Game Cheats - A Big Business

Thanks to the San Diego Union-Tribune for its amusing article discussing the use of in-game cheatcodes and other game spoilers. It can be big business - regarding the cheat/hintbook market, an analyst suggests: "When you look at the magazines, Web sites and hint books, it's clear that consumers are spending quite a bit of money not just on the games. It's well over $100 million (annually). It's a big, big area." The up-side of cheating is mentioned, too - Chris Ulm of Sammy Studios says "Some of the codes let you play the game again and have a different experience. It makes the game a toy that you can play with in a different way." But the dark side is also revealed, with one piquant passage suggesting codes could be "...akin to cheating at solitaire, a source of false accomplishment and just one more instance of the fraying in society's moral fabric."

Comments

I want to cheat! (in single player)

[oni]

Cheating in an online game is immoral IMHO, but in a single player game I actually *demand* the ability to cheat. See, I view computer games as just an extension of my imagination. And I don't like arbitrary walls holding me in. There's no joy for me in "defeating" a single player game. The fun is in the play itself, and if the designers - being only human after all - limited me in some way, I want a way around that limitation. I want a cheat.

Case in point. X-COM UFO Defense. A great game and one that I still play because I can cheat at it. There is a program called xcomutil. I use it to add or replace the aliens and generally make the story progress the way I want it to. To me, that makes it fun, even though strictly speaking I am cheating.

I also play a lot of Quake and I've seen what cheaters do to an online game. So, my hope is that game makers, in their zeal to protect the online experience, will leave plenty of loopholes for cheats in single player games.

Re:I want to cheat! (in single player)

[rekkanoryo]

I agree with you totally. I hate being limited arbitrarily in games. This is why I loved the Game Genie (GG) for the NES and SNES. I would play the game through normally until it got too frustrating to keep losing (although I actually won about 2/3 of my games without the GG), then use the GG codes to make it easier. Games like Super Mario Bros. and the like I would actually make harder with the GG (only 1 life, extra lives worthless, faster timer, etc.). Doing that actually improved my gaming skills in those areas. I got to the point that when using the GG to make the game harder, I could play SMB five times through without ever losing a life, and when I did lose a life it was because of fatigue. Take away the GG and I could slaughter the competition score-wise.

When I got into PC gaming, one of the first games I was given for it was Frogger. This was back in 1998 or 1999. Until I figured out how to play each level, I used the infinite lives cheat to make sure I could figure each level out. Unfortunately, I never did get good enough that I could beat every level without the cheat. Games like SimCity, on the other hand, are impossible for me without cheat codes. I have no clue how *anyone* can build a city in SimCity without running out of money within the first 10 years.

So to summarize, I think cheats in single player games, whether in the game or provided by external devices (for consoles) are good. But not having played an online game, I can't form an opinion there.

Re:I want to cheat! (in single player)

[Goldberg's Pants]

Right on!

If you cheat in multiplayer games, YOU ARE SCUM. That's all there is too it, and the planet would be better off without you on it.

As for single player, cheats rule. One thing that SERIOUSLY irks me with todays games is the process of unlocking items. Now, don't get me wrong, I WORKED to unlike everything in Gran Turismo 2. I'm a racing nut, so it was fun to do. However, when you get the likes of Tony Hawk 2, the last THPS game I actually liked, I lost patience before I'd unlocked the third level. I shell out my money for the game, I should NOT have to work to access stuff I've paid for.

On saying that, once I got cheats to unlock everything in THPS2 I was in heaven. And some of the other cheats are fantastic. Low gravity, reverse the levels etc... All good stuff, but that initial process of being forced to unlock stuff SUCKS if you're a casual player. MOST of us have lives and can't invest anywhere near as much time as we'd like into a game. Having the majority of the game locked out punishes the casual player.

The argument is made that unlockables are rewards, but playing the game should be it's on reward.

Okay, so I'm all for having SOME unlockables. Hidden characters and the like, that's fine, but Tony Hawk pushes it TOO far with having every level bar the lowest locked out at the start. Sadly, other games do the same.

