Gamers tend to have strong opinions on cheating in games, whether they'd rather die than cheat or won't attempt a game without a walkthrough. In the first of a two-part feature, we take a look at both sides of the argument.
Michael Foster

Cheating. Every other pastime tends to take a dim view of it. Take Ben Johnson. Everyone was so pleased for him when he won his Olympic gold medal, right up to the point when he failed his drug-test. I bet he still wishes people would drop the subject. So what is a cheat? The Concise Oxford Dictionary says:

Cheat n. & v. 1. n. trick, fraud, deception; swindler, deceiver; impostor; unfair player. 2. v.t. deceive, trick (person into or out of thing). 3. v.i. act fraudulently.

That's pretty cut and dried then. Cheating isn't exactly something looked on favourably and even Tony Blair would struggle to put a positive spin on it. Why then, as gamers, do we find cheating such a rewarding pastime?

Cheating is as old as games themselves. Whenever two or more people got together and thought up some rules, the cheat was already thinking of ways to circumvent them. Games need rules. There's no avoiding it or all you have is a brawl. However, cheats don't like playing by the rules because that means you have to actually be good at the game to win, and cheats don't like to lose.

Computer gaming brought a new arena for guilt-free cheating, though. The only victim of the videogame cheat is the computer. Computers aren't generally noted for sulking and taking their ball in, so who gets hurt? If your own basic morality means that you don't mind cheating yourself, you're home and dry. Of course, the program runs to some fairly rigid rules so how can we go about breaking them?