Honest vs Cheating Bots in PATROL-based Real-Time Strategy MMOGs

Abstract. The increasing success of massively multi-player online games (MMOGs) is due to the fact that they allow players to explore huge vir-tual worlds and to interact in many different ways, either cooperating or competing. To support the implementation of ultra-scalable real-time strategy MMOGs, we are developing a middleware, called PATROL, that is based on a structured peer-to-peer overlay scheme. Among other fea-tures, PATROL provides AI-based modules to detect cheating attempts, that the decentralized communication infrastructure may favor. In this paper we illustrate how we implemented honest and cheating autonomous players (bots). In particular, we show how honest bots can detect cheat-ing bots in real-time, thanks to strategies based on neural networks.