Before I discuss game cheats, it’s important to know what the word “cheat” means; generally, it is used to refer to the act of swindling or being deceitful to another person for personal gain; so how does it apply to a game? In that case one could say that you would be being deceitful to the game; but you can’t deceive something that has no capability to be skeptical. So that entire definition pretty much needs to be thrown out the window.

Generally, when speaking about games, cheating can refer to any of a number of things; the “worst” kind would be using hacked executables and trainer programs to play an online game; things like aimbots or something, for example. In this case, you are in fact adhering to the original word meaning- you are quite literally cheating the other players out of a fair game, if nothing else. outside of multiplayer games, however, the only person you can really “cheat” is yourself- and wether you are being cheated is a matter of perspective; one person may be perfectly happy with the product that a con-man/swindler sold them- while another may consider that person a cheat.

When it comes to single-player games, there are a number of different things; the most obvious is of course cheats that are designed into the game; for example, typing dnkroz or dncornholio on the keyboard while playing Duke Nukem 3d, or typing idkfa while playing Doom; others are inherent to the game itself or are designed into the game but entirely by accident; for example, being able to clip through walls in some specific areas in Duke or being able to access the “minus world” in Super Mario Brothers.

The first evidence of “debates” about what was and was not a cheat and was therefore allowed in internet tournaments probably started with games like quake. Quake, like any other game or program- had bugs. Two are rather relevant here; one is called “Rocket Jumping” whereby you can point your rocket launcher down, jump, shoot, and then the explosion will launch you high in the air (while doing damage), as well as something called bunny hopping- where you would constantly jump and be able to get to seemingly insane horizontal speeds not attainable by standard running. Now the question here is wether theses are “cheats”; consider for a moment that in general a cheat deprives other players; in this case- they are not being deprived of a fair game, since they can just as easily use the same techniques. additionally, both have their trade-offs; when you use the rocket-jump technique, for example, you take damage. If you aren’t careful or have the Quad Damage item, you may send yourself in a number of bloody bits flying all over the place. For “Bunny-Hopping” although you get a lot of forward speed you trade out your ability to maneuver quickly; bunny hopping around pits or corners can often be deadly if there is lava nearby, and  many players will take advantage of a players relative helplessness in the air and inability to dodge; the main claims that this is “cheating” of course comes from those that cannot perform the technique; but truly it isn’t complicated at all; it’s no more a cheat to rocket jump or bunny hop when your opponent cannot then it is to shoot your gun when your opponents thinks they are playing a hello kitty simulator. To be precise, these are more or less “exploits” of the games design; they weren’t necessarily designed in that way (by which I mean, nobody said “hey, if they keep jumping they should not lose forward momentum”); however, this is no different then the fact that you can knock two koopa shells into each other in Super Mario Brothers 1 and they both get destroyed, and nobody considers that cheating.

Now, this post was prompted by a common game mechanic used in the equally popular game, “Minecraft” I won’t post about the game itself- either you love it, you hate it, or you manage to do both and just sound like a whiny bitch, except to say that it’s a sandbox game. Now- the question is, how can you cheat in a sandbox game? of course, with minecraft you can give yourself inventory items, or edit maps using MCEdit; here you could legitimately say that you are cheating yourself out of gameplay; but, at least in the case of monotonous building, you are doing quite the opposite and saving yourself agonizing time performing the same monotonous building operations by simply adding that ceiling to your giant house rather then having to build a tower up to it and build it manually; at the same time, however, you destroy the “I’m part of hte e environment” feeling- if you can just flick your fingers and make gigantic towers appear it practically defeats the purpose of the game entirely. Inventory Is another matter. Sometimes, I feel like building a specific idea but don’t have the materials, such as, say, diamond or gold blocks. So I give myself the requisite item and build the structure. Of course one still has to build the structure, which is often just as difficult as the gathering, depending on the particular item being used.

One sore point it seems to me is Mob traps; these are contraptions/buildings designed in such a way as to make the game spawn various items there (as it would normally) but the layout inside of the dark cavern causes most monsters (called “mobs”) to fall into- say a deep pit where they fall to their death, or a waterfall where they quickly perish or are suffocated. The idea here is to allow you to collect the various item drops from those monsters “without cheating” the contention on the other side is that doing it this way is no different then just inventory editing those items in. However, people who claim this are missing the entire point; of course you could just inventory edit yourself all diamond armour, tools, obsidian, and various rare blocks as well as build/import elaborate structures using the MCEdit editor, but then you are entirely defeating the purpose of the game ; the idea is to build your own stuff; building a mob trap that works can be difficult, and therefore by association rewarding. Neither of these can be said to be the case for simply giving yourself the items. The naysayers claim that “it is exploiting the way the game is written”. Of course it is. They say that like it’s bad; that is almost the entire point of a sandbox game; we are also exploiting the way the game is designed when we convert wood into a crafting table or sticks and iron into iron tools. The fact that you can move your character can be called an “exploit of the game design” because we take advantage of the fact that the game responds to controller/keyboard input. Basically, a game that has no availability of this sort of thing is either entirely linear or at least strongly story based, and IMO for many of those games they may as well make it a damned movie, and save everybody the trouble of pressing A or X or whatever the fuck button they want to continue the dialog.

Thing is, for something like a mob trap, it’s not a cheat since a cheat generally gives you a lot of payback for very little effort, lies outside the limits of the game or is a preprogrammed response to a specific “cheat code”; a mob trap takes time and planning to build effectively, and the due diligence afforded it’s construction reflects in the amount of output it has; Sure, you could run around on the overworld killing these eneemies yourself with your bare hands, but at the same time, it’s no different then ancient man; if you went back in time and gave them guns, they wouldn’t throw t hem awya and say “we don’t cheat, we hunt fair” because In real life there is no such thing as a “cheat” and damn near anything is fair game; this is particularly true in matters of survival; the idea would be for humans to try  to survive by exposin themselves to as little danger as possible; they wouldn’t throw down their bows and arrows and challenge a mastadon to fisticuffs in the interest of “fairplay” they’d pelt the fucker with as many arrows as it takes to get the thing on the ground so they can kill it. And Minecraft is called “Survival Beta”.

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