Game Changers
I have played a
fair amount of Atari video games as a kid, but I never became a game
junkie/addict. And yet I found this Michael Thomsen article on
cheating in video games very interesting and thought provoking.
But first, let’s
be clear what does not constitute
online game cheating. In many online games, you could play them the old
fashioned way (advancing by your skills). Or you could pay the game maker to get extra lives or to increase your farm
produce or to skip levels! (In case you’re wondering, most such games are free
and such purchases are the way the game makers make money. It’s just a
different business model). But at least those games were designed with such
options in mind and everyone knows that some of the others would be employing
such techniques.
So what about
games where cheat codes were never intended to be part of the game? Your
instinctive reaction about using such cheat codes might be, to quote Johan
Huizinga:
“as soon as the rules are transgressed
the whole play world collapses.”
Anarchy,
chaos…just as in the real world.
And yes, in some
games, cheating would violate the philosophy of the game:
“Making use of this exploit (It also
allows first-time players to skip some of the game’s most imbalanced and
exploitative areas) destroys the Dark
Souls’ core values, built around the
tolerance of suffering. If you haven’t suffered the unfairness of fighting
giant skeletons on narrow cliff ledges in the pitch dark, and later having to
choose between holding a lantern or a shield, you haven’t suffered enough, you
haven’t understood the game, you haven’t gone deep enough into your submission
to the logic of its rules.”
That game’s
theme almost reads like a modern day religion’s theme!
Now consider
this alternate perspective that Thomsen describes:
“Cheaters can be considered anyone
interested in having an experience not predetermined by a rule or limit,
someone intent on antagonizing those whose adherence to artificial rules numb
their awareness of possibilities outside those other prescribed by the game’s
systems. In this light, cheating is the only ethical action one can take in a
game, forcing play to be a consideration of the rules themselves and not an
obedient exploration of how to best follow them. Cheaters are not enemies of
game culture and good design, but an essential group whose persistence should
be embraced, internalized, and allowed to flourish into new ways of playing
that even our most celebrated proctors would never have thought up on their
own.”
Is cheating at
games the same mindset that causes some to push the boundaries, to question the
rules, and to change the world in real life?
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