Cheating as a concept is as old as the hills. Expressions such as ‘Don’t let the cat out of the bag’ hearken back to the days in medieval markets when people would cheat each other at ye olde fair. In our modern day world of spray on hair and laser pointers the dark shadow of the cheater casts it’s terrible shadow over our own favourite past time. My most recent incident of unethical behaviour on Xbox Live was during a Rocket Race match on Halo 3.

For the unfamiliar, Rocket Race is a game type that sees eight players making up four teams. Each team of two has a VIP and a ‘driver’ who hops on the nearest Mongoose quad bike and drives his VIP to a series of shifting checkpoints. Everyone is equipped with a rocket launcher and the VIP has to try and blast opposing teams away from the checkpoint to be the first through it. First to ten checkpoints wins. It’s an exciting and fun game type and highlights the versatility of the Halo 3 multiplayer experience. Yes I am a Halo fanboy.

On a game of Rocket Race on the map Rats Nest my team mate wouldn’t move, no amount of pistol whipping or jumping up and down would get him to move. Then I noticed that no one was scoring points in the game. I checked the scoreboard and discovered my ‘teammate’ was one of four guest accounts playing the same game and split up over the four teams. I wondered around and found the actual player using these four accounts killing himself over and over again with melee hits to the back, the only way to kill someone in Rocket Race. Not wanting to drop out and affect my own standing I put the controller down and went and made a cup of tea. When I came back a review of the scores showed that Mr. McCheatpants (not his real name) had racked up 41 kills in that game with zero deaths, got the MVP award and several other normally difficult to achieve badges for multiple kills and killing sprees.

I’m not trying to alert the world to cheating in Halo 3. I get the feeling the cat is out of the bag on that one. What I can’t help but question is the why. As I said before cheating is an old institution, but in its previous incarnations it at least had some tangible result for the trouble the scally wag went too. When some poor fool bought a piglet in a bag at market only to get home and find a bad tempered alley cat in  the black hearted shop keeper was pocketing his cash. When dozens of Olympic athletes and professional sports stars the world over stick a needle full of synthetic hormone in their butt cheek they’re doing it for the prestige, for the fame and everything that entails, money, adoration, the attention of liberal minded bimbos and himbos, the whole deal. The phrase ‘going for gold’ is a multilayered one. I understand that and on some levels even accept that no matter how the times change, some things will stay the same. I can accept that people’s greed and ambition can throw a heavy blanket over their ethics, it happens a million different ways all over the world every minute.

But when someone puts considered time and effort on their own into achieving a score or a rank in an online game I can’t help but wonder at their mindset. Who is the current number one gamer on Xbox Live right now gamerscore wise? I don’t know and further more I can’t think of anyone who would know. I’m sure I could find out with a few clicks and a bit of help from Google. But I wouldn’t particularly care. The vast majority of the Live community doesn’t care either. So why are people compelled too cheat in a forum whereby the only prestige they’ll have comes from a few faceless people they will most likely never meet? Cheating on Xbox Live and other online games nets you some prestige but it isn’t real. There’s no profit or gain to be had, no one is going to do anything more than send you an online message that says ‘dude, gratz’. No money or bimbos to be gained from achievement boosting. In fact all it really does is cheapen the whole experience for everyone else, taking that edge of challenge thats drawn other gamers to the fold. When Xbox and Microsoft first clamped down on cheaters on Xbox Live it was discovered that Rance6, the number one leaderboard champ on Xbox Live, had been using gamesaves to boost his score. It was alleged that the top 30 players on Xbox Live were all using gamesaves or some other system exploit to boost there points. It's hard to imagine someone jumping from 30th place to first feeling any sense of real achievement under those circumstances.

It’s easy to drag out the gamer stereotype when questioning what could motivate someone to cheat like this. The cripplingly shy, overeating basement dweller, possibly caring for his sick mother or some relative or suffering some semi fictional ‘back injury’ that stops them going out and interacting with the rest of the world. Ever noticed the stereotypical gamer image always sounds like a serial killer? Creepy that. It’s easy to imagine someone like that craving the attention and false adulation that comes with a massive gamer score. But that’s an easy assumption, a surface diagnosis of the problem. Maybe gamer cheating is actually giving us a deeper look into the psychology of cheating. When all the associated benefits of competitive cheating are stripped away, the fame, money, women and/or men and all the other trappings of success are not up for grabs, people still cheat.

There has been a lot of psychological research done into cheating, particularly as it relates to competitive sports, and the general consensus seems to be that it just don't make no damn sense. Rather than being cold and calculated people seem to cheat without thinking, an opportunity arises and they snatch it, like a fly to a honey trap, without pausing to fully weigh the consequences. This is why you hear crazy stories of people who were the hot tip to win a competition doing something that could jeapordise their whole career and reputation to ensure they win; the opportunity popped up and they took it. The research is pretty scattered, in some cases control groups who were specifically warned of cheating in controlled tests were more likely to cheat than the group who was not warned, in other studies it was the other way around. One thing that was identified in numerous studies was that there wasn't a particular psychological profile that had a propensity to cheat. Under the right circumstances anyone would snatch the opportunity if it arose.

The bottom line with game cheating for victims of it is that it's going to happen and there isn't too damn much you can do about it. Sure you can file complaints through services like Xbox Live but you won't receive feedback so you won't get any personal closure on the matter. All you can do is drop the offending person from your friend list and hope you don't play with them again. Or better yet, play with your friends. Don't have any friends? Might I suggest joining the forums here at That Aussie Game Site and making some. While several million users online is great and all, that anonymity can out the worst in people. Just don't be one of those people. Game nice.