Growing up when I was gaming in the 90s and on, I knew of the stigma of cheating in video games. You were seen as stupid, someone incapable of completing challenges on your own. You were seen as lowly, someone who can never go through life without cheating. Like, it was a pretty big deal as I grew up, hearing all of this for years on end.

I've been able to beat games without cheating, of course. But during my late teens and early adulthood, I just tried going past the stigma. Cheating in video games don't necessarily reflect how you handle life and don't translate. I've found it quite fun to cheat in video games. Probably not in multiplayer and especially on the receiving end.

I even use cheats just to beat games anymore, who the hell cares. People only care if you want to make a big deal about it, by showing it to everyone and boast how you've beaten a game in record times. I've tried beating some games head on without cheats but there just comes a point where you ask yourself if it is fun dying a hundred times at some part of a game. I don't think so, personally.

So yeah, I don't have the stigma anymore. I kinda like how gamers today only care about cheating if it was done in multiplayer or if you're trying to beat a speedrunning record or some score record. Fun is meant to be how you find it.

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[–] 0 points 5 hours ago

While I accept that for many developers, mods are seen as welcome, my problem with mods is, if you're playing a game of chess with someone and both of you agree to change the rules, then that's perfectly fine, but that's no longer chess. You could in theory not even know the rules of chess and make up your own game using the chessboard and its pieces, but if someone were to ask you if you know how to play chess and you say yes, you wouldn't be able to explain a single rule, so you don't really know how to play chess at all.

If you're modding a game, it's no longer that game anymore, it's something else - which is fine. Some people prefer mods over the "vanilla" game itself, but then we should be honest with the fact that you don't really like the game as much as the version you've frankensteined together.

In addition, a lot of mods make games easier, which is the reason why many players "enjoy them". Some people - and I've been gaming since I was about 3 on an Atari 2600 for over 40 years - seem to just enjoy when a game is "easy" and do not really like anything that makes it harder for them to "win", but those people rarely realize - from my experience, anyway - that this is what they are actually enjoying about mods.

For example, you could play a game that introduces new vehicles or weapons, not understanding that these vehicles and weapons are better than those currently in the vanilla build of the game.

Game developers often do this to their own games in the form of power creep, which almost ALWAYS ruins games (compared to their initial release and/or their highest point.) Take World of Warcraft as an example of this. The power creep got so ridiculous multiple times that they had to rework the entire game's mechanics, skills, and even numbers just to keep the game "working" on a fundamental level.

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