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."

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)

[martyb]

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.

In other words, it sounds like you want to make use of all the game has to offer. Explore and then push the limits of what you can do in that "universe".

Reminds me of a time back in the late 70's when a friend (Brian) and I popped in to visit the sysop (Mike) of our school computer system (PDP/11-70 running RSTS/E). Mike had apparently finish

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

[PD]

I like cheats because sometimes I like a game, except for one stupid little thing.

For example, Command and Conquer doesn't have cheats as far as I know. I was having a great time with the game, until I hit the mission where the little commando dude has to make his way into the abandoned base and start it up. I must have tried 50 times, but couldn't get past that mission.

Sorry Westwood, you might have made some great missions past that point, and I might have actually purchased some of those many expansion

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

[goraknotsteve]

The solution is here [ign.com] - about halfway down the page - not a cheat but a walkthrough.(is there a difference?)
I remember taking many, many goes to get through that level but can't remember having to use the walkthrough, honest.

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

[PD]

There's a difference between a cheat and a walkthrough. A cheat would have just let me be invincible, or skip the level entirely. I remember using the walkthrough to try to get the mission over with, but even with that it was impossible for me.

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.

Oh please

[jvmatthe]

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

And when my wife skips ahead to read the end of a romance novel it's just pushing the handbasket even faster. Pshaw.

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.

Re:Oh please

[muirhead]

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

Don't you think that the fact that, violent video game play was positively related to aggressive behavior and delinquency [apa.org], is a bit more of a worry?

good gracious, i never!

[buback]

And of course, no one EVER cheats at solitaire!

Or heaven forbid, poker!

Re:good gracious, i never!

[kneecarrot]

Lifter, leg, and poker. (3 parts of old-style stove) Now, say it again... slowly. :)

It can go both ways

[DaveJay]

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.

- - -

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.

Remember adventure "hint books"?

[DaveJay]

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. ;)

Invisiclues

[sparkhead]

They were called Invisiclues [csd.uwo.ca].

Re:Invisiclues

[DaveJay]

Thanks for dropping this link. I had forgotten about the multiple clue tiers, commentary in place of clues, and fake questions/answers. :)

For those that didn't follow the link, each question had four hints. The first was a nudge in the right direction, and for hard puzzles the last was an outright statement of how to solve it.

For easier questions, however, the writers would give you the outright answer in the third hint, and the fourth hint (if you bothered to reveal it) was some kind of smartass comment.

Re:Invisiclues

[lytlebill]

Speaking of leading cheaters astray, does anyone remember the old CRPG Wasteland? It came with a book of numbered text snippets called 'Paragraphs,' which you would be instructed to read one at a time at certain points in the game, to get clues, or more detail about a situation. Spread liberally throughout the paragraphs were a number of false ones, some telling a story, and a nasty one I remember in particular that gave an incorrect password to an in-game trap. If you used that one instead of the real o

Re:Remember adventure "hint books"?

[evilhayama]

There's an online equivalent. It's called the Universal Hint System [uhs-hints.com]. You get to look at progressively stronger hints at solving each puzzle. They're great for lucasarts style adventures where you need that little bit extra.

100 million annually? Really?

[handsomepete]

Wow. With virtually all of the same information for any game you could want is available on gamefaqs, gamespy and ign, I'm pretty surprised. I'm one of those "try to do it on my own" people (which explains why I still haven't finished Metal Gear Solid 2), so maybe I just don't get the strategy guide thing...

Anyways, cheating in non-online games is just fine by me. I don't think playing Contra with 30 lives is fraying society's moral fabric.

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.

Re:Yeah, right!

[wolpert]

I agree with Tom7 here for the most part. Cheating at solitaire doesn't mean the 'moral fabric' is ripping. People have always cheated at Solitaire when they're just using a deck of playing cards... just because the cheating happens on a computer doesn't mean society is more immoral then before. It just that now companys have found a way to profit from it.

Cheaters may never profit, but companys may on the assumption that people like to cheat.

Re:Yeah, right!

[scot4875]

I think the issue isn't morality, per se. It's more along the lines of: nobody is willing to put in any 'work' to get things. People don't take satisfaction at an accomplishment, even if it is just a game.

I mean, it's supposed to be entertainment, for crying out loud. If you have to cheat to be entertained, what does that say about you? It reminds me of playing Dinosaur Hunter: Turok several years back -- most of my friends were complaining about how hard the game was; that it was impossible to finish

Re:Yeah, right!

[mcgroarty]

Please stop with the Star Wars references and climb out of your web designer's nest long enough for someone to scrub out the urine stains. I'll even get you a date if that will help.

fraying moral fabric??

[legLess]

Disclaimer: people who cheat in multi-player games, absent agreement beforehand, are pond-scum.

just one more instance of the fraying in society's moral fabric.

Oh, that's ridiculous. That's like saying I cheat at Lego when I make something different from the instructions.

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.

Re:fraying moral fabric??

