FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION

DESIGNING TO REDUCE COLLUSION

The designer of an online game must try to anticipate collusion as much as possi­ble. Unfortunately, experience shows this to be extremely difficult. There are no
limits on players' ingenuity or the lengths to which some will go. Even if your game doesn't offer a chat feature, players can play from two machines in the same room, call each other on mobile phones, or use any online chat facility to collude.

You can't prevent players from colluding, but you can design the game to minimize the effects of cheating. You should consider in what ways the following types of collusion might affect your game:

■ Sharing secret knowledge. Does the player ever have secret knowledge that she can share to someone else's benefit? In the trivia game described previously, some players receive the correct answer before the time runs out. Withholding this infor­mation prevents collusion.

■ Passing cards (or anything else) under the table. Does the game include mechanisms to transfer assets from one player to another? Is there any way to abuse these mechanisms?

■ Taking a dive. What are the consequences if one player deliberately plays to lose? If you allow gambling on matches (even if only with play money or points), you should look out for this.

If you're designing a game in which the competition mode is supposed to be every player for herself, try imagining what would happen if you made it a team game in which you encouraged players to collaborate. If it's already a team game, try to imagine what would happen if one player on the team spied for the other team.