I'm curious to hear what others here think about video game cheating. I have a very clear philosophy on the subject, and I find it interesting to hear other peoples' opinions on the matter.

Here is my philosophy: as long as the cheating is completely confined to a single-player experience, there's nothing wrong with it.

I'll expand on this. I believe that implementing cheats on any kind of multiplayer game that gives a single person an advantage over the others is wrong. This covers any range of the spectrum: from some sort of God Mode in World of Warcraft, all the way down to unfair achievements in Steam or gamerscore boosting on XBox Live.

However, if you want to cheat on a game that has no element which leaves its system, I see no problem with it whatsoever. Why? Because, my friends, I AM A CHEATER. I've been a video game cheater for decades now, ever since the first Game Genie. I've cheated on every console I've used that has let me do it (mostly NES, SNES, and the PC).

Why? That's the other half of my philosophy. I've always loved video games, and I really enjoy playing them. However, I play games to have fun, and not to get frustrated. Games are a release for me, particularly when the rest of life is presenting the challenges. For that reason, there are often games I encounter where at some point the normal gameplay simply ceases being fun and starts raising my blood pressure. That's usually when I start cheating. A good example: Warcraft 3. I tried to play that game straight many times, but every time I start cheating around the time Arthas decides to kill everyone in that city. I don't enjoy starting a level over and over again.

This is not always the case (I've finished many games without cheating), and sometimes I cheat AFTER I've finished a game in order to eke more replay value out of it. For example, I've beaten Final Fantasy 2/VI at least 6 times playing it straight. But then I'd like to see what it would be like if I raised my characters to level 99 from the beginning. Or what it would be like to have unlimited money in Sim City. Or how much damage I could do with unlimited ammo in GTA.


The reason I bring this up is because I'm starting to lose this very specific avenue of entertainment from my games. The more that video games are connected to the web, the less I'm able to get this from them. I know it's a difficult thing to defend, but it's actually an important aspect of gaming for me. As I stated, I don't want to hurt any other players because of my cheating, but when I'm getting trophies and achievements for games I've bought through Steam - even when I didn't ask for them - clearly I don't feel right if I get them because I just wanted to have a little more fun from a game.

What do you folks think about this? Are there any other cheaters out there?