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An Interview with a Cheater
Dan writes to mention a post at the Aeropause site. Author Richard was recently given the rare opportunity to interview a cheater, shining a light into the dark recesses of a conflicted mind. The article explores why the cheater cheats, and the great excuses they use to be able to look themselves in the mirror. From the article: "Aeropause: What made you decide to mod your Xbox to gain an unfair advantage in games like Halo 2? Schmuck5000: Modding is not an unfair advantage. There is just as much chance that there will be a modder on the other team. I am there to even things out. Halo 2 is beginning to get old, us modders are just making it more funner."
Athletes often use the same excuse, that since there will be "other" players on drugs, they need to use the same drugs to stay competitive. However, this should only be the case if the drugs are allowed, because any given cheater could be exposed and stripped of their titles, video game or otherwise. That's the ultimate slap-down, because anyone after that will assume you're cheating even if you're not.
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The summary calls this a "rare opportunity to interview a cheater". Cheaters are hardly rare and it isn't difficult to talk to them. Granted, you're likely to get "OMGSTFUONTEHBBQ!!!11!1!one!eleven" than a real conversation, but...
Regardless, the amount of cheating that exists online now is the reason I only play online with people I know, on locked servers. The rest of the time it is single player stuff. When I play a game I play to have fun, and cheaters make games very UN-fun.
Catching them can be a problem. I'm happy the some companies are taking steps towards anti-cheating measures, but ultimately the cheaters are going to win. They control the software running on their hardware and they can modify it as they see fit.
PunkBuster was a good example of this. A server with PunkBuster running required all client connecting to be running a PunkBuster client, which reported to the server various bits of information such as video drivers, what processes are running, if something might be modifying the game's memory, etc. But, after a while, it was useless because the client software was hacked to make the cheater player seem legitimate.
Anti-cheat software is like a lock on a door: It only keeps the honest people out.
Love sees no species.
You're missing the point of the interview.
Yes, it would be very interesting to ask technical as well as moral questions to the people who enable cheaters to cheat, but this interview gave us insight into why a person would cheat in the first place.
I would also like to add that there is a strong difference between cheating at a single player game, and having fun figuring out the save system, and cheating at multiplayer. When you're cheating by yourself, whether it be because you enjoy reverse-engineering the save file or because you simply want to advance faster, it has no impact on anybody else.
Cheating at multiplayer is an annoyance for everybody. The interviewee clearly demonstrates that there is no technical challenge to what he is doing. He's not doing it because he wants to understand how the game works. He's doing it because he's not very good at the games he likes to play and he wants to win, to the frustration of everybody else.