What is Cheating?

There are many levels of cheating in any game. But when you are playing by (with) yourself at a solo video game or going it solo on a MMORPG or something, what does cheating really mean?

There are no other players involved. There is no reward other than your own personal enjoyment, so what then is cheating.

In a card game, cheating could be defined as any action not allowed by the rules. Some people would extend that definition to any action not allowed by the rules which gives one player an advantage over the others. I.e. they may not consider doing stupid things which are not directly covered by the rules but which give them a disadvantage or no advantage to be cheating.

But in a video game environment there is nobody there but you. Who then are you cheating? Are you cheating the designers? The developers? You certainly aren't cheating the sound guy who made up the nifty door opening sound effect. You probably aren't cheating the artists who spent hours making those spell effects.

Once you have paid for the game, really the only person you can cheat is yourself.

So what does it mean to cheat on oneself?

My definition would be any action that detracts from the enjoyment of the game experience.

This definition does not apply to everyone, because I am not everyone. But if your enjoyment of the game is lessened by some action that you have taken, then you are cheating yourself out of the valuable time you are putting into the game.

Some people enjoy cheat codes. Some people find that after they have used a cheat code they enjoy the game less. Some cheats save time. Some forms of cheating don't involve using codes at all, just exploits in game design. Is it still cheating? Yes - if it lessens your enjoyment of the game.

What is your definition of cheating? How does your cheating behavior affect your game play and enjoyment?

For a full list of cheats see Dungeon Siege Cheats page.
Here you can find links to Dungeon Siege Walkthroughs.