On Cheating: Redux

Words: 3212 Approximate Reading Time: 20-25 minutes

Over the years I’ve been trying to rethink the way in which I approach concepts of difficulty and challenge. I usually try to play games on a “Normal” setting unless I feel some specific pull to ratchet up the challenge. I tend to let my patience wear out a bit faster than I used to, and either stop playing a game entirely or look up solutions or tips to help me progress. I have tried to allow myself to reduce difficulty if I’m feeling like the challenge is getting in the way of my having fun. And I have tried to remind my friends that it’s okay to do these things themselves.

A lot of the reason I have been engaging in this evaluation is that there’s a lot of baggage that comes with notions of difficulty and challenge, and a fair amount of that baggage is pretty toxic. That toxicity is something I want to avoid imposing on others, but just as importantly I want to make sure I don’t trip over it. I want to connect with a game as something to enjoy, rather than as a mere hurdle to overcome.

The more I’ve thought about this topic, the more I find myself wondering about the narratives we create about what is and isn’t “cheating,” and why it matters.

For the purpose of this discussion, we are confining ourselves purely to a solo experience. When you “cheat” within the context of a game you are playing by yourself, for your own enjoyment. So any kind of competitive component – multiplayer, leaderboards, etc. – is irrelevant to this discussion.

Examining these narratives is important because there isn’t a good and stable understanding of what “cheating” really means. There’s the obvious stuff – using codes or mods that grant you an advantage that does not exist for “standard” player. But then there’s also the use of guides, specific builds or pieces of equipment, certain tactics, or even using particular mechanics.

Now you could read that last sentence and say “hang on, that’s not ‘cheating,’ that’s what we’d call ‘cheese.’” If that is your response, that is part of why this essay exists. Because “cheese” is functionally a form of cheating. It is a behavior that people look down on, consider to be illegitimate, and will often use as an opportunity to denigrate other players. It doesn’t really matter what we call these other behaviors, because they get treated the same way. They are ways of engaging with a game that are perceived as “lesser.”

So I am grouping these all together because that underlying perception hurts players. Whether we call it cheating or not, there is a layer of toxicity that impacts the ability of people to enjoy things on their own terms. Cheating, cheese, cheapness, and so on are merely different sides of the same coin. We need to look at the stories underneath them to realize why we should probably start being extremely skeptical of these terms.

Superiority and Inferiority

We can’t really dissect the concept of cheating without understanding the role of comparison.

A significant amount of discussion around video games surrounds difficulty and its meaning for players. A player willing to undergo a greater hardship – and can succeed – gains a degree of esteem for their accomplishment. They possess skill, knowledge, ability, or dexterity that others don’t have. And in turn they are worthy of respect.

The above is not some universal rule. Just because you beat a game on the hardest difficulty without using healing items or upgrading your character does not mean you have some special role in gaming culture. It certainly does not make you a better person. But even if we recognize that fact, it doesn’t help to ignore how powerful that allure of skill is, and the way in which overcoming difficult trials is a common benchmark for demonstrating skill.

Nor should we ignore the way in which skill is parlayed into other enterprises. Skillful players who try to delve into analysis of their chosen game – to try to explain why some enemy or boss is well or poorly designed – can attain a certain level of attention precisely because of their skill. Their analytical abilities may be weak, but because there’s no obvious way to determine whether someone is good or bad at analyzing. It’s much easier to use something more demonstrable instead as a marker of whether we should pay attention to someone. And after all, if someone displays the know-how to overcome the toughest of challenges, surely they must know what they’re talking about, right?

The role that difficulty and esteem play in this conversation is important because it works in the reverse as well. If difficulty is tied to skill and thus more difficulty equals greater respect, then likewise less difficulty equals less respect.

Thus do concepts of cheating, cheesing, cheapness, and everything similar fall under an umbrella of disdain. The impulse exists because the “true mark” of a gamer is their ability to overcome challenges. The inability or unwillingness to engage with difficulty signals that someone doesn’t really belong to the in-group. They aren’t a “real gamer.”

The background for why this happens is long and convoluted. We won’t step into that story, but suffice to say all conversations about cheating (again, within a single player context), difficulty, or anything similar revolve around these comparative judgments. There exists some kind of floor that you must clear to prove your chops.

The weird bit is, though, that these judgments are as much internalized as they are externalized. Meaning that people don’t simply judge others in their skill, but also judge themselves. The invisible rules of what you can and can’t do become standards for how you yourself know if you’re really winning at a game. And thus solutions that are available to you must be taken off the table, lest you “cheat yourself.”

