Okay, I’ve been playing The Sims for about a month straight now, and I’m a little perturbed at all the people on the chat board at http://thesims.ea.com who respond to every question with yet another cheat code. I mean, geez, who is so lazy that they cheat up a million dollars and give their characters 10 in every skill point so they can buy 4 Servo robots and never have to work except make exploding garden gnomes all day?
I only use the money cheat if a family is broke and in a life-threatening situation, and even then I try and make up a story to justify it. Or if I screw up and decide it’s easier to cheat up a few thousand dollars rather than restore from a save game. For instance, I built a new home for a family but ran out of money, so I gave them a $20,000 “home loan” to finish and furnish it.
When I played Ultima Online, cheating and exploitation was rampant. I tried the money-duping cheat and the skills-hacking cheat and found it dissatisfying, and even made me a little nervous because the game masters were banning people left and right for cheating. And I got a lot more out of DOOM when I stopped using IDDQD all the time.
Ok, so post your opinion…do you cheat in games? Do you feel guilty about it? And do you feel that cheating in computer games is morally wrong?
To use Doom as an example- when I first started playing it back in (1993? 1994? looong way back, when I was using Archie, Veronica, and Gopher rather than a web browser) a friend refused to tell me the cheat codes until I had already beaten the game. I’ve used that as a rule of thumb. I don’t consider it morally wrong, just stupid of the people who do it.
That is, if you’ve just paid $50 for a game, what’s the point of using a cheat code, character editor, or walkthrough just because you’re stuck for ten minutes? Immediate gratification, I guess, or the feeling of omnipotence of using God Mode or Unlimited Ammo or Free Money. A few times I’ve gotten a game and used a cheat code right at the start, and then I’ve beaten the game - and there’s no replay value, since I’m stuck at points in the game that were easy with the cheats, and there’s no challenge.
Eh, I’m rambling. If you want to cheat, go right ahead; I won’t think you’re morally corrupt, I’ll just think you’re dumb for paying $50 for a great gaming experience and then ruining it right away.
(Of course, if you pirated the game to get around paying the $50, then I think you’re morally corrupt and an assbiscuit.)
Cheating in the single player games is just fine. May be that it’s kinda missing the point, but whatever makes you enjoy the game is good.
Cheating in multi-player games is annoying. I don’t know about morally wrong, but I’ve felt justified in nuking a cheater’s computer before. Two wrongs may not make a right, but they can make some fun.
My wife always buys the game guides for the games she plays (primarily Might & Magic VI, VII, and VIII), not so much so that she can cheat but because there are hugely important things in the games that can only be learned in-game by mindbogglingly retentive attention to detail.
My attitude is, you can always win by cheating (well, most games, that is… X-Wing allowed the player to cheat in the middle of a mission, but a win for that mission didn’t count). I figure, if a game is so hard or confusing or stupid or slow that the only way I can get through a level is by cheating, maybe I’m playing the wrong game…
Examples: Some of the missions in X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter are monumentally difficult. Might & Magic requires knowledge of huge amounts of game info, which takes a long time to acquire. Pharoah has an end-game time (on my computer) of 10-20 HOURS (!!!) during which NOTHING HAPPENS except the occasional invasion, which I’ve already established I can defeat, or environmental whatevers (ooh, a bad flood) which I’ve also established I can defeat. I stopped playing Pharoah once I realized my playing style had devolved down to (once I got to the endgame): Save the game. Go do a load of laundry. Come back in half an hour, deal with the stuff that happened. Save the game. Go make dinner. Come back in half an hour, rinse, repeat until the game finally says oh, hey, look, you won.
I agree with The Nerd (no big surprise in a computer game thread ). I like computer games for the eye candy and the relaxation factor. And occasionally a decent challenge.
I’ve played games all the way through without cheating if the gameplay is interesting enough - ex: Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Other times, regardless of gameplay, I just want to see all I can see from a game as quickly as possible.
Example: The Sims. This will probably have me assassinated by the Maxis people, but I don’t really find the game play that intriguing. After a few (game) weeks I just get bored with my beings and start torturing them. Oh, but how I love to build them extravagant houses. I give myself as much money as I want and just go to town like the I. M. Pei of Maxis-land.
So I’d say cheating in single player games is akin to masturbation - it’s completely natural and no one gets hurt, although you might develop a few calluses.
