Peek-a-boo to their card game of Cheat, children learn the principles of
cheating.”12 And it pervades our world: “to be is to be cheated.”13 Bowyer
also agrees that cheating is transgressive and alters the game being played
to give power to the cheater; “to cheat, not to play the game that reflected
the norm, indicated that there was another world, the world of deception,
in which people did not play the game, your game, but their own.”14
How does that relate to videogames? As long as there have been
videogames, people have cheated while playing them. But now we arrive
at the point where we must turn to players themselves, because only they
can tell us what it means to cheat in a videogame.
Paratext
Before a videogame is ever released, communication and artifacts relating
to it spring up like mushrooms, much of it (the noncommercial side at
least) with little planning or overall design from the game’s developers.
Fans of a game series post updates to a blog, mailing list, or chat site.
Previews of the game, including screen shots, trailers, and interviews with
the developers, appear on television and in magazines. Slots for the game,
to allow potential players to preorder it, are created on Amazon’s and
GameStop’s Web sites. Rumors may fly. A strategy guide may go into
production. Shelf space and advertising are secured.
Before a player loads a game on to a console or computer, the opportunities
to learn about that game have become vast. And once a game is
released, that steady stream of information becomes a flood. Reviews (both
commercial and noncommercial), ads, cheat code releases, G4 TV
specials, walkthroughs, discussion board topics on GameFAQs.com, and
perhaps the opportunity to pay more real money to upgrade your game
experience all appear.
In two decades, we have moved from a trickle to a torrent of information,
and it all plays a role in shaping our experiences of gameplay—
regardless of the actual game itself. Yet how can we make sense of such a
system? This system isn’t the game industry but is closely related to it. To
call it peripheral dismisses or ignores its centrality to the gaming
experience. Whether we admit it or not, we have learned how to play
games, how to judge games, and how to think about games and ourselves
as gamers in part through the shaping of these industries. How best to
capture that system?
Introduction
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Writing originally about printed works and the surrounding materials
that frame their consumption, Genette introduced the concept of the
paratext.15 He argued that the paratext, which could include a table of
contents, a title, and a review (among many other things), all helped shape
the reader’s experience of a text. And centrally, the paratext helped give
meaning to the act of reading.
Peter Lunenfeld later took that concept and applied it to digital
media, writing that the boundaries now are even more fluid, and the
paratexts are often more interesting than the “originary” texts.16 I believe
that the peripheral industries surrounding games function as just such a
paratext. Gaming magazines, strategy guides, mod chip makers, the
International Game Exchange, Even Balance and other companies, and
industry segments work to shape the gameplay experience in particular
ways. Those ways have played a significant role in how gameplay is now
understood. Yet not all such shaping—or attempts to shape—went unchallenged,
either by the game industry or the players themselves. I will
explore that history throughout this book. The central tendency remains,
though: the creation of a flourishing paratext has significantly shaped
games and gamers in the process of creating new markets.
Book Structure and Chapter Preview
Part I: A Cultural History of Cheating in Games
Part I looks at the cultural history of cheating in videogames. It examines
how the act began, from the desire of game designers to put in “Easter
eggs” for players to find, to the implementation of cheat codes to help
designers in constructing the game. The chapters in this part chronicle
how those items migrated to several paratextual industries, such as game
magazines, tip lines, and cheat books, to GameSharks and mod chips. The
focus concerns how the packaging and selling of cheats was developed into
a market, and how that market helped define particular modes of playing
games that go beyond simple cheating. That growth also spurred the
development of subindustries not working together with designers and
publishers that actively pushed for player activity outside the bounds of
what is deemed fair play. The part ends by asking how contemporary
videogame players conceive of cheating: how do they define it in their own
terms, and how do or don’t they engage in those practices?
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Introduction