Billy Mitchell’s Donkey Kong high-score case will move forward to trial
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
No, seriously, I have never been wrong yet about a person's character by observing things like that. I know a view as unscientific as that will not go over well with the HN crowd, but perhaps some of us do find merit in body language, and other external "tells".
To be sure, not saying he is not an impressive, and maybe even the best Donkey Kong player — just making an observation about his general trustworthiness in my view.
Life’s a garden, dig it.
There's also some surrounding circumstantial videos where Billy originally claims to change an arcade machine circuit board to a different game board in a very theatrical video, but then is called out for merely putting the same board back in (one can verify by looking at the circuit boards and cross-referencing with verified images of each alleged board), casting doubts into his motivations and general credibility.
There are also cracks in his main line of argument (decks and decks of "signed testimonials" from people who allegedly witnessed him doing the runs). Some of those witnesses have later come out claiming to having misrepresented, and would likely testify to that effect if ever called to stand.
Personally, I agree with the sentiment of the vast majority of the community that Billy is likely a cheat and that he sees this whole thing as "defamation" merely because it is a threat to his income model of milking sponsorships etc through his fame. I don't particularly see this as a good use of the courts' time, especially given how "productive to society" the monetary impact is here, but alas, he does have a right to pursue whatever crazy suit he wants if a judge hasn't thrown out his case.
I wonder if that sort of figures into the whole equation.
Did he get typecast or was he really that type of person?
I watched "The Talented Mr Ripley" and I couldn't see Matt Damon as a hero type character in any role afterwards.
Edit: grammar + spelling.
Run from the namesake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwYt3QxJv34
And yes, watching him create Grand Poo World 3 has been a ton of fun, I love those streams.
Barbarous King, the creator of Grand Poo World 1 + 2 released this video montage of other streamers playing his Grand Poo World 2 for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anhKrWAT0Oc
Blindfolded Mike Tyson's Punchout is an amazing niche documentary. To repeat, a blind speedrun of a very old boxing game. The level of skill and dedication that those runners have is just astonishing. In some strange way, it really makes you reevaluate the limits we humans have, and how they aren't anywhere close to where you think they actually are. It's a heck of an achievement. All that from a game with Mike Tyson on the headliner.
And his response: https://mobile.twitter.com/RWhiteGoose/status/10677075646897...
How these are weighed against one another in evaluating his character is left as an exercise to the reader.
That is partially the crux of the matter: on the one hand, popularity and like ability is not evidence for or against him, and second, community contempt is the consequence of invalidating his scores and making him seem like a cheater. Maybe he’s a cheater, but evidence is the important thing
https://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/622-the-perfect...
After 254 levels of normal Pac-man, the screen fills with jibberish and screen noise -- some of the pixels you have to eat are actually invisible. Billy was the first person on planet earth to crack that level.
That's one of the other records Twin Galaxies has invalidated.
Billy's argument is in part: there's zero evidence he cheated at Pac-man, so why is that score being invalidated too.
https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/29330854/retro-gamin...
But not by Twin Galaxies...
Titles/records are stripped from events where they are proven to be doping/cheating but that's usually it. Athletes are then usually banned for a period afterwards.
It's just that the conclusion of the investigations into the allegations that started early in the major success portion of his career was that he was cheating the whole time of his biggest successes.
I think Twin Galaxies and those records predate this sort of privately issued internet law.
That way a game isn't killed forever because an unverifiable run got a perfect score.
Are there good records to determine that it isn't suspect?
The damage of not removing an invalid score is that that score may be impossible or require superhuman skills (i.e. TAS) to attain, thus forever removing that category from competition.
This lopsidedness - and don't get me wrong, a healthy dose of schadenfreude too - makes me strongly believe proven cheaters should be stripped of all records.
I'm not sure how you can differentiate the punative nature of banning someone from all future tries because they had cheated indeterminately in the past, but not invalidating all their historical record outside of individiaul cases...
