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.
Depends how.
Using Rimworld as an example because I’m playing it now, I’ll occasionally create a separate save file in the same seed at the same location and turn on god mode to see if certain defensive strategies will work before I implement them in the actual game.
Additionally I’ll sometimes save scum, but only if I think the consequence I’m trying to avoid would ruin the fun for me, I remind myself that sometimes bad things happening can be interesting, but I work a lot and don’t want to have to start from scratch because a mechanoid colony landed in the perfect place to wipe my tribe.
But I don’t give myself infinite food or the best weapons because that just wouldn’t be fun. I need challenge, I need to overcome hardship and come out ahead. I don’t want to cheat myself out of my victory.
That being said people still shouldn’t cheat in multi-player games.