I’m with you guys. I try to never use cheat codes the first time through a game. Why would anyone want to do this? The fun of the game comes from mastering it through your own skill, not from entering a code.
The only time I can ever remember using a cheat code was when I played Syphon Filter on Playstation. I got stuck on one level that I just could not get past. I must have tried it 20 or 30 times, but I couldn’t shoot down that damn helicopter. So I entered the one-shot code, shot down the accursed thing with one bullet, and reset the code back to normal. But I still felt guilty about it.
I will use codes to play through the game later, though. Sometimes I just want to play certain parts of a game I have already finished, and I don’t really feel like playing the whole thing through to get to a certain spot. I figure: if I have already beaten the game by myself, then I can use the codes I want and be morally satisfied.
I call it ‘reprogramming’. Who’s to say some game writer knows how a game should be written? Most of the time when I use a GS on the psx2 it’s cause I don’t want to spend 30 hours doing stupid fights to build up stats, I have to work for Pete’s sake!
I don’t see how it could possibly be wrong to cheat at a game like the sims, since there’s no way to win. I actually address that in the Stupid Repetitive Question FAQ on my sims site. (http://www.geocities.com/simthingdifferent)
“Why are there so many people against cheating in the Sims?”
Some people can’t stand the thought of other people having fun in a different way than they would.
It’s a totally open-ended thing, so…most who people argue against cheats because they think it’s “challenging” to work one’s way up through the career system and then afford stuff. Not everyone plays for a challenge, many of us play to make Albums. Why take care of the sims for three weeks longer without the money cheat if all I’m doing is making a story about David’s Happy Fun Cult? Then, my site is also holding a contest for the best user created Richard Simmons head, so maybe I don’t play like everyone else…
The first time through a game, I generally won’t cheat, especially if I paid the full new title price for it. It’s a waste of money, otherwise. But that doesn’t make it wrong.
However, when I played through Baldur’s Gate II, I downloaded a character editor right from the beginning to correct this bullshit about Imoen, whom I had built up to be a very effective thief in Baldur’s Gate to being a crappy thief who would never again advance in her theiving abilities because the plot demanded that she become a mage. They gave her points in pick-pocketing. Pickpocketing! That’s what the goddamn bard is for! The thief is supposed to be my scout, my assassin, but these jerknobs decided she should be a crappy mage. I already had a crappy mage – the bard! I fixed Imoen, and I’m not a bit ashamed of it.
Elfkin, I was about to make the same comment. I’m on a Sims mailing list that just had a HUGE discussion over cheat codes.
Personally, I don’t see the problem with them. I used them to create my all-medieval town, since there was NO way I could get people into a castle without running the game forever the normal way. Also used it to build a replica of the house where I grew up. Not everyone plays to “win” in that game…a lot play to create albums or stories. Where honestly, you HAVE to use cheat codes.
Also, a cheat is the only damn way to get rid of the damn flies in House Party.
I cheated in Diablo II when my boyfriend and I wanted to make lots of perfect diamonds to put in our shields. We rationalised it by saying it was “just this once”, but once we started, we couldn’t stop. It took all the fun out of the game for both of us, because after that point, we’d lost our sense of accomplishment from building up the characters.
However, I can also see how fun it would be to make my Barbarian level 99, with unlimited gold and all his stats maxed out. It all depends on your reasons for playing the game, I guess.
Why would they build the cheats into the game if you were not meant to use them? I “cheat” like crazy in The Sims, but it’s kind of a game about nothing, so who cares? My goal is to get my money’s worth out of it and have fun, and using cheat codes definately helps that.
I just thought of two more primo examples of games that beg to be cheated on (at least in my mind): Sim City 3000 Unlimited and Roller Coaster Tycoon. And here is my reasoning:
I play these games when I’m in a creative mood. I like to “create” a work of art in the form of a city or a theme park. Do I really care about balancing the price of hot dogs vs. general admission, and figuring out if I’m paying my security guards enough while making sure that every ride entrance is being entertained by a performer? Hell no! I wants to build me a rollee-coaster!
Same with Sim City. If I wanted to spend all my time on the computer figuring out a working budget, I’d have become an accountant. Gimme them skyscrapers! Let’s surround the Sears Tower with freeways, lets plant Alcatraz in the middle of downtown … budget schmudget, my name’s not Poindexter.
Viva La Cheat Code!!
Well, you sort of have two questions here, dn’t you?