Yeah, right!

[Tom7]

"...akin to cheating at solitaire, a source of false accomplishment and just one more instance of the fraying in society's moral fabric."

ahahah, yeah, right. Games are really just about entertainment. Someone else has already beaten that boss, and seen the ending. Nothing in the real world actually happens when you kill Mother Brain. For sure you can make an argument that cheating is pointless because it makes the games less entertaining (perhaps true), but there's no moral issue here. Nobody is hurt if you cheat. Nobody is hurt if you don't bother finishing the game because it was too hard. Nobody is ever hurt because ultimately there is no point to games other than to amuse you.

Ugh

[Anonvmous Coward]

"...akin to cheating at solitaire, a source of false accomplishment and just one more instance of the fraying in society's moral fabric."

Stupid ill-thought conclusions like that are doing more to fray society's moral frabic than cheating on games is.

My little brother

[MrResistor]

My little brother (13) learned the evil of cheat codes when he finally tried playing Starcraft online. I've always been anti-cheatcode, and I tried to explain why to him, but he's one of those people who has to learn it on his own. The lesson he learned is: if you always use cheat codes you'll never actually get good at the game. That's fine if all you ever do is play on your own just for something to do, I guess. My own feeling is that you're just cheating yourself, though.

That said, I have used cheats, but just to get around bugs in a game. For instance last time I played through Half-life there were a couple places where there were barriers that for some reason you just couldn't get around (one was an elevator where no matter where you stood you'd get 'stuck' when it transitioned to the next map, the other was a wall that was supposed to blow up but didn't, I had to use a walk-through-walls cheat to get through them). They do have their place...

Outting myself

[Korpo]

Hi! My name is Korpo and I'm a cheater. And I'm not going to stop it!

I'm 24 and don't have the time or patience to sit for days in front of a game like "Vice City" to master its handling and getting skilled at the acrobatics just like a 14-year-old. Clearly designed for the the kids that have plenty of time and want a challenge, "Vice City" doesn't even have a Beginner, or Rooky level. You're only going to see the end of the game if you're really good. REALLY good!

It is a great, immersive game. But I wouldn't get to see more than a quarter of it wouldn't I have resorted to cheating. That's sick, because the gaming experience is for a lot of lesser skilled players simply not accessible without cheating.

I simply want to see the full game, all subplots, mini-stories, etc. In a RPG or strategy that's no problem for me, since there you can plan and make a great strategy, execute it and win. RTS and 1st-person-shooters on the other hand are worth a look as well, but I find the games overly hard.

Back as a teenager with a C64 I was equally good at the joystick arcade, but now I want to enjoy playing a game, and don't want to have big stress and trouble, because the game is designed for Junior-Hardcore-Play-The-Game-7-Hours-A-Day-All-We ek and doesn't offer any way to ease it up EXCEPT cheating.

Perhaps not player ethics is at stake. Perhaps it's not the cheaters who are doing anything wrong. It's the game designers, with their narrow focus on the kids, that only "bugfix" their overly hard games with cheats.

Maybe beating a hard game gives you a sense of accomplishment. But this is purely virtual, remember! You have accomplished anything real, you have not hacked a piece of code, have not read a book, learned something or done something useful. This virtual sense of accomplishment is the real problem, because it is widespread in the Western societies, and people are no more wanting to getting something real accomplished in their lives, with their computers...

Yeah, overexaggerating I know! But I cheat, and it could be worse... what the xxxx!

irritating

[bigbigbison]

This wasn't a bad little article, especially for a general mostly non-gameplaying audience. But then they had to go and talk to the guy who had to go the "what about the children" moral panic route.

"I worry that the message that cheating is OK might carry over to more significant areas. If parents buy their children these magazines, it sends the message that it's OK to do this."
Boo hoo. When will people realize that videogames are not exclusivly a children's medium?

I suppose that since there is no way to cheat in board games, or card games, or hide and seek, or on a test, or on one's spouce, then OF COURSE videogames are a horrible influence.