Abuse Cases and Subversion

Identify at least 4 potentials for abuse and subversion in the following game. Describe in detail how you think the abuse or subversion might play out.

Game Title: Entity Hunt (Flash or PC version)

Game Goal: To hunt and destroy an entity as a team in a Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO). Each player connects to a server and joins a team. The team hunts the entity together while avoiding other dangerous creatures.

Design Decision 1: Each time a player plays, they are required to join a new team. The server will deliver pre-canned game hunts for teams to conquer. This saves processing time so that the server does not have to generate new game hunts for each new team.

Design Decision 2: Members are vulnerable to entities, other creatures, and other team members if hurt in battle.

Design Decision 3: The game will download a map of the game environment to the client at the beginning of the game while the splash screen is being displayed. This saves time during the game so that the game client does not have to do this during the game. The map contains locations of various items in the game. However, they are not visible in the game screen since they exist only in the game cache (c:\program files\EntityHunt\cache\).

Design Decision 4: Points are awarded for completing hunts unhurt (max points) or alive but hurt (some points). Zero points are awarded for being killed on a hunt. Players are ranked and can attain prizes for their individual rankings.