Cheating in a single-player game is no problem. If you use the cheats in a way that ruins your gaming experience, that’s your problem, but many game cheats benefit the gaming experience when you want to add a feature or play the game a different way. The Sims is a good example; I always give my new little family a little more startup cash. Other really good games have some play balance problems, like SimCity 2000 or Age of Empires, that can be corrected with judicious use of cheats. I have other games where cheats are good for setting up specific situations or overcoming play balance problems or buggy games; Diablo II, for instance, in its earliest incarnations was SO laggy in multiplayer you could get killed while waiting for the next area to load. That loses you big bux, so it’s nice to have a cheat to get stuff back to overcome the lag problem. Cheats also allow for some game modification.
However, cheating on an online multiplayer game is the sort of thing a filthy, lying weasel does, because it ruins the game for others. UO is THE absolute perfect example; hackers practically destroyed the first version of the game, drove customers away by the score, and more or less handed the fantasy online supergame title to the virtually cheat-free EverQuest.
To be honest, games that lack good cheat codes are, in my opinion, the pits. A classic example is Rollercoaster Tycoon, a wonderful game except you can’t play some levels until you complete other levels. There’s no in-game reason for this, it’s just an arbitrary limitation on your enjoyment of the game. It’s stupid, and I wish there was a cheat code to unlock all the levels, but I’ve never found one. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to play those other levels? I bought the game. I paid good money for it, too.
I’ve been wondering about this myself, and I do think it’s fine in certain circumstances. Example: Banjo-Tooie, on the Nintendo 64. On each level of the game, you have the opportunity to gather up to three pages; when you have five pages, you take them to a certain location and receive a cheat code. You can then enter the cheat code and receive some bonus, like more firepower, becoming “fallproof” (no injury from long falls) or, the biggie, having your energy restore itself slowly after you’re injured.
I mean, they call them “cheats”, but in my mind, since they’ve placed the pages out there for you and it’s not some word-of-mouth hidden thing, it’s not cheating, but something I earned, within the rules of the game. Entering keyboard codes that you find on message boards, however, seems more like cheating somehow. And some things, like the “lumber bug” in Warcraft II, are so widely known and relied upon that I don’t think taking advantage of them could be considered cheating. So in summary: does the game itself give you the cheat codes? If so, I don’t believe it’s cheating. Or, is the “cheat” so widely known that you WILL lose if you DON’T use it? If so, still not cheating. Typing “idspispopd”? Cheating.
Due to various reasons that I shant go into here, I am not currently in contact with my computer (long story, I’ll tell you later), but if I were, I could hook you up with just what you’re looking for. On the other hand you could probably find them yourself. Alas, I cannot point you to any specefic sites for the lack-of-my-computer problem mentioned above, but if you search Google for RollerCoaster Tycoon Trainers you should find what you’re looking for.
The only caveat is to make sure you download the right trainer for the version of the game you are playing. Also, some of these trainers are a little unreliable (crashing the game), so you may have to futz around a little to find a good one, but they are out there.
In multiplayer I think cheating is unforgivable, because it ruins other peoples’ experiences with the game.
In sp, it doesn’t really matter. Most of the time I don’t bother, but in some games, I find myself cheating just to get more of the plot, particularly when doing it the full way would be just too annoying, or if the game programming is too buggy to get through the game reliably the conventional way. One game that comes to mind is Mechwarrior Mercenary. Great game, great plot. Buggy as hell. There was one mission I could NOT get through without cheating because the AI on the drop ship would get jammed on a mesa every time and it would fail to pick me up at the end. Most of the times, not. I don’t think it’s ethically wrong, but it does ruin much of the experience.
First question…how do I get on The Sims mailing list? I’m sick of my friends getting bored when I talk about my families…
I used to only use God Mode in DOOM, until I started recording demos which didn’t allow cheat codes. Not only did I become a better player, I got immense satisfaction out of not only beating four cyberdemons at once, but being able to show people that I did it!
Then somebody came up with a way to cheat in Doom demos, and won a few competitions before somebody blew the whistle on him. It almost wrecked the whole DOOM community. I don’t get the satisfaction of knowing that you beat somebody by cheating. (Ironically, someone later had the idea of making cheated demos, but admitting that they were cheated, just for fun’s sake. It was a huge success.)
). I like computer games for the eye candy and the relaxation factor. And occasionally a decent challenge.
It took all the fun out of the game for both of us, because after that point, we’d lost our sense of accomplishment from building up the characters.