Game Cheats

A Short-Cut to Better Gaming, or Just An Easy Way Out?

To a lot of people, cheating in video games is useful, nay, essential to ensure a satisfying gaming experience. With the exclusion of online games, where cheating eventually leads to temporarily or indeed permanently banning players' online accounts (seeing as they get an unfair advantage over other players), the process of using game cheats has become a crucial part of modern-day electronic entertainment.

Still, it would be pertinent to mention that the process of cheating in online games has reached an all-time high and is now divided into various categories such as boosting (ranking up), binding, rigging, ghosting etc. As far as off-line gaming goes, things are a bit different.

Every day, millions of gamers keep Googling their way towards video game cheats goodness. At first, you might think they are just looking for an easier way to complete the game. Well, that's true. However, there are numerous cases in which gamers end up completely frustrated and annoyed due to design issues that plague the game. On the other hand, in certain console or PC games, developers count on players using cheats. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. First, we will take the time to examine the roots of the game cheats and how it was done many years ago.

POKE 'em!

Cheating in video games dates back to early home 8-bit computers, when systems like the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum dominated the industry. Things were much different back then. Fundamentally, all numerical values in computer games were fully stored into memory, which meant players had to adjust or re-program a portion of the game itself, before launching it, in order to successfully employ a particular cheat pattern - invulnerability, unlimited lives and such. Executing such modifications was possible by means of so-called POKE sentences. As soon as this method of cheating had been introduced, it thrived into a whole community and culture, followed by gaming magazines that mostly encouraged cheating and offered various tips and detailed instructions on how to utilize POKEs for a huge variety of video games.

Interestingly enough, not everyone was eager to hop onto this new cheating bandwagon. In fact, many prominent gaming magazines condemned cheaters and cheating in video games in general, saying that such exploits go against the very principals of gaming. At the same time, however, those who encouraged playing games without cheats were also quick enough to point out that video games shouldn't cheat the player either. Yes, back in those days, numerous games were flawed or simply characterized as too demanding for average and even more experienced gamers. Having a challenging game was fine and all, but in some cases the video game was intentionally programmed in such way to "cheat" gamers, thus forcing them to take shortcuts and use cheat codes.

Pretty soon, other schemes of cheating in games took hold, such as the Game Genie, which represented cartridges crammed with cheats, designed by Codemasters. The cartridges were distributed for the various console platforms such as the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega Game Gear, NES, SNES and Game Boy. Inserting the Game Genie would modify data, allowing you to cheat and alter diverse aspects of the game. Even this method caused problems. The original NES Game Genie, for instance, was deemed unfit by Nintendo. In time, Nintendo sued Galoob (the NES Game Genie distributor), claiming that cheat cartridges brought about derivative works and were violation of copyright law.

Cheating is A Good Thing?

Every gamer gets to use cheats at some point. If players don't resort to actually using cheats, they are bound be tempted at least, should the game prove too difficult for their taste or if they cannot contain their curiosity to find out what's going to happen next in the storyline. This happened to some of our colleagues here at the office a number of times. Personally, I found myself using cheats plenty of times in similar situations, especially when I just couldn't wait for the story to move on. Looking back, I recall that a particular mission in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne triggered this line of reasoning. I just couldn't wait to discover where the plot was going (of course, I also wanted to speed things up in order to check out the brilliant cinematics).

When you think about it, in certain cases cheats are liable to spoil your gaming experience. So, while cheating diminishes the challenge in some games, it can help increase the replay value in others. As I've mentioned earlier, most game developers rely on the fact that a great deal of players seeks to go through most of the experience by using cheats, hints or walkthroughs. In reality, playing games is one of the most time-consuming activities known to (modern) man and a lot of gamers nowadays just don't have the time to sit patiently through puzzles or challenges of a particular game. That's why, for gamers who are pressed with family obligations, work and whatnot, cheating can speed things up if they come across a dead end.