I wrote an opinion piece about Xbox live in the June/July issue of Xbox Nation magazine. I said the online game architecture had promise, but the social experience was limited, curtailed. Over the phone Andre Vrignaud from Microsoft promised me there would be enhanced community tools, so you could more easily find friends and stick with them. I came away wondering if the closed network architecture of Xbox Live wasn't a hinderance - limiting the pool of available online players to those owning Xboxes, and curtailing innovation that might come from non-sanctioned community tool development. Vrignaud responded to my skepticism by arguing passionately for the importance of encrypted communications and secure tamper-free game sessions.
For PlayStation 2 online games, developers must create their own online communications and matchup systems. There's no PS2 online user accounts tied to behavior standards and anti-hooligan architecture. The Sony approach is open - they build the machine, developers make the network and community tools that suit their titles.
The most popular PS2 online game has been SOCOM, a tactical team shooter. If I'm not mistaken, SOCOM has sold about as many software copies as Xbox has sold Xbox Live kits. Immensely popular stuff.
But that popularity might be threatened if malicious players are allowed to mess with the game balance; ie, if players are allowed to cheat in human-versus-human online play. GamesIndustry.biz takes up a recent annoucement by Fire International, a game peripherals company that they are releasing a means to cheat in SOCOM for players in Europe. But enterprising fans have beat them to it in the United States - already, according to Jeff Gerstmann at GameSpot, SOCOM has become unplayable for non-cheaters.
Rampant cheating in the unencrypted, open architecture of this popular PS2 online game would appear to vindicate the technological control scheme of Xbox Live. You can't trust players, argues Microsoft, so you have to limit their choices. Xbox Live doesn't trust anything that doesn't have a credit card and a digital signature granted by Microsoft.
But the GamesIndustry article hints at another way to control cheating online - norms. With technological freedom comes social responsibility. Perhaps, GamesIndustry argues, players will boycott any company offering the means to cheat in an online game. You can see scorn and censure for online cheat-enabling in this GamePro article about the Fire International announcement.
Perhaps if there were robust reputation systems in online worlds, players could flag other players who don't follow appropriate rules of conduct. Or maybe the game system could recognize and flag cheaters. There may be people who want to cheat in online games; let them play against people want to play that way. Or is it better not to have the choice to cheat at all?