Do you cheat in games?

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Necrifyre@piefed.blahaj.zone⁩ to ⁨games@lemmy.world⁩

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.

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Comments

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slazer2au@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
In single player yes, because I play how I want to play.
In MP with friends, no I don’t.

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- thingsiplay@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  
  In MP with friends, no I don’t.
  
  Back in my day cheats added so much more variety for local multiplayer games with friends. Some cheats were hilarious, like giving you big head, or add gameplay features. Nowadays off course with strangers on the internet where only one part have them activate is unfair. How times has changed.
  
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  - Zarxrax@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    I mean some of that stuff would more accurately be called mods rather than cheats.
    
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Dudewitbow@lemmy.zip ⁨46⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Single player, sure, especially grindy jrpgs just to cut down on time to complete time

Multiplayer. Absolutely not

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EmoPolarbear@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
That’s wild, definitely did not experience that stigma growing up in the 90s. Cheats were just something fun to play around with, like the skins or big head mode that we used to unlock. Of course cheating in multiplayer, especially PvP has and should be considered taboo unless all parties are in agreement, but cheats in single player like a GTA or the Sims are just for fun.

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- Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨27⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  To be fair offline gaming was dominant up until the late 2000s/Early 2010s in my experience, so modern perceptions of cheating are mainly online-centric.
  
  (There’s also cheating in the sense of like faking speedruns or trying to enter things like pokemon tournaments with juiced stat pokemon)
  
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- Maiq@piefed.zip ⁨57⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  “big head mode” reminded me of Turok for N64 disco mode( SNFFRR ) that somehow I still have memorized like the contra +30 lives on NES.
  
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tburkhol@lemmy.world ⁨34⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Growing up on single player RPGs in the 90s…I’d play those games until they got boring, then entertain myself deciphering and editing save files with a hex editor. Not as fun once they started using plain text, or encryption. Not as fun once the internet let me just download someone else’s editor, but godlike powers would still add a few hours of fun, tromping around the map absolutely squishing formidable enemies.

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blindkermit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨28⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Sometimes cheating can lead to an interesting new way to play a game.

Diablo 2’s Open Battle.net was an interesting place that really was a kind of wild west that showcased some of the silliest items people could make.

After joining a few random lobbies, I remember being given a charm that did something like adding 99 to all skills, as well as a ton of movement speed, experience gain, and resistances.

That got me into using the D2 Hero Editor and the hacked character dueling scene which had its own meta of transforming your character into the Amazon Valkyrie skill and using a shield to Paladin Smite people to death.

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Maiq@piefed.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
player.additem 3377d 25

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- meco03211@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  You Psycho.
  
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  - Maiq@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    This one’s gonna tcl it’s way out of this conversations…
    
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Broadfern@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
In singleplayer only.

For me, a SP game is a toy to play with as I see fit. If I can’t play with it how I want to or make it so, what’s the point? Games are for fun.

Accessibility options in a lot of newer games have fortunately made cheats largely unnecessary, but it’s helpful to have them anyhow.

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Scio@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Never been very competitive in games, so cheating to win against other people was never something I’ve felt compelled to do.

But in single player games, all the time! XP earning multipliers in Pokémon, house ruling Arkham Horror so Investigators can interleave their Actions in any order, starting Sims with all the money! Editing a save file to resurrect that one NPC I might’ve killed for being too snarky in etc etc.

I wish I could cheat more in computer games, honestly!

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PonyOfWar@pawb.social ⁨37⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Very rarely. Pretty much the only recent instance I can think of is spawning some items for me and others on my own Minecraft server. Other than that, I don’t really bother with cheating and prefer playing games how they were designed. Back in the day, it was pretty fun spawning cars in Age of Empires though.

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GridGremlin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Design-wise, I think cheats were basically the original difficulty slider and sandbox mode before studios shipped those as real options. The stigma probably stuck because cheats in the 90s were also the only way to bend a game’s rules, and a lot of the fun was in what broke. Big head mode never made a game harder, it just changed the mood. Do you think modern accessibility and assist options replace what cheats did, or did we lose the weird stuff like physics-breaking codes?

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- Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
  Lol no.
  
  They were almost all just game testing features. Infinite lives, being the ubiquitous one
  
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snooggums@piefed.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I don’t cheat on multiplayer but do modify games however I want if it is single player or it is multiplayer with friends who want the same kind of modifications.

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atrielienz@lemmy.world ⁨44⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Yeah, but not the way you’d think. I’ve used cheats to go back and re-fight bosses and such in silksong or to make the funny hahas in Skyrim (thomas the tank engine dragons are funny).

But not really for anything meaningful that would affect progression of the game.

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scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The older you get the less time you realize you have to do things like gaming. I don’t even have kids, but my last 5 weekends have had events/meetups/items on them that 10 years ago I wouldn’t have had. I’m more exhausted after work now too, and spinning up a game and getting into the mode is effort in itself now. So, when I do game, I find myself being annoyed at games that want me to sit for an hour whittling down a boss, or figuring out some inane puzzle. If I only have max 10 hours a week to game, then I want to spend them making progress in a game.

For example I’m playing FF7 remake (first playthrough, no spoilers please) and I was fighting in the arena, and it took me a couple tries and finally made it through after probably 2 hours of fighting. Then the surprise round with the house, and I failed 5 times, I’m simply not spec’d right, and wasted 3 hours trying to get past it. At that point I’m not even enjoying the game anymore, and the small amount of time I get to play games I didn’t even get to see any new story or character development. Then I have to go do something else and it’s been 2 weeks now since I have had time to game, but thinking about it I just get annoyed.

