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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."
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.
Cheat codes are nothing more than the bonuses the developers liked enough to leave in for the regular folks. Well, the ones they can get by the suits, at least.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
The morality depends on your intended use, I suppose.
For instance, we occasionally play Test Drive LeMans (Dreamcast) at work in groups of four. We're at work, so none of us have any interest in sitting down and winning races against the computer in order to unlock new cars and tracks -- we just want all the cars and tracks we can get on those rare occasions when we gather to race. Cheat codes, in this case, are a godsend.
On the other hand, I'm playing Animal Crossing right now. The whole point is exploration and communication, and I'm staying as far away as possible from any kind of hints or clues as I can. The faster I get to the "end", the faster I use up the potential entertainment that the game represents.
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One recent example comes to mind:
Recently a friend pointed me to a little online adventure game. I loved playing it, because I took pleasure in each puzzle I solved. My wife, on the other hand, didn't like it much. She kept asking me to give hints so that she could reach the end quickly.
It turns out she takes no pleasure from puzzle solving whatsoever -- she just wants to see the payoff, and sees the puzzles as an unwelcome obstacle. I, on the other hand, don't care about the ending that much, and take pleasure in solving each puzzle.
It's an interesting example of the points of view involved in the larger cheating issue, I think.
When I was a kid, we played a lot of text adventures. Infocom had this great hint book system: the book came with visible questions, but invisible answers that could be revealed with the use of a special pen (included.)
;)
It struck a great balance -- it was impossible to accidentally read a clue and spoil the game for yourself, but if you got to the point that you couldn't solve a puzzle and were getting really, REALLY frustrated, a simple swipe of the marker would ease your pain.
The best part: if someone in your family claimed to "figure out" the answer to the puzzle on their own, we could peek at the book to see if they'd actually cheated by revealing the clue.
"...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.
For years I had uncanny aim in Quake2-engine games. I got kicked from servers a few times 'cause people thought I was a bot (just to note that pro players, or anyone at that level, is light years beyond my skill, now or ever, so I'm not bragging especially).
People asked how I did it, and it was simple. I'd start Quake 2 single-player on 'Nightmare' and use one cheat code to get the railgun and bind another key to give me railgun ammo. Then I disabled weapon switching. Every shot and every kill I made in the game was with the railgun. It was surprisingly hard. Do that a few times and your aim will improve, too.
My point is that this is one of the many uses that I bet id never imagined for cheat codes. Using them to get eternal life is kinda lame, but using them to create new and different challenges can be quite cool.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
"...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.