[Repton]

Society's moral fabric has been fraying for decades. Centuries. Millenia, probably. Maybe that's where Atlantis myths come from... You take the assumption that "standards" (morals, education, whatever) are slipping, have _always_ been slipping, and then just run time backwards :-)

But anyway, I wanted to tell my Quake cheating story.. I was playing the first Quake mission pack (Heretic or something?), and I didn't have the skill or the patience (probably both) to go through it properly. So I did IDDQD (

Re:fraying moral fabric??

[Jad LaFields]

Well, IDDQD and IDKFA were for the Doom games, not Quake I believe (which was "god" and "impulse 9", right?), and Heretic was a separate game based on the Doom engine. But otherwise, good story. =)

And to add to that last comment, I agree that I definitely play differently when I'm cheating. When I'm not, I am an ammo whore. I hate the idea of running out of ammo at any time, so I have a tendency to avoid the use of the powerful, ammo-hungry weapons and to do more sneaking around and sniping, even in ga

They have their place

[EdMack]

As most others said, in online games, cheats are a crime with victims, but in single player games / a game where your friends are involved and cheating too, cheats are meerly an expansion of the game. One of my favourite gaming memories is playing the N64 Mission Impossible game on the Embassey mission at the start, only with a weapon cheat.

That meant that I could covertly creep around, and kill isolated people. Many times you got caught, but it was brilliant fun picking them all off until it was just y

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...

Re:My little brother

[MrResistor]

Got to the end of Half-Life without cheating... except for the final monster. For me the payoff is working out how to get throught the game, so when it looked like I was at the end with just the last boss to beat I would look up (carefully) a walkthrough to see if I was indeed at the last boss. I don't very much care what happened after that so I never did finish the game.

That's unfortunate. IMHO the final monster in Half-life is one of the most clever, well designed parts of the game, and the ending is a

Re:My little brother

[kisrael]

Not really cheating, but I remember there was this cool game "Omega" where you would program a battletank and then let it fight a head to head battle on its own.

I found out a good strategy was not to waste my tank's precious cycles moving...just staying in one place scanning and waiting for the enemy tank to come to me...

I think this proved to be a tremendous "evolutionary deadend". It let me advance quickly in the game, but when it finally stopped working, the game was so tough that i had no chance to ge

societies moral fabric could us a fray...

[shaitand]

If someone is contemplating how moral cheating in solo player games is, then perhaps societies moral fabric could definately use a lil fraying...

if I can't cheat,

[overbom]

I usually don't play the game as much. With me, it ends up being an issue of time management. I'll ask myself, "do I want to spend 40 hours on this game? Do I even want to spend more than 10?

I don't buy a lot of games. But the ones that I buy and keep, if they're good enough that I bought them, they're also good enough that I can get addicted to them. Cheating allows me to prioritize the use of my time more effectively. So when I can't cheat (I'm looking at you, civilization 3 for mac), I'm more like

I play games 3 times..

[Stonan]

First: to complete it (no cheats)
Second: to get everything & all secrets (cheats)
Third: to either kill everything or see how fast I can finish it (cheats)

Without single-player cheats I would only play a game once. Concidering how much they cost, only getting one 'original/unique' game might not be worth it to some...

at least to pay for...

Other reasons to cheat?

[DarkGamer20X6]

I always find it interesting when people try and analyse the reasons why Person X does Behavior Y.

It seems as though these philosophers/experts/whatever are pretty set at debating the morals of cheating in games, as has been reflected in the posts to the story as well, but I don't think that's the end of the story.

I used to use cheats when I was young (not that I'm very old now), but that was just a way of getting through the game on a very restricted schedule of play (my parents didn't let me veg out in

*insert raised eyebrow here*

[SoulSkorpion]

Don't you just love articles written by people who have no clue what they're on about? No, never mind commenting on aimbots, wallhacks, maphacks, item duplication, bug exploits and other mallicious techniques used to gain unfair advantages over other players (or just piss them off). Let's just declare that cheating in an offline game of Solitaire leads to the decay of western society. Idiots.

I guess that answers the question

[lightspawn]

Are Game Guides Dying? [slashdot.org]

Three weeks too late, but still. Kind of makes you think how that one got posted, doesn't it? Especially since the opinion was backed up by nothing more than random observations.

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!

Re:Outting myself

[Zeriel]

Funny, I'm 24 and don't have time to sit for hours in front of a game at a time, but I love Vice City precisely because it IS challenging. I've always been under the impression that games are getting easier since my youth, and I don't like that all that much.

Regardless, I think you do have a lack of patience if you can't enjoy Vice City playing it a few hours each day. (or even just an hour--more than ample time to finish a mission or two.)

Perhaps that lack of patience is the real problem here.

Re:Outting myself

[Torgo's Pizza]

Back as a teenager with a C64...

I spotted your problem. According to this statement, you were playing with outdated equipment back in 1992. If given the proper tools at the right age, there's no telling where your gaming skills would be today.

so....

[Ty]

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

I fail to see how this is any different from what already takes place in society. Say for example, I screwed off my entire life until I was 40 years old, but my rich father ushered me into being president of the USA? Sounds mighty like having a secret code to me.

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.