A Participatory Approach to Understanding Game Cheating

• In Event: Emerging Methods and Measures in Game Studies

Abstract

Cheating in video games has been prevalent since it first began to gain popularity, but the boundaries game players set to understand, engage and create meanings of game cheating still remain under-investigated. This paper aims to uncover the participatory mechanism of how players actively create new meanings for cheats in video games by considering the underlying psychological and sociological rationales for engaging game cheats. Six focus groups were conducted to explore this rationalization process among players of different video games. It was discovered that elements of intentionality, utility, core gaming goals, game norm and community feedback serve as important rationalizing mechanism to justify game cheating behaviors. Through the discovery of these mental schema, the paper discusses how the concept of cheating and fairness in video games can be re-looked through this active meaning making process of the game players.

Authors

• Vivian Hsueh Hua Chen, Nanyang Technological U

• Jeremy Ong, Nanyang Technological U