[Malthaussen]

Somewhere or other (in this very forum) I posted a bit of a diatribe on the subject of soi-disant "cheating." Methinks the whole topic should be either banned or made a sticky (moderator's choice, there), since a day rarely goes by without someone looking for permission to "cheat."

Frankly, I see little difference between using a third-party program or exploiting the original code to achieve ends not envisioned by the designers. Both are violations of the game's "intent," insofar as one can talk about such a thing.

Setting that aside, however, the question has always seemed a bit of a non sequitor to me. We play these games to enjoy ourselves, in competition with no one. How is it possible to "cheat" in that context? Whatever enhances the experience for the individual playing is approximately the opposite of "cheating," IMO.

The retort to this is usually something along the lines of "when you cheat, you cheat yourself, depriving yourself of the enjoyment that comes from playing the game 'legitimately'" (whatever that means). This response carries with it the prior assumption that all individuals derive the same enjoyment from the same activities, which is nonsense. Like the song says, different strokes for different folks.

-- Mal