And we need to acknowledge that these are all just stories. The idea of “cheating yourself” within the context of a video game can only have meaning if you yourself acknowledge the cheating. That is, you must feel a sense of dissatisfaction with your own behavior and wish you hadn’t engaged in it. But this isn’t what is referred to when this phrase is used. Instead it a judgment applied to prohibit certain behaviors and try to make people feel guilty.

And that sense of guilt itself becomes a way in which these standards are internalized. I may refuse to engage in some behavior even though it might let me have more fun with a game because I seek that approval. I wish to have my experience validated and “be real” because I did not cheat, even if that means I have to be miserable doing it.

And I think that last statement is especially important: a lot of people end up pretty miserable under these standards. Not everyone, but there is more frustration than is really needed. Indeed, the idea of challenge and frustration and how these things are some kind of symbol of growth and maturity becomes part of the narrative. People are willing to bash their heads against something because they think that willingness means something, even if the process gets progressively more frustrating.

Cheating in All Its Variants

So now let’s try to sit down and give some kind of definition to cheating.

The obvious response would be to modify the game in some way to provide the player with an advantage. This would let us exclude mods that are purely cosmetic. If you want to install a mod that makes your sword glow, that’s not cheating.

Of course, that kind of definition wouldn’t include something like built-in cheat codes to games. Those aren’t as common nowadays, but the idea still stands.

Alright, so we’ll expand it a bit to include something which modifies the experience of the game in some way to provide the player with an advantage. So if you enter a cheat code or download a mod that makes you invincible, that’s cheating.

We could be done there. But to call that sufficient ignores why it’s cheating. Here we are focused on advantage, and particularly an advantage that the “normal” player doesn’t have.

But then we are talking about at least two different metrics: what is an advantage, and who is this “normal” player? To that we might actually want to throw in the idea of “having/not having” something (this might seem weird, but just put a pin in that concept for later).

Since we’re talking about a single-player experience, you can’t have an advantage against someone else. So what is the advantage supposed to be? Simply put, against the challenges of the game. If you mod the game to give yourself an extra hit point, you’ve made the game slightly easier. You would face less difficulties beating the game than an equivalent player who didn’t have that mod.

Theoretically, the point of comparison is some hypothetical version of you that didn’t cheat. In reality, though, the comparison is the person making the complaint. If someone complains about cheating in this context, they are upset that someone else had an easier time that the complainer feels that they should have had. Put another way, if you cheat and I don’t like it, it’s because I didn’t cheat. I had to go through the game without that advantage, and therefore you should not as well.

But what’s that “normal” player I keep bringing up? That one is a bit more nebulous, because it’s a standard that changes from person to person. And that shifting will be relevant later as we start expanding the kinds of behaviors that get treated as “cheating.”

But basically, the “normal” player is someone who just tries to engage with a game directly without any kind of outside assistance (i.e. no mods, advice, or guides). If this person is given a difficulty setting to choose, they select “Normal.” If there a default class to choose from when you build a character, the normal player picks that one.

“Normal” play in this context generally extends to a player’s first experience with a game. Once you beat a game, all bets are off and you can do what you like. But until that point, the “normal” player sets a kind of floor of acceptable behavior. If you deviate from what is normal, it must be in a way that makes your experience more difficult, rather than less. Why? Again, advantage. The idea here is that the “normal” player provides a standard not just for difficulty, but for how a game should be experienced. “Normal” states that you must struggle at least this much in order to legitimately play the game. If you are going to struggle less, it must be because you are skilled, not because the challenge is lessened. Your struggle must be equivalent to my struggle: you either need to struggle more, or be better than me.

I know it seems weird to keep talking about “advantage” in this way. Surely it shouldn’t matter what someone else does with a game as long as they aren’t engaged in some kind of competition. If I want to give myself invincibility and run through the hardest game ever made and I have fun doing so, then that shouldn’t impact anyone else’s experience with the game. This is the common response when the idea of cheating or cheapness gets brought up, and it’s correct. But our goal here is to understand the narratives surrounding what cheating is and why people get upset about it. And at its core is this comparison.

So those two metrics explain why something like modded buffs or cheat codes are considered cheating and looked down upon.

But as I said before, that doesn’t capture it all.

Assistance, Magic, and Tight Spaces

Let’s get into the weeds with some examples. Let’s talk about Dark Souls.

Dark Souls is a notoriously tough game. Not only is combat punishing, but the game also relies on the player paying attention to various things and putting together bits of information to progress at certain points. This design often means that you might be wandering around a bit aimlessly trying to figure out what to do next because you didn’t read an item description, or you may be spending an hour trying to fight a boss because you need to learn its pattern.

