Hi there, this post is for both players and Developers and I am looking for honest feedback. (TL;DR I am looking on how to discourage stat-manipulation by baking it into games I want to make).

I am starting to see a very sharp rise of Statistics manipulators in video games, and pardon my french its starting to annoy the holy-living-fuck out of me. There are some very talented people who have elected to not use their mathematically gifted skills for good, but instead for evil, (and sometimes money). I am of the opinion that these people do not care about the communities they end up hurting in their quest for perfect stats (and money) and I have time and time again often find myself abandoning games and communities I really enjoyed playing with all because of this type of greedy behavior.

I am starting to see the same things on NewGrounds in regards to whistle points, (and on a non-videogame level a certain individual baking themselves into collaborations so they cannot be blocked by others, which is system limitation being exploited).

I am now making the leap to make video games with game engines like Godot. But I want to do it right and bake anti-stat manipulation from the start and foster healthy communities around these games that will actively reject these dickheads and want to play for fun, not money or stats.

Is there a manual of methods or bible that explains these methods, or is their something from experience that other developers willing to share that I can benefit from?

Thanks in advance.

Do you have a more concrete example of what you mean? I can't tell if you mean min-maxers in a strategy game, which is relatively harmless imo, or something completely different. Either way, it's the game's leadership or lack thereof that fosters the community, same as a Discord server or any other group of people.

My experience is a bit difficult to translate without revealing what I now understand (as I was harassed for awhile over it). But basically I want to make it difficult to allow players to somehow make money off my games (aside from whatever streaming nonsense they do).

Still not really clear, but if you offer no means of financial transfer to the player within the game or community, they can't make money in any way you have control over. If someone makes money by betting on some site that they can speedrun your game within 10 mins, that is completely and wholly out of your control. If you host some weekly leaderboard where the top player gets money and players start playing a way you don't like, then don't do that or change parameters to disincentivize that strategy.

If you mean people stealing your game and (re)selling it, the only practical way outside of DRM tooling is to utilize whatever reporting feature is available or to pursue legal action.

It's hard to suggest feedback because this isn't a situation any developer has to deal with outside of big money games or niche situations.

Not gunna lie, this is the first time I've ever seen anyone worry about the best way to avoid any money being made from posting an online game, especially on NewGrounds.

If you're worried about people finding ways to post bogus highscores to a leaderboard then maybe I could think a bit on how to keep that from happening, or at least make it hard enough that it's not worth people's while. If you mean people rating the game up down or sideways for whatever purposes they might have aside from actually liking or disliking the game, then ignore the ratings. If you're worried about something else, it'll be difficult for any of us to say anything useful if you speak in riddles, but if you don't want to post it publicly then feel free to msg me if it's something that can be addressed by coding in Godot and doesn't need to involve changing how NewGrounds, the Internet, or Humanity works.