Growing up when I was gaming in the 90s and on, I knew of the stigma of cheating in video games. You were seen as stupid, someone incapable of completing challenges on your own. You were seen as lowly, someone who can never go through life without cheating. Like, it was a pretty big deal as I grew up, hearing all of this for years on end.
I’ve been able to beat games without cheating, of course. But during my late teens and early adulthood, I just tried going past the stigma. Cheating in video games don’t necessarily reflect how you handle life and don’t translate. I’ve found it quite fun to cheat in video games. Probably not in multiplayer and especially on the receiving end.
I even use cheats just to beat games anymore, who the hell cares. People only care if you want to make a big deal about it, by showing it to everyone and boast how you’ve beaten a game in record times. I’ve tried beating some games head on without cheats but there just comes a point where you ask yourself if it is fun dying a hundred times at some part of a game. I don’t think so, personally.
So yeah, I don’t have the stigma anymore. I kinda like how gamers today only care about cheating if it was done in multiplayer or if you’re trying to beat a speedrunning record or some score record. Fun is meant to be how you find it.
The point of games is to have fun, so you should play the game in the way that is most fun for you. Whether that involves cheating or modding the game is up to your own preferences.
Cheating only becomes a problem in competitive contexts because at that point you are being dishonest and ruining the fun for others.
There are some cases where cheating is not okay in singleplayer games and some cases where it is okay in multiplayer games. It all circles back to whether everyone is having a good time.
single player, absolutely. half the fun in the 90s was typing in a code from a magazine just to see what broke
Absolutely.
I like a challenge. It’s not fun if there’s no risk. But the bottom line is a lot of devs appear to not have a great grip on gameplay. These days if I come across a mechanic that is just bad, I cheat or go to Nexus Mods and find a mod to just strip the mechanic out of the game or alter it to make it more reasonable. Just got done playing a game I Nexus Modded the shit out of to get it to play the way I wanted.
Or maybe you just select a difficulty you think you can handle but you get halfway through the game and you realize you can’t and you aren’t going to start over cuz you have a life.
Cheating is totally fine to get the experience you want unless you’re doing it in an online game, then you can die a slow death.
Most games are too easy. The moment you figure out how AI is playing it becomes too predictable and boring.
So, i do changes to make the game more difficult, more challenging, more memorable moments.
Mods aren’t considered cheating even if they make things easier, but then that is cheating, unless is makes other things harder to balance.
Never. I literally never use cheats. I do not even use mods.
Cheating takes the fun out of games, but like most people I’ll cheat occasionally. Mostly I only justify the cheats/mods that reduce time-wasting mechanics.
Example: Auto-collecting spiribirds in Monster Hunter Rise. It’s a compete waste of time to chase them all down every single hunt, but the serious challenges are balanced around having the temporary buff you get from collecting spiribirds.
Sometimes, situationally, usually if I have already done something I need to do again. I just beat Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse tonight and intentionally got the good ending first. Then I had to redo the final boss fight the get the best ending, so I cheated so I could beat him within a couple of minutes that time.
I cheat on a lot of single player games and I’m happy to tell anyone. It makes gaming sooo much better. It’s one of the main reasons I favor pc gaming and have moved away from console. Cheating in competitive multi is nasty and I would never do that but for single-player it helps me reclaim time and avoid frustration. Grinding is a thing of the past - good riddance. I used to love it as a kid and I cannot stomach it now. Heavy punishments for failure is some sort of trend now and I don’t understand it and don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to replay 10 minutes to get back to where I was because it decided to send me back to the beginning of a level or a boss has 4 phases and I’m just stuck on the last one. I skip a lot of platforming in my action / adventure games - jumping around to climb a building is not why I’m playing. Rng for rewards - skip that too. Grinding and save scumming and guides were all strategies to work around annoyances but cheating is much faster and easier. I don’t make the game trivial I just make it so that I’m enjoying the fun parts and avoiding the tedious parts that I no longer have the time and patience for.
Depends on the challenge. If you can figure out how it all works, you can usually overcome it yourself and that’s the best feeling, one of the best things about gaming. Don’t deny yourself this out of laziness.
But if the challenge is a timewaster, a grind, bugged, or just makes no sense, absolutely use cheats.
The only games I ever used cheats on were games where I wanted to experience the story of the game but found it to be prohibitively difficult to get through (Silver Surfer for NES and Einhänder for PlayStation are two that come to mind—I used a Game Genie and Game Shark respectively). One game where it was the opposite was Grand Theft Auto 3 (and Vice City). I have never actually played the storylines of those games. I just really enjoyed pulling rampages and wandering around. So I’d employ cheats to do that.
It strongly depends on the game and the definition of cheating. I do mod a lot of games, and some mods make them easier/give me advantages so that can be seen as cheating. If a game has MTX I always cheat myself everything I can buy, either the premium currency or the items directly. You might be rich enough to buy your way to success, I’m smart enough to do the same thing without spending a dime. Other than that, I may use a cheat or two if I get to a point in a game that frustrates me, be it because of difficulty or grind. I do enjoy an occational challenge and I have quite a tolerance for grind, but both have a limit and once it is reached, I prefer to just skip ahead and continue from there.
One thing I loved to do was counter-cheating in multiplayer games. I had my cheating setup ready but disabled and play the game normally until I met another cheater, then I started everything and showed him how its done until he gave up and left. Good times. But once my interests shifted more and more away from multiplayer pvp I eventually also stopped doing that.
Ive never needed to cheat to win, but i still use cheats to make games more fun (used to, when cheats were a thing without needing mods).
I did play as oddjob a couple of times though, and thats about as scummy as it gets.
Yeah, cheating is awesome.
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I still remember that game shark code years later. I still remember which digits to change to screw with the game in fun ways. I learned hexidecimal because of cheating.
In online games cheating is a dick move but in single player it’s just another way to enjoy the game.
Single player games, it’s to be expected. Some games even build it in. Multiplayer, you have a special circle of hell just for you.
