Computer Game Cheats Pros and Cons
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios


Defined Tag: Computer Game Cheats.

As a general rule of thumb, as should be, perhaps, expected, computer game cheats are frowned upon by gamers. That’s not to say that in every case a cheat is a bad thing or entirely disrespectable; it’s a matter of balance. Game cheats exist for one of two main reasons: either they are shortcuts created by the game programmers and developers for the purpose of testing the game or features of it; which have been left in the final release. Or they are what is known as an ‘exploit’. An exploit can be many things; it might be a weakness, vulnerability or security flaw in the game’s code which allows a player to make changes for personal gain or general disruption; or else it might be a flaw in the game design, which allows a player to ‘game’ the system and gain advantage which, rightly, is not within the dynamics of the game as envisaged or designed.

For example, in a first person shooter game the player typically begins with a low grade weapon, a knife or pistol, and fairly simple targets; as the story line progresses the player will be able to access more powerful weaponry such as automatic rifle and rocket launcher but will also be faced by more difficult and dangerous foes, such as armoured vehicles and strong defence structures. A typical cheat, in such a game, is one that allows a player to gain access to high level weaponry, such as missile launchers, when he is only faced by low level foes. Such a cheat is often deliberately placed in the game by a developer who is testing some specific feature of the game and doesn’t want to spend time fighting off enemies during testing so he equips himself with a weapon which will allow him to remain in the game unchallenged. Often the code is left in the game simply due to the long time it would take to remove the code safely.

What this means is that, by discovering the various coded developer cheats in a game, a player might give themselves an advantage and play the game through in a short time without too much difficulty. The clear disadvantage of this is that the player doesn’t learn the full skills that playing the game properly would teach them and, therefore, would be unlikely to really appreciate the game fully. With that said, there is only one person affected by this: the player concerned. Only when cheats and exploits are used in online game environments, where competition with others is unbalanced in favour of the cheater, do these tactics become truly frowned upon and the cheater may find themselves dropped from servers and blacklisted. Computer game cheats can be useful tools but can also be damaging.

BIG Mike is a well known author, developer and Adsense expert as well as the owner of Niche Maniacs - a unique Adsense Marketing System designed to build long-term passive income streams from Adsense, Amazon, YPN, Chitika and other PPC services.