Cheating?

[mcstuff]

Has anyone ever had to deal with cheating in their games?

If so, what kind of cheating did you encounter?

If not, how would you cheat if you were so inclined? Hypothetically.

I'm not condoning cheating but I figure this may be a good exercise to get some creative juices flowing.

[NotHisRealname]

Generally it's by covering the hit sensor. I think that's the primary source of cheating that goes on.

Others can be rule specific. For example, with capture the flag, players not dropping the flag when they die.

[VisOne]

Most if not all possible avenues for cheating are easily covered through simple rules enforced by game judges/referees/admin or what have you. As Real has mentioned most are scenario or game specific but I have being on the receiving end of the very people who are there to enforce the rules bending or breaking them to suit themselves. Its hardly unique you need only play any online game to see petty people given a little power abusing it. Now its much harder to deal with online then it is in your own business.

What I'm trying to say is make sure your co-workers/employees are fair minded adults and you will have little to worry about. Also remember at the end of the day your not their to have a good time the customer is and its their positive experiences is that will bring in more customers and see them returning for another game or two.

[Stone]

Just people covering sensors or using the dead to do recon for them.

[mcstuff]

Covering sensors is the only method I'd heard of. It's the most obvious to me but still detectable by a referee.

The only laser tag arena near me is an indoor cookie-cutter place. It got me excited about laser tag but it's limited and the same 2 floors every time I go. Naturally I thought about laser tag for hours after leaving that place and often went to bed with laser tag on the brain. Sometimes I would feel devious and my mind would turn to how to obliterate the competition without playing by the rules. Covering a sensor would show up on the score card so I didn't like that method. My idea was a lot more sinister because it didn't invecauseolve disabling any equipment but instead sneaking unlicensed equipment into the arena. Imagine if you were point-zero for a frag grenade every time you pulled the trigger. My idea was basically a high power, 360 degree emitter that cloned my gun's emitter signal. If I put an infrared receiver on my shoe and the aforementioned emitter on a hat I could hit every single player who could see me.

Of course I didn't build this device because shooting fish in a barrel is no fun. Sure, my score card would show that I have 200% accuracy and no one would be near my score but I wouldn't care.

Thinking along these lines was a great mental exercise in thinking outside the box. It gave me insight into building a legitimate frag grenade for my own DIY system or even a rocket. If someone were to build a device like this I would know what to look for.

Another thing I thought could be used by a cheater is a learning remote. Some universal television remotes can be "taught" codes. The process involves pointing your existing remote at the universal remote and pushing the button you want "learned." The same concept applies to IR emitting guns.

VisOne, you make a good point about having fair-minded people administering the games. I don't have an arena/field of my own but I know how I would feel if a worker were abusing their position for their own amusement or if they weighted a game in favor of one team. How would you deal with a customer who didn't follow the rules? What would be your reaction if you caught defeated players doing recon, like Stone mentioned, or caught them using a device that wasn't supposed to be part of the game?

[cottonwood]

We have a policy of one stating up front and very clearly that cheating will not be tolerated, one warning is given and if that person is caught again doing the same offence the gun is turned off for the remainder of the day.
Our staff do not play during the games they are there as refs only. we occassionly get a whinge but all the other paying customers appreaciate the hard line.

[mcstuff]

Cottonwood,
I can understand the importance of setting that line and I would appreciate the enforcement if I were a player. I hope you never have trouble with your employees favoring one customer over another. Maybe a cute boy or girl comes through and the referee gives him or her double life points to make him or her come out ahead.
Thanks for your input. I'm gracious to see how one place handles that sort of thing.

All,
I have high hopes of starting some enthusiasm for free outdoor laser tag in my area but I don't want to be providing all the guns. I want to encourage regular players to build their own guns but this will naturally leave a lot of room for players to "enhance" their own weaponry or build less-than-McSTUFF-worthy sensors. Being on the sneaky side of engineering I think I have a good eye for catching that sort of thing. Your experience and advice will be invaluable information for catching would be cheaters.

Thank you all for the interest and advice so far. I'd love to hear more.

[NotHisRealname]

Have heard of players with a cutoff switch installed in some personal taggers that renders their hit sensors useless. Never seen it myself, but I'm lead to believe that the issue wouldn't show up in the score download of the tagger, either.

[Harlequin]

Yeah, even with FragTag that'd be pretty simple to do.

[VisOne]

VisOne, you make a good point about having fair-minded people administering the games. I don't have an arena/field of my own but I know how I would feel if a worker were abusing their position for their own amusement or if they weighted a game in favor of one team. How would you deal with a customer who didn't follow the rules? What would be your reaction if you caught defeated players doing recon, like Stone mentioned, or caught them using a device that wasn't supposed to be part of the game?

Like I said I have being on the receiving end of exactly that sort of thing before. Obviously I wasn't happy about it so I raised the issue with the relevant people and they knuckled down on the culprits. It will happen from time to time and the only thing you can do about it is to rise above it and make sure it isn't a on going thing. Simple enough make sure the people running the business are looking after the customers interest and if they don't run in parallel to some smart mouthed pimply teenager who has a awesome job of going pew pew pew all day then show him the door not the customer.

At the end of the day if your looking to create a business like this it will cost a fair bit to set-up and it will take some time to build a strong repeating customer base especially given the current social trend of NOT LEAVING THE HOUSE and or twitter/facebook/misc other evil anti-social networking site.