Tibia

The Cheating Assemblage in MMORPGs: Toward a Sociotechnical Description of Cheating

This paper reframes cheating in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) as a sociotechnical assemblage rather than a simple set of player actions that confer unfair advantage.

• The paper reframes cheating in MMORPGs as a sociotechnical assemblage, drawing on DeLanda and Callon, in which players, EULAs, anti-cheating tools, forums, server and client code, and gameplay design interact non-linearly rather than cheating being a simple set of player actions.
• The authors argue cheating should be analyzed through multi-level relationships rather than solely through technical prevention, positioning the work as a bridge between technical anti-cheating literature and media literature that treats cheating as intentional play.
• The empirical basis is qualitative: a pilot study of Tibia (roughly 300,000 players, September to November 2008), participant observation, forum posts, and the EULAs and Terms of Service of several MMORPGs including World of Warcraft, with no quantitative findings reported.