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Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com ⁨48⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Sometimes it can be fun to mess around. In Crysis 1 I used cheats to make myself super strong, I would punch people and they would go flying, it was great.

But then I increased the strength higher and when I punched someone I would die for some reason. I realized if I backed away while punching I would survive. Turns out the physics of the game, with the enemy ragdolling, actually calculated that the enemy’s legs would swing up and kick me and that’s what was killing me.

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DjangoFett@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I always felt like cheats were rewards for beating the game. Once I had accomplished a given thing in a game on my own, I never felt bad about giving it to myself again - especially in the days before saving in games was a standard thing. So even when schoolyard chatter taught me where the warp whistles were in Mario 3, I didn’t use them to get to Boswer until I had got that far myself.

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lev_arris@lemmy.zip ⁨56⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
I’ve been gaming since the early 90s and I’ve used cheats over the years. I don’t take games too seriously (for the most part).

Around the Xbox 360 era I stopped cheating because of the achievement systems reduced built-in cheats for many games. That same time I also played a lot of multiplayer with friends so I didn’t cheat in those types of games (Halo 3 multiplayer was so much fun).

But I also remember grinding COD4 on veteran difficulty or grinding The Last of Us for that max difficulty backpack. Until your post today I forgot I even did all those things and none of it even matters today.

These days I don’t take games too seriously anymore. I only play solo now so I play games on easy mode and I resort to cheats/trainers/mods if I need to. I’ve gotten to that place in my life where gaming is less important than other things and I simply don’t have the time to play a game all day long.

Some memorable ones from back in the day:

IDDQD

F2+F3+F6

NO TALENT

DIFFICULTY_SCALE = 0.00
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TheMinions@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
100%, but it’s really just to cut down on grinding JRPGs stuff.

Like adding 999 Rare Candies to a Pokemon game.

Or maxing out Materia for FF7 Remake.

I will also occasionally use a save editor, for example. To unlock a late game companion in Mass Effect 2, because they’re one of the most interesting squad mates in the game and you only get them for about 3-5 hours in most playthroughs. Plus they have a bunch of dialogue in the game naturally, and seemingly were meant to be unlocked earlier.

It’s

Tap for spoiler
Legion, my beloved.

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Kyrias@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Only if I run into a bug or blocker that would basically mean all the time I spent playing was useless.

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ieightpi@lemmy.world ⁨58⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
I have a backlog that I refuse to leave untouched. And sometimes the games take too long, not to cheat. So I do like to speed things up so this backlog actually shrinks.

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thingsiplay@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Only in online multiplayer games. /s

I grew up with 8 and 16-bit games as well. When playing single player games seriously to have fun or beat, or complete them, then cheats aren’t allowed. But just like Romhacks and Mods, cheats are another way to add replayability or more fun to the games I already know.

We also have to make the distinction what type of cheat it is. In example cheats to make the game easier, or to jump to different levels to train specific parts, or is it to change graphical appearance or add variety to gameplay with new weapons. Some games even expose additional features and options in “cheat” menus, such as Goldeneye and Perfect Dark as examples. Other games would have these options in a normal menu or in today’s day and age, these are DLCs! So “cheats” are not always “cheating” to me.

Do I cheat? Sometimes in old retro games.

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esc@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
When I feel like it, yes.

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missingno@fedia.io ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Usually no, but it depends on the game. If there are a lot of unlocks to grind and I just want to play the damn game, I may just hit Unlock All. Or if I've beaten the game normally and cheat let me explore funny sandbox things, I'll fiddle with those.

That's increasingly rare with modern games anyway though.

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Assassassin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Not unless I’m wanting to test something specific in a single player game. Beyond that, it seems really pointless.

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TabbsTheBat@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’ve “cheated” in Minecraft I guess :3 like playing with keep inventory or peaceful mode, when I just wanna hang out :3. Or turning on creative mode to quickly fly out of caves instead of walking back, or spawning in more torches cause I forgot mine at the base

Other than that the only time I cheated in an online game was for a knock-off halo game. That game was shutting down, and basically the only way you could play it was if you had the files as it was not available for download anymore by that point… and as the userbase dwindled most players left seemed to be cheaters, so then it was just leveling the playing field :p

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Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
I’m not a gamer nor have I ever been but it would seem that you’d stop playing the game if it frustrates you enough to cheat, that can’t be fun.

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cattywampas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
In single player games, if it’s more fun for me, then yes.

I played the shit out of Mario Odyssey but the final stage is extremely frustrating so I turned on assist mode to finish the course.

In Tears of the Kingdom I’m riding a hoverbike all day long and cheesing the shrines.

In Factorio, I turn off all enemies because I just want a cozy factory game without the added stress of managing defenses.

Whether or not you’d call these cheating, they’re examples of things I’ll do. I play video games primarily for fun and relaxation, not to challenge myself. If I’m challenged in a way that’s fun and engaging, I’m for it, but it’s not my main concern.

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WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

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.

Honestly depends on how the game handles it. When it makes you go through a long death animation and a long walk back to just try again? Perhaps not. Otoh, I’ve possibly died 10,000’s of times in a single level that I never beat after like 60 hours and I still had fun with it. So many of the deaths happened within seconds of each other though.

Anyways, cheats and glitches can be fun. I had action replays growing up and some cheats are fun or allow you to focus on the things you care to spend time doing. Like using cheats to get extra rings to buy stuff for your chaos or the glitch to reuse animals/chaos drives because you don’t want to spend forever in levels when you could be hanging out in a chao garden more.

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