They did not forfeit their legacy, and in fact the very next year came within one game of competing in the World Series.
If you're dishonest enough to cheat once, why should we expect your other records (both past and future) to be more honest? Once you have been caught cheating, that knowledge colors all of the other records, and you have a stronger burden of proof to demonstrate that those records are indeed valid. If that means that we are stripping you of legitimate records, well, maybe you shouldn't have broken the rules if you didn't want to suffer the punishment.
[1] In absolute terms. Of course, cheaters also get more ways to cheat over time, so the relative capability of cheaters versus anticheat detection will fluctuate over time.
For purposes of this ruling the judge found that TG's statements were not opinion but were held out as fact. I think TG did themselves no favors in being cagey. They could've easily formulated their statement as an opinion based on disclosed facts. In essence, "I think John is a drunk" may be defamatory because it implies undisclosed facts while "I think John is a drunk because he buys a liter of vodka each week" is an opinion.
In this case, placing the "I think" would make it a belief. This could also make a statement an opinion, but from what I understand, beliefs have a non-zero chance of being proven or disproven, whereas opinions cannot be proven.
"I think gentleman11 is nice username" is a bit different than "I think gentleman11 is a man". Something being "nice" is a bit harder to prove, and possibly impossible without additional context. Thus, it is an opinion. Someone being an man, cheater, alcoholic, etc have the ability to be proven, so it's not as much an opinion as a belief.
I'm not a linguist, but I'd be interested in what language specialists have to say on this.
If someone is found to have cheated, their other records also lose credibility because of that honour component. Also, suspending records is maybe the only form of leverage honest players have.
I don’t have a high opinion of the Olympics but In the case of team events, the rule was revised in March 2003 so that the IOC can strip medals from a team based on infractions by a single team member. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stripped_Olympic_medal...
That’s arguably a much harsher stance.
It would seem outrageous to me for you or I to keep our Olympic Gold Medals.
Designated alternates only get medals if they have some nominal participation, so they will generally get it when possible.
Ha! Might want to explicitly indicate sarcasm; even here on HN people might think you're serious!
How does this guy selling hot sauce have enough money to file lawsuits in foreign countries?
Sarcasm is a cathartic way to vent, especially when spoken with intionation between friends, but it causes confusion in short-form published text. I suggest editing comments after writing them and before submitting.
https://www.reddit.com/r/speedrun/comments/8a6ymm/billy_mitc...
The most important thing to keep in mind is the rendering artifacts demonstrate that the video in generated using double buffering. In single buffering, the CPU writes to VRAM which is ultimately read and displayed on the CRT. The circuitry writing to VRAM is racing the circuitry that reads it.
With double buffering you have two video buffers in memory. The CPU writes to one while the other one is being read. While aging hardware can experience glitches, rewriting a game to use double buffering simply isn't something that will occur by happenstance.
It's also an indication that the emulator isn't totally accurate at all times, even if it might be during gameplay.
They painted Steve as this upstart who came out of nowhere who was going to dethrone Billy's score. In reality, Steve was well known in the community, and had been on the stage with Billy Mitchell some years prior. He had set the record in the past, and when he was setting out for a new record in the documentary, he was trying to beat his own record, not Billy's. Yes - at the time, the record was actually held by Steve. When Billy got his (new) record invalidated, it wasn't so that he could be on the top again - the record simply reverted to Steve's prior record.
When Steve ate at Billy's restaurant, they made it seem like Billy avoided him. In fact, Billy did come out and meet Steve. They'd interacted in a friendly way multiple times over the years.
When Steve took part in a competition, and everyone seemed upset that Billy didn't show up, they made Billy look like a real jerk. His defense (not in the documentary) was that the invitation to compete came out of the blue with very short notice, and he needs time to practice/train, so he declined.
You can see Twin Galaxy's statements on the King of Kong here: https://www.twingalaxies.com/forumdisplay.php/406-The-King-o...
