Cheating is an act of lying, deception, fraud, trickery, imposture, or imposition. Cheating characteristically is employed to create an unfair advantage, usually in one's own interest, and often at the expense of others, Cheating implies the breaking of rules. The term "cheating" is less applicable to the breaking of laws, as illegal activities are referred to by specific legal terminology such as fraud or corruption. Cheating is a primordial economic act: getting more for less, often used when referring to marital infidelity. A person who is guilty of cheating is generally referred to as a cheat (British English), or a cheater (American English).
There are various forms of cheating in video games. On console platforms cheating is commonly a combination of buttons. An example of this is the Konami Code of "Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start." This code appeared in a number of games, most famously in Contra, for the NES, where it gave the player 30 lives, rather than 3. In role-playing games one of the most popular methods is using "trainer" programs, which usually greatly inflate a player's statistics or attributes. In strategy (real-time or turn-based) games, similar programs are often used to maximize player's own resources, or weakening opponents. Modifying game data files is also a popular way to cheat in games. This mostly applies to computer games.[citation needed]
Attitudes towards cheating vary. On one hand, cