Hail to the cheats

This is a generation that’s seen more climate change than any in gaming history; extinction seems to be everywhere you look. Exaggeration, too. Kids born in 2011 will likely never buy a boxed software product. Maybe they’ll miss out on health packs, or even, as hard as it is to believe, the release of a new Dreamcast scrolling shoot ’em up. But cheats? Surely there will always be cheats?

Reading some of the scare stories on the matter, what’s clear is that cheats have become one of those gaming heirlooms prized fiercely by those who were there at the start. They’re a symbol of a forgotten intimacy between player and developer; of absolute ownership and the right to play as you choose; of simpler times, when everyone’s needs were the same.

There’s plenty of reason to think they’re under threat too. On the console side of things, you have the rise of multiplayer and the realtime policing of progression. Bragging rights are now the chief currency of the console marketplace, attached to every hour, chapter, option and kill. They’ve created a mindset shaped by the Gamerscore, where progress must be earned and cheating is borderline ‘theft’. DLC, furthermore, has put a real-world price tag on in-game advantages, making the idea of, heaven forbid, giving players an exploit seem rather old-fashioned.

PCs got there first, of course, the vast and fragile economies of MMOGs turning ‘cheat’ into a more pejorative term than ever. A criminal charge to the virtual vendors and mega-corporations who turn even time into money. Games evolved into services, keeping stats, the stuff of your classic cheat code, locked up in online vaults.

Ruffian Games producer James Cope (left) and Codemasters design manager Matt Horsman

Doomsaying like this, though – as great as it can read beneath a ‘cheats are dead’ headline – is far too circumstantial to describe, much less fix, the problem of cheats in modern games. What is the problem, even? Are publishers and developers robbing us of something integral to gaming: our right to break the rules that don’t suit us? Or is this another case of over-entitled gamers being blind to the realities of making modern games? To put it another way, is anything actually wrong with today’s games?

“Player entitlement to cheating has too many factors to have a right or wrong approach,” says Ruffian Games producer James Cope. “Everything in development has a cost and every player has a pretty good perception 
of value. Somewhat annoyingly, I have to sit on the fence and say that every game has to be evaluated differently. Primarily, that’s because the difference between cheating in a singleplayer experience versus a competitive online experience is massive, with vastly different implications.”

A veteran of both Crackdown games, Cope has worked as closely with Microsoft’s games division – with Xbox 360 and all that it stands for – as anyone. To a fan of cheats, this fact alone should put him squarely in bed with the enemy. Crackdown is the quintessential Achievement hunt, and a pioneer of both DLC and Live-enabled multiplayer. It is the ultimate product of an ecosystem many blame for killing our right to cheat, yet it’s also the ultimate cheat game. Blasting through the game at whichever speed and in the order you like, trampling all in your path, you’d think it had been actually compiled from those old-fashioned cheat codes, with all of them being switched on by default.

This kind of freedom, though, certainly isn’t free, as Cope explains: “Crackdown gave away the Keys To The City – effectively a cheat mode DLC – free twice, but it wasn’t cheap to do. That was a decision based on value in the player’s eyes and how we wanted them to have fun with the game, rather than any up-front decision on pricing or ownership.