraudulent. You just stumbled upon a method for winning that was stupidly unforeseen by the company.

I would suggest that the majority of people would enter anyway.

Again, I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here, and think that those players who tweaked line-ups should be ranked lower than those who didn't. But in the end, it comes down to 2K's screw up. I think when this much money is on the line, "spirit of the rules" becomes too vague to trust.

[ANDROMADA 1]

Re: OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

If you're not cheating you're not trying. What I mean by this is there are loop-holes and grey areas in all competitions it is the responsibility of the competitor to find them and use them to their advantage.

My drill sergeant used to say thew same thing.....but he would add "If you get caught you ain't tryin hard enough."

People will always go for the lowest common denominator. Its human nature.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

I'm completely in agreement with you (and others) on the end result. Beating the Red Sox with their line-up intact should score higher than one without their stars.

Let me throw out another hypothetical, one that actually grounded a little in reality. When I was a kid, Topps release "Gold Cards," which were premium cards with fancy embossing and extra glossiness. One year, each pack had a scratch off ticket. It was a picture of the field, with a scratch-off at each of the bases.

If I recall, the goal of the game was to find three matching symbols before your scratched off the one that was different. If you did, you won whatever prize was under another scratch off field. Pretty much like an instant lottery ticket.

Anyway, some kid on my bus found out that by holding a flashlight against the back of the card it became easy to see the differing symbol. Suddenly, everyone was winning the prizes (which I think were mostly free packs of cards).

Suppose a company ran a similar contest today, with higher stakes...say, $1,000,000. And, by accident, you find that holding the ticket up to light reveals the matching symbols. Would you do it?

I suppose an ethics professor would suggest that the morally correct thing to do would be to abstain from entering the contest, since you had discovered a loophole not covered in the rules. You aren't defacing the ticket or being fraudulent. You just stumbled upon a method for winning that was stupidly unforeseen by the company.

I would suggest that the majority of people would enter anyway.

Again, I'm sort of playing devil's advocate here, and think that those players who tweaked line-ups should be ranked lower than those who didn't. But in the end, it comes down to 2K's screw up. I think when this much money is on the line, "spirit of the rules" becomes too vague to trust.

This is a wonderful comparison; it virtually mirrors the situation at hand.

Ahhh...the mountainous 'what if's!!!!' I think it says a lot about my moral compass when I hesitate to predict my hypothetical actions when the prize changes from a free pack of cards to a $1,000,000 cash mattress.

And yes, if I ever won a cool million, night one I'd sleep on it. That was not an iTouch predicative dictionary typo. I meant mattress when I said it.

Though, when I really analyze this, I can't justify the flashlight trick being any different than knowing an ex-Topps employee, one that used to work in the printing section, TELLING me the patterns in which to scratch the lottery ticket in.

Or is it different? Perhaps maybe it is...

Ugh, I'll be hypothesizing all day long now about this, and what it would be like NOT to be broke in the process.

Thanks. Thanks a lot!!!!!

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

Here's a question:

How do you think 2K would have reacted if one of the 8 finalists, after flying out to the event, held a press conference to announce he or she was stepping out of the competition until the scores were recalculated? On the grounds that they would feel cheated if they somehow managed to win, knowing deep down inside they weren't actually playing the "best of the best."

Do you think that kind of pressure/public ridicule would have forced 2K's hand into addressing this matter? You know, an actual finalist demanding a recount in a very public forum?

[fakeimmigrant]

If only this story got more traction on other sites, it might have resulted in 2K doing more or reacting accordingly.