Is It Wrong To Cheat?  Assistant Professor Mia Consalvo Explores the World of Game Codes, Cheat Devices and Cheating Online

By Louis Bedigian

 

“If you look at things like strategy guides, game magazines and online walk-thrus and cheat codes, a lot of this stuff increases replayability of the game.”

 

 

Secret characters.  Wire-frame backgrounds.  Really big heads.  What do all of these things have in common?  They’re all things that can be accessed in a game by entering a cheat code.

 

Is it really cheating to enter a cheat code?  Most hardcore gamers would probably say no.  What if the cheat code you’re using makes the game easier to beat?  Then is it cheating?

 

How about this one – suppose you’re playing NFL Madden against a friend, and you use the GameShark to make your friend’s team weaker – would you consider that cheating?

 

There are dozens of ways that you can crack a game, including ways that can influence the course of a massively multiplayer online game.  But how far is too far?

 

That’s just what Mia Consalvo is trying to find out.  “Cheating is like porn — hard to define, but we know it when we see it,” she says of her current research.  Her goal is to find out what people define as cheating, what they’re accepting of, and what they’re completely against.

 

Mia is an Assistant Professor in the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University.  She’s been a part of the panel at the Game Developers Conference, and is on the Steering Committee of the forthcoming Women’s Game Conference.  Once her research is complete she intends to compile the information for a book on cheating.

 

Continuing our spotlight on Women in Gaming, GameZone Online sat down with Mia for an in-depth look at her discoveries.

 

Please start by introducing yourself.  How did you get started in the game industry and what work have you done?

 

Mia Consalvo: I'm an academic.  So I mostly play games and study games.  I'm an Assistant Professor in the School of Telecommunications at Ohio University.

 

How long have you been involved in the game industry?

 

MC: I've been doing research for four years.  I attended the last two Game Developer's Conferences and presented some research on women in games.

 

Tell us what you wrote for The Video Game Theory Reader.

 

MC: That was an analysis of two games: The Sims and Final Fantasy IX, looking at how sexuality is portrayed in the games.  Just how you could understand sexuality.  You could understand it in different ways if you looked at different things.  If you just looked the representation you could see one thing.  But if you looked at the dynamics of gameplay, like in The Sims, basically you can do what you want with the gameplay.  There's no way to code the characters to be heterosexual or homosexual or anything like that.

 

Regarding the topic of cheating, what kind of research have you been doing and what interesting things have you found?

 

MC: I've been doing a lot of research.  I've been talking with some of the writers and publishers of strategy guides.  Some people don't consider those cheating, but they’re a growing part of the industry so I wanted to see how they fit in.  And I've been interviewing a lot of players to see how they define cheating for themselves.  You kind of get a range of people.  There are some purists who consider asking your friends for help cheating, all the way to the people who say the only way you can cheat is in a multiplayer game against another person.  (Their attitude is that) if you're playing a single-person game and you use a cheat code, it's not really cheating.

 

I actually talked to one guy who even said, he was playing Max Payne, you know it uses bullet-time in it, he felt like that sort of gave him an unfair advantage.

 

Hah!  That's hilarious!

 

MC: That's been really interesting because pretty much everyone cheats.

 

Well you know in Final Fantasy VII you have magic spells so I think that might be cheating!

 

So were you happy with your findings?

 

MC: I'm just trying to figure out how people are thinking about it and how they're approaching it.  I guess one of the most interesting things for me is people who cheat in multiplayer games because that upsets a lot of people.  And I'm just trying to figure out why are they doing this.  From the industry standpoint, that could ruin an online game and lose the company a lot of money.  So how can we possibly approach it in a way to keep cheaters happy but keep everybody else happy as well.

 

How has cheating affected the game industry overall?

