Accessibility and Game Cheats
Game cheats, software hacks, and hardware add-ons enable players to alter their in-game experience. From God-like immortality to infinite ammo, these features often subvert a game’s rules or mechanics to create an unfair advantage for the user. Cheaters are scorned by their peers, and the use of such add-ons can spoil gaming experiences for honest gamers. However, the creative innovation that many so-called cheaters bring to games can help make games more fun and inclusive for a growing player base, including those with accessibility needs.
In the earliest days of video games, players relied on self-made cheats to defeat tough titles. A little bit of computer knowledge allowed gamers to manipulate the 8-bit computing systems of the day and change game memory values, a process known as POKEing. These third-party cheats varied in their effectiveness, from the ‘XYZZY’ code that gave the Colossal Cave its famous infinite lives to the unprintable ‘Engage Ridley Mother……’ of Metroid.
Entering a POKE code was a time-consuming affair, but the advent of the Game Genie – a small piece of hardware that connected to a cartridge and plugged into an older console – gave gamers an attractive interface for changing game variables. This device also encouraged developers to include first-party cheats in their games. This trend of ‘cheating codes’ exploded, with magazines at the time dedicating more pages to cheats and walkthroughs than reviews of new releases.
Modern cheats, which are accessed by modifying a game’s software rather than its hardware, offer a much more attractive user interface. Some are implemented as simple macro scripts, which are run by the player’s operating system to activate certain functions within the game, such as a Twinking (the use of two joysticks simultaneously to control a single character), or aimbot (auto-aiming). More sophisticated software hacks, such as wallhacks and artificial lag, modify the behavior of a game’s graphics driver to circumvent built-in protections.
The use of external software and hardware to alter a game’s programming can raise legal issues, since many games have EULAs that prohibit modification. This is why most game hacks are implemented by modifying data files separate from the game’s main program. These hacks are harder to detect, and allow for a wide range of effects, from godlike immortality to infinite ammunition.
In the world of online multiplayer games, the most popular cheats are ‘bots’, which automatically play for players. These bots are designed to rack up gold and experience points, the virtual currency of massively multiplayer role-playing games. Using these bots can cause real-world problems, such as cybermob beatings, as well as ruin the gameplay for other players, and some game publishers have started to implement their own anti-cheating measures.