[1] You need to be a bit of a subject matter expert to gauge the accuracy of a documentary. And if you already know the subject that well, the documentary isn't going to teach you much.
And then everything crashed when I looked up the details. It went from "awesome" to "Man, how evil were those filmmakers?"
My apologies.
I mean it’s a video game high score. It’s impressive played on an emulator or not.. but in the grand scheme of things..
I always thought of Billy Mitchel as kinda a fun personality in small doses. In the extras on the “fistful of quarters” he brings an old woman a q Bert machine to practice on which was nice. Though he seems to have a bit of an humility problem he seemed affable.
This Lawsuit changes ones perception of that image a bit. I wonder what his reception at in person video game events will be once they resume.
If such a pattern only shows up in 1/4 of the runs and you need a good combination of three or more such patterns over the course of the game, the ability to control this will make reaching a world record much much easier. You still need a lot of skill, though.
There are some excellent documentaries on speedrunning on YT: For example Ninja Gaiden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u1tVD7UEqw
And it's also possible to put some visual or aural indicators for player when to press which buttons, so the player would be just following computer's instructions. An ability to sync your actions to background music not provided by the game itself is also a possible avenue for cheating.
So the idea that somebody can set a recognisible world record while streaming from home is ridiculous. A proper procedure must involve all hardware and software provided by competition organizers and checked by independent judges.
It might be easier to do certain things with different hardware setups.
An illustrating example: If you play quake 3 at 125 fps you can jump farther than you could if the game was running at 60fps.
1) It's much easier to cheat (in many ways, adjust random generators to always be in your favour for example).
2) There can be differences (the differences are how he has been caught) -- it's common that games in emulators are faster as they don't bother implementing waits of various kinds correctly, as most games still work fine (often better, as they'll skip less frames), and it would just make your emulator slower.
In fact TG has a separate leader board to track the mame high scores. Which is one of the most frustrating things about this whole affair... if Billy really wanted to use mame he could have just submitted his score under the mame category instead of lying and submitting it under the arcade hardware category!
Arcade and emulated play have different verification standards. Generally you need to reset the cabinet, which shows the machine's uninitialized memory on screen, post game you need to show the board. For emulated play you typically need to provide a full recording of the game, which can be re-run in the emulator.
One difference between arcade and emulation comes down to inputs. The arcade joystick has a 4-way restrictor. When Jumpman is climbing a ladder the player can't provide left/right inputs. At a high level this impacts their ability to steer and group barrels. This is totally irrelevant apart from the highest levels of play.
Billy Mitchell built his life and career around this effort. Whether he is right or wrong in his claims, it matters. We wouldn't say that a professional athlete's dispute about cheating is unimportant because it's just a game. By the "grand scheme of things" almost nothing any of us care about matters.
It's a defamation case. Liar is outed as a liar. You can imagine how this can negatively effect your entire life. Look at athletes caught for doping. Imagine you are called a doper, your records stripped, when you were actually innocent.
It's not about high scores per se.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/05/is-this-the-worlds-fi...
As top-tier play has gotten better, the ceiling has increased. We used to think this score was about as good as it was going to get, but only a few years prior, we thought the max was closer to 1.15m. Wild how things change.
EDIT: found it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20569280
This quirks are things like (and I'm simplifying here) "Arcade hardware draws girders from left to right, but MAME v1.11 draws them from right to left. Billy Mitchell's video also shows them drawn from right to left, plus this random enemy always appears in the easiest possible position."
One of the original threads: http://donkeykongforum.com/index.php?topic=2055.0
The 5 or so main threads are novel-length, in total.
And a cringy appearance on an unknown talkshow which was supposed to exonerate him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLxh9Yi5Dc
Everyone deserves the right to clear their name even if they are only accused of cheating at a really old video game.
Truth matters and unfortunately a long drawn out expensive process is the only way we have in most cases.