 

MC: My argument is that it's helping.  If you look at things like strategy guides, game magazines and online walk-thrus and cheat codes, a lot of this stuff increases replayability of the game.  So when people, once they know about Final Fantasy, they have to play through the game several times to find everything.  (But they can) go to www.GameFAQs.com, or buy strategy guides to get everything.  So it's increased the replayability, the satisfaction people have with games, and it's made the industry a little bit more sophisticated.  They have to respond and make things more secure.  Some people would argue that they're more fun, you know, with cheat codes it allows for people to play in different ways.  Some people don’t want to beat the game, they just wanna goof around.

 

How do gamers feel about cheat devices?  Those are a little different from cheat codes in that they allow the player to go beyond the bounds of what the developer intended.

 

MC: They vary on it.  Some of them will use it, but they pretty much all see it as something outside the bounds, especially if it's used in multiplayer.  (Then) it's definitely not okay.  Some of them refuse to use them, and pretty much the people that do say they will only use them after they beat the game.

 

Or if they're at some point where they absolutely cannot go any further and they really wanna finish the game.  So it's either like throw the game away (or cheat).

 

Is there anything that can be done to stop people from cheating in online games?

 

MC: No.  There's always gonna be people who are gonna be testing the same to see how far they can go with certain things.  A friend told me about a guy who plays EverQuest, and he could like enchant monsters and stuff, and he figured out how to enchant a boat, and because it was an object he could sail around with it. 

 

You've also been researching female gamers.  What specifically were you trying to find out?

 

MC: What they were interested in.  We looked at women who played a lot, women who played somewhat, and then women who didn't play games at all to see what were their attitudes about games, what did they like.  It was interesting – women who play games a lot saw them as very social.  They were into multiplayer games, they liked a lot of first-person shooters, action, competitive games.  They saw it as a place where people are hanging out with their friends.

 

Whereas non-gamers thought that games were very anti-social, for those who don't know how to talk to people because they spend all their time playing games.

 

And then for the women games were sort of about a way to control something and relax, a little escape from reality for a bit.  They like to do well in games, but it wasn't about meeting someone else.

 

Do women tend to prefer multiplayer or single-player games?

 

MC: The ones that we interviewed had a range of interests.  There's not like a majority of women who play MMORPGs.  I think they're about 20% of EverQuest.  And you'll see now that there's online communities coming around for women who want to play Bridge online, which is just a casual game.  But I didn't notice any definite trend that they want to play with other people or by themselves.

 

How do women feel about cheating in games?

 

MC: I didn't really notice any big differences between men and women.

 

How do you personally feel about it?

 

MC: I guess I've used various things, you know, cheat codes and walk-thrus.  I've tried out GameShark.  I guess I see it as fine as long as I'm not hurting another player.

 

But then I don't like to play multiplayer games anyway!  I mostly play games as sort of a way to relax.

 

What kind of games do you enjoy?  What recent games have really stood out to you?

 

MC: I love Final Fantasy.  I had fun with the Buffy game.  The first one, I haven't played the second one yet.  What else...I don't know, there were sort of those games that really took up a lot of time, then there are smaller games.  There's a Flash game on the Internet called Grow.  (Located at: www.eyezmaze.com/grow/)

 

What research are you currently doing?

 

MC: Still working on the cheating stuff, and I'm also trying to get together with a national survey looking at men and women and what they're playing and what their perceptions of games are.  What they like and don't like, what they're buying and not buying.  There have been some industry studies but not any real national academic studies.  And I'm interested in the Japanese game culture. 

 

When do you think you'll finish your book?

 

MC: If all goes well [laughs] by the end of this year.

 

I look forward to reading it.

 

Thanks Mia for a great interview!

 

 

For more information on Mia Consalvo and her research, visit:

http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~consalvo/researchinfo.html

 

 

GZ Spotlight: Women in Gaming – Previous Interviews

 

Sheri Graner Ray (Game Designer, Sony Online Entertainment)

 

Ellen Beeman (Live Team Producer, The Matrix Online)

 

Laura Fryer (Director of the Xbox Advanced Technology Group)