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.
That’s wild, definitely did not experience that stigma growing up in the 90s. Cheats were just something fun to play around with, like the skins or big head mode that we used to unlock. Of course cheating in multiplayer, especially PvP has and should be considered taboo unless all parties are in agreement, but cheats in single player like a GTA or the Sims are just for fun.
Yeah there were a huge amount of cheat codes and a whole culture around finding and abusing glitches and stuff back in the day. Not sure what OP experienced but it’s not what I remember. If anything I think people are more intense now about ‘playing the game as intended’. Which, personally, I get. I, myself, want to play through the whole game at least once without cheating. But if it’s just to screw around and not to skip something, or if it’s a part I’ve gotten through before but I just want to skip ahead, then yeah I’ll fuck around with some cheats.
“big head mode” reminded me of Turok for N64 disco mode( SNFFRR ) that somehow I still have memorized like the contra +30 lives on NES.
To be fair offline gaming was dominant up until the late 2000s/Early 2010s in my experience, so modern perceptions of cheating are mainly online-centric.
(There’s also cheating in the sense of like faking speedruns or trying to enter things like pokemon tournaments with juiced stat pokemon)