Cheaters Under The Microscope

1up.com has a piece up examining the reasons and rationale behind the online gaming cheater. From personal pride to pure cynicism, the realm of the cheater has many ways in. From the article: "Using grenades and jumping on friends' shoulders can help you get ridiculously high and reach far-off boundaries in Halo 2. Players like Joe32 call it creative thinking. Victims of sniper fire that seems to come from another world call it cheating."

Comments

Its not cheating if its in the game.

[HellPhish]

My stance on cheating in video games is that its only cheating if you modify the client app or take advantage of something that other players can't take the same advantage of.

Simply put, if the game allows it, it is part of the gameplay. It may not be the most obvious way to play, nor may it be how the manual TELLS you to play. As far as I'm concerned, anything allowed by the engine is totally fair.

There is no such thing as an unfair advantage.

Re:Just by jumping on someone else's shoulders...

[Saige]

I can't believe they used that as an example. Anything like that is completely NOT cheating. Grenade jumps, jumping on another player, fancy trick jump, etc - those are all completely valid techniques and anyone who considers them cheating is full of crap.

Level glitches - like the superjumps on various maps, the old trick of pulling flags/weapons through walls, those are also not really cheating, since anyone can do them. People who abuse them to grief people are not cheating, but still deserve negative feedback.

Standbying (the modem glitch mentioned), and now the whole problem with hacked files - now that's cheating, and those people need to get their asses banned like NOW.