How I wish truth did matter. In what time period are you referring? Clearly, in 2020, truth at best is tolerated. When you have people with photo/video evidence of someone saying something, but then argue with you that it didn't happen or that's not what was actually said, the truth is no longer relevant. So the question then becomes "Whose truth matters?" In an era of post-truth with concepts of 'alternative facts', truth is best describe as "what you believe is truth".
If your idea if truth is such that it can be dictated by political will, then you don't understand what makes truth special. It is special almost wholly due to its resilience to narrative, and it is incredibly bold or stupid to try to discount it through those means.
It doesn't even need to be political. We have people that believe in a flat earth to this day. If you go through life expecting people to accept true as true, then you will be sadly un-armed for real-life experiences. There are people that are absolutely unwilling to accept that what they currently believe is not accurate, and will not listen to any reasoning what so ever.
Allow me to paraphrase a concept from Tolkien: evil doesn't win because it's a superior force, it wins because it convinces you that it's already won. "Look over there, evil wins. Look here, evil already won. Evil always wins, that's the way it has always been. You can't fight it so give up."
You can't win by spreading evil's messages, even sarcastically. You win by being a superior force and never giving up. People's credibility should actually suffer when they do or say things that are incredible, and people who appeal to us with facts and compassion should be rewarded.
There are fights worth having, and then there are fights that are worth walking away from. If someone starts spouting off garbage, I just walk away and cut ties with them. I'm well past arguing over stupidity. You can tell when someone is unreasonable pretty quickly. However, when someone responds in a way that says they are willing to at least consider an opposing view, I will have a conversation. I enjoy those conversations even if no view points are changed at the end. That's the way it should work. See, I just said should as well.
But what if they don't want a conversation? What if they want a "silent majority" that they will then claim to represent? What if they interpret a lack of resistance as evidence of support?
You may not be changing people's minds outright, but you do have some impact on the strength of their convictions, and their sense of how broadly held they are.
If someone doesn't want that conversation, then it doesn't happen. I don't strap someone to a chair with toothpicks under their eyelids. I reserve that when getting people to watch my short films!
Edit: Conversations about differing/opposing view points isn't always about changing minds. It just helps to get to know someone. If someone tells me they are vegetarian, I don't launch into why I'm not. However, I will make the mental note to not ask them to join me for dinner at the local steak house. If I want to have dinner with them, it helps me plan an appropriate place that they would be okay with as well.
Oh. Sorry. Spoiler alert.
If you look at the sports world you have, more or less, the acceptance that cheating happens, the components change, training regimens change, etc. Professional baseball has comprehensive statistics dating back to the 1860s and the result is that people have divided the sport into eras, and when you compare players in different eras you don't look at the stats alone, you compare how they performed relative to their peers, etc.
A "high score" list that ignores the reality of change is worthless.
No, and no one involved has suggested this.
Is there any reason to believe that the ROM loaded on every single original Donkey Kong cabinet is exactly the same?
Yes, unless otherwise documented by MAME.
Is there any reason to believe that the components on every single original Donkey Kong cabinet perform the same?
Yes, based on literally thousands of hours of video footage.
Well that's fantastic! Probabilities can be established for all sorts of in-game occurrences and the probability of this dude's game being legit or not.
Not only that, but the gamer ability can then be separated from the randomness of the game on any particular play! Are all the high scores the result of aberrations in the game, or because the player is just that great???
Regardless, while those in-the-know can recognize that a good run would have been a record if not for an unlucky event, at the end of the day all that matters is your time (or score). Accounting for the randomness is part of the strategy aspect of the sport.
[0] People who speedrun a particular game will also know of any differences in those probabilities across all known versions of the game. These people have studied these games so deeply they usually know more about how they work than the people who made them.
I recall in the documentary that they came to inspect Steve Weibe's machine (I think there was controversy because they just came in to his garage and started looking without asking first and they didn't seem to give Billy the same scrutiny.)
Curious use of language, in context.