But that toughness is also derived from some behaviors of the player base itself. Let me provide two examples:

• Summoning – Before almost every boss in the game, players have the opportunity to summon someone to help out. This could be an NPC character, or another player. Summoning a cooperator increases the amount of health a boss has, but it is always less than double the original amount, meaning that generally speaking you and your helper are still going to have an easier time than you would on your own.

Summoning is often regarded as something players should not engage in on their first playthrough. Every boss can be defeated solo, so therefore you should be defeating every boss solo. You can, if you so choose, summon a cooperator on another playthrough. But never your first time around. This despite the fact that summoning is not only a mechanic in the game, but is one that is clearly explained and pretty openly presented as something for the player to do. Indeed, there are multiple boss fights where the game all but screams at the player that they should summon help.

• Magic – When building your character, you have a few basic paths that you can follow for how you’ll deal damage. The vast majority of options are based around using some kind of melee weapon, and it seems most players gravitate toward this. But there are a couple of paths that allow the player to use magic and attack from a distance. This strategy is especially helpful given that most of the difficulty of Souls combat is dodging enemy attacks when they are right next to you. Having a spell means you get to put some distance between yourself and an enemy.

Magic is generally considered to be “cheap” or a “cheese build.” Like with summoning, it’s fine to use magic after you beat the game “normally,” but not your first time through. Even though you generally need to use the same basic defensive mechanics such as dodging to ultimately survive, because the magic user has access to abilities which means they don’t have to be constantly in the face of their opponent, the build is considered illegitimate.

These rules are not written down in stone for all to obey. Nor are they something that everyone in the community enforces. There are a lot of people – perhaps even a majority – that are fine with summoning and using magic whenever you feel like it. People who would never judge you or say you were cheesing the game or playing on easy mode or anything else that would invalidate your experience.

But we can’t ignore that a sizable portion of the player base – which often comprises the most hardcore fans – imposes these rules upon everyone they can. And we can’t ignore that even if we say that people shouldn’t be imposing those rules on others, it still has an impact. The constant screaming from this cohort still constrains our behaviors. People can still be more hesitant to use certain strategies or mechanics because they’re worried, even just a tiny bit, that doing so will invalidate their victory in the eyes of someone.

Hence the true purpose of this analysis. It is not merely enough to say that those loudest voices should be ignored. Because as long as they are loud they will still dominate the conversation. The very stories that are used to support those loud voices need to be investigated both socially and individually. It’s important not only for people to ask as a whole why this matters, but for each person to take the time to investigate their own behaviors and thought processes to root out the more toxic elements that have seeped in.

Because there are many players who engage with games with this feeling that a victory is only legitimate if it meets a particular baseline. If you play on a particular difficulty setting, or if you refuse to use a certain mechanic, or if you never seek outside help. That rhetoric creates this underlying fear: sure I might not attack a person for doing this…but I can’t actually do it because then my triumph isn’t real.

And it is not a mentality exclusive to these difficult games. People select harder difficulty settings than they probably should in a bid to prove themselves. Maybe this is your first time playing a game of a particular genre, and you should start off with easy mode to help you learn. Maybe you intend to stream your game and will be distracted or trying to do little things for extra fun, and playing on hard mode is just going to introduce new problems. Unless you can definitively say that you will not or are not having fun without that challenge, why add an extra layer of frustration?

The obvious rejoinder here would be that the challenge is fun. But this response is one that is bandied about without much thought given to it. It is something that can be true without necessarily being true. More challenge does not equate to more fun (if it did we would always play on the hardest difficulties and forego every advantage a game gives to us). There is a limit, and part of the problem is understanding that limit. But tackling the relationship between challenge and fun is outside the scope here.

But what we can see is how much of this self-imposed difficulty is rooted in this fear of illegitimacy. And that illegitimacy is fundamentally the same whether it comes from choosing easy mode, getting assistance, or putting in a cheat code.

Concluding Remarks

Pushing back against the narratives surrounding cheating and easy modes and legitimacy is tough. There is a lot ingrained in the very language of gaming and the culture that surrounds it that resists that kind of change. There is a lot of nuance that is hard to wrap your head around.

And the core thing I want to do is decouple the association of legitimacy with toxicity. The problem certainly finds its source in that toxicity, but when we think of toxic people we think of the loudest and most hostile speakers. But questions about legitimacy creep into our psyches whether we listen to those people or not. At a certain point you don’t need toxic gatekeepers to set the rules, because your average person is perfectly capable of serving as their own gatekeeper.

So it’s through that introspection that we can learn to stop and ask what we’re doing with our time and effort. If the game gives you an option, play a bit of it on easy mode. If you’re stumped by something, get a hint about it. If it has online play, have a friend join you. And when you do, did your victory really feel any less legitimate?