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Article Written by Draslushee
Original Forum Post
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Way back in the past of video games, when games were cased in blocks instead of discs and "amazing graphics" meant making your characters out of smaller blocks than anyone else, we had a few things that we just don't have today. When games were just too hard, we had cheat codes to help us through. These were secrets, things that no one knew, that would give us an advantage that none of our friends had. Or, in some cases, they could just make it more fun to mess around in the game. We don't see cheat codes any more in games, though. This leads to two key questions: Why don't we see cheats any more, and what could we do with them if they were still around?
When games were young, good information was hard to come by. If you wanted to know anything, your best bet was usually a magazine. I remember that when I was a kid, I would get excited every month for Nintendo Power to arrive at my house. Yeah, the strategies and such were all well and good, but I especially looked forward to each month's installment of Classified Information, the section devoted to cheats and super secrets in games. None of my friends got Nintendo Power, at least to my knowledge, so if I found a code for a game I had, then I was miles ahead of anyone else. Heck, sometimes I'd even make my rental decisions based on the games featured, just so I could use that one God mode code I saw. It was a thrill to be super-powerful in a game, and even more thrilling if you were the only one who knew about it.
So, why don't we see cheats anymore? Well, it may be because nothing I talked about in the last paragraph still applies. Nowadays we have the Internet, not to mention a load of people who can fish data straight out of a game's code. If a cheat exists in any given game, everyone and their mom will know about it because it'll be plastered all over their web browsers. Any hope of discovery and exclusivity is lost, and thus developers have little to no reason to put any codes in their games.
But what if they did? What if developers did decide to put cheats in their games, and just update them for the times? Well, as it turns out, we already have some things like that. PC games, especially open-world games like the Elder Scrolls series, often have Console menus that give any player nearly godlike control over the game's world, provided that they know the proper codes. A few more games might opt to include unlockable items such as costumes or super-powerful weapons, though these seem less plentiful than they were a few years back.
If you ask me, however, the true power of the cheat code has not yet been fully realized in modern-day gaming environment. Sure, Console commands are nice, but they're routinely absent from console ports of PC games. Unlockable items are usually restricted to costumes and the like, and are often uncreative or not worth the effort. Codes can do more than this. Even if console games can't handle Console commands, something vaguely resembling them would open up a lot of options for gamers. Unlockable items could be used to give you special powers, like super-jumps, invincibility, or generally more fun toys to play around with in a game.
Open-world games especially could benefit from treating cheats and unlocks like toys. Imagine playing Just Cause 2 and having a code that lets Rico jump a hundred feet in the air. Imagine playing Red Dead Redemption with a code that basically turns your horse into a speeding rocket that can leave a train weeping in the dust. Imagine, in any open world game, being able to restore things you've already blown up, tasks you've already beaten, or things you've already killed so you can explode, conquer, or mercilessly slaughter them again. Would it be the greatest thing ever? No. Would it be a heck of a lot of fun to mess around with? You bet.
I think cheat codes need to make a comeback, or at least unlockables need to be used better. By giving players the ability to tweak a game ever so slightly, developers could give us a lot of fun toys to use in our games, especially those of the open-world variety. The feeling of being the only one to know about a code may be lost, but there are new ways to use cheats today. And yeah, I could imagine a lot of developers not wanting to do anything like this because it'd mess with the whole "trophies and achievements" system we have going on now. But I'd much rather be able to jump really high, run really fast, and run through hailstorms of bullets than get little pings on my screen every so often.
Comments
14 years, 4 months ago
I like the part about unlockables and it got me to thinking about a game designed to be played multiple times. What if how you went about your first playthrough unlocked a feature in your second play through that made the game different? For example: If you took your time and fought every battle rather than doing a speed run you would get access to "New Game+" material such as stronger weapon unlockables or better armor upgrades than the previous playthrough.
What if the gamers experience changed entirely in a second play through based on a first sequence of events (thinking the choices of Heavy Rain with the time travel and ending possibilities of Chrono Trigger.) I think a game like that is on the horizon and though we don't see it too often now it could become more mainstream. In other words: To recreate that unique experience - make the experience unique to the playstyle. I think a game like Devil May Cry 3 did this sort of well in terms of the variety of weapons and playstyles available but the experience could have been made even more unique with more options and choices available. Perhaps changing history in your first playthrough could alter the events of the past for your second playthrough and you go into something "new" with new unlockables, etc...
Maybe that's all wishful thinking and far away - but I think since I imagined it in a matter of minutes that it could be executed by the right developers.
14 years, 4 months ago
The only devs i know that like releasing cheats for their games are studios that make open-world games like the GTA series, the Saints Row series, the Red Dead series, and the Crackdown series with it's separate cheat mode Key to the City that not only makes the game more fun but makes you come back for more things to discover with the mechanics of the cheats in general.
Seeing game developers and publishers collaborate with gamebreakers such as Action Replay, Gameshark, and Codebreakers would be great to see in the future of gaming. Like giving Alistair from Dragon Age Origins an extremely large head and small body just for laughs while playing the game and talking to him in camp.
14 years, 4 months ago
@Dano25655
Doughnut Drake!
Made me want to play through the entire game again (though the game was fun enough to warrant a second playthrough already.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HWUOcp2TDE&feature=related
14 years, 4 months ago
i remember using cheats for a football game on the gamecube but they just made everyone look silly or made you really fast
14 years, 4 months ago
Ah the good ol'days. I remember with golden eye you could have cheat codes to make every ones head bigger which took me forever to find. Now a days, like the article stated above you can just go on and type in "Cheat codes for.......". But also those days are slowly dying. But who knows they could come back.
-Alex
14 years, 4 months ago
(Repost from the original topic.)
Back in the day, Cheat Codes were used to help test games and make sure nothing was bad with them like glitches and game breaking things. Now adays, game making has evolved to a point where it is easier to locate and fix glitches and such. Ya even with all the bug ridden games out, how long does it take for most of those to be fixed (on ps3/360/pc)? a month maybe? even a week? with the internet, its easier to fix these bugs then it ever was back in the day.
HOWEVER,like stated, cheat codes aren't completely gone for good. Many pc games still have them in some sense, though ussually the ones that don't get mods later that add them.
Like xalgar said in the original topic, with all the balancing and stuff, having a cheat code that gives the player the ability to get through a game without any effort is a slap in the face for some but at the same time, If I was making games, I would much rather people see all the game and have a good time with it then get frustrated at 1 part and stop playing all together. It somewhat goes into my thoughts on freedom in games. you say i can do what i want yet you make it so i have to follow what YOU, the creator would do? I may be able to beat a certain boss or get through a certain stage of enemies but that doesn't mean EVERYONE can so having that alternative would help many.
Let me make a suggestion. What if by playing the game, you unlock tokens that can be put towards unlocking cheats. like you can use 3 tokens to unlock "play as a kitten" cheat that turns your character modle into a kitten if you input the code. imagine this in a devil may cry style game or a gears of war style game. ya, you will get people into it with that stuff.
maybe have better cheats cost more tokens, like invincibility or infinite ammo cost 15 or 20 tokens each. once you unlock them, you can the codes whenever you want in single player and turn them off as well. For xbox 360 games, they could adapt the gamer score into this. For instance, pay 50 gamer score to gain a free token. For many people like brad, this would give the gamer score a usage and actually want to earn them so they can easily unlock fun things in games.
14 years, 4 months ago
i never played any GTA game without the proper cheats enabled. I would beat games with cheats on and fell like i do now when i beat a boss i died 20 times on hard mode. I was so bad at games i found some hard WITH cheats on.
I think that cheats helped me get through some games i would have never touched twice without them, and that the new generation of gamers is missing out on big head mode and flying tanks.
14 years, 4 months ago
I am pretty sure developers originally put cheats into their games so they could test different aspects of the game without worrying about losing.
14 years, 4 months ago
I agree with what Travis said as to their origins, especially when often times there would be a large variety of cheats that would have similar functions. (i.e. Infinite Clip/Infinite Ammo, Low gravity/Infinite Mass/Noclip, Infinite Health/Refill Health/Infinite Health Packs)
Some developers aren't to stingy to deny us a little fun though. Voliton and Rockstar are ok examples, and many pc titles have generally easy to access console commands. But it does get rather annoying when saving is disabled for the current play session. And the Trophy/Achievement argument against even including them in a game can be an obnoxious one at times as, after all, more often than not you're paying $50-60 for a product to entertain you.
I really think the thing holding many developer's willingness to include cheats in a final product are either fears that it may detract from the experience of the first playthrough, or that it may alienate those who intend to play competitively.
14 years, 4 months ago
i always use to get mad cause id never get magazines an as soon as i noticed my freinds had got them id take it from them real fast an write down all the codes an stuff an bring it back to them awhile later it was dumb but i did it :P but now i get magazines...idk why lol
14 years, 4 months ago
I completely agree. The only game with cheat codes I've played this generation that has cheat codes is GTA4. And they did a great job of implementing that too. The fucking cellphone. And the achievement problem? Well just do what GTA4 did, disable achievements when the cheats are used.
As for unlockables, I miss those too. But publishers nowadays are so fucking money greedy they need to turn them into DLC. And fuck, it's not even free, they could at least update new stuff into the game now and then, but no, they have to follow Activision's example.
Valve on the other hand, are the exact opposite. They've put so much stuff into Team Fortress 2 that it would basically equal 10 times the original content. Literally. And for free.
And guess what, they're earning more money that way than if they made the updates DLC you had to pay for; people are buying the game, for the free updates.
But no, Activision puts out battle maps for MW2 once every month or so for fifteen bucks. And guess what, they're earning money off of it.
Why is this a problem?
Because other studios and developers will see this and do the same thing. It's no longer about "but it's not like you're forced to buy it", it's all about devs sucking out content or otherwise unlockable stuff from the original games and demanding that you pay extra for it.
DLC is killing videogames.
14 years, 4 months ago
Hey anyone remember Left 4 Dead BEFORE THE PATCHES? You know when you would hear someone talk over live or PSN about how they could move a generator with a hunter and block the survivors, or how you can quickly kill the tank? How about being in a bind and being able to push the horde off you with an endless melee? It was the first time I felt like a kid again. There were secrets that were being spread through word of mouth and it made Versus mode challenging and fun. It was like playing games with my friends back on the N64, where you try to win but you still have fun at sudden surprises the enemy cooks up and you can give a surprise back. But what happens? They fix it so that all these secrets and strategies don't work. It was like taking a game of laser-tag and making it so that there are no obstacles between the teams, the players aren't allowed to run, and they can only shoot each other once before the opposing team gets a chance to do a counter. They took the fun out of gaming. The whole industry needs to bring back that time of gaming in the 90s and early 2000's.
14 years, 4 months ago
Well, to kind of tie in Travis's article with this one, the way we see cheats has changed. Since we have been always pushing a game to it's limit it gets more likely that we "break" the game. By breaking I mean glitches. Some are more exclusive than others and probably totally useless. Sometimes they're amazing and enhance the video game a hundred fold. To out smart the testers and people who made the game is an incredible feeling of god-hood. As it is, I have a youtube series of videos dedicated to SplashDown: Rides Gone Wild for the ps2 where I either get out of the playable level or fall through to the bottom of the level. It's also glitch heavy in Tony Hawk games, the older ones mostly, in all these ways you can go places the creators only put for show but you want to go there anyway. Exploring things your not supposed to is very rewarding and still remains decently exclusive outside of halo and even Neopets, that kids internet pokemon site, evidentally has glitches that can help. Though neopets has codes for their games....why did I have to bring up neopets and a part of my childhood....
14 years, 4 months ago
Gosh, the old days where you needed to enter a code to restart at a certain point in Metal Gear 2...
I agree with you, though, Nick. Return of cheat codes could add a lot more re-playability to current gen games.
14 years, 4 months ago
I loved cheats. Getting them to work most of the time pulled some of the enjoyment out of it, but why would I expect running through walls to work 100% of the time?
I also love debug rooms. I played the crap out of FFVII debug room. Talk to yuffie for all materia and fight those 5 pyramids for 20-30 levels a fight. Then start the game with a set of mastered materia and at lvl 99. Not to mention having Sephiroth in your party even if you can't control him. Although I made like 20 lines of code on my gameshark to get him to work by replacing Vincent.
14 years, 4 months ago
Good point nick :) I think that theres reasons that cheat codes should be put in games and why they shouldnt. but it seams you nailed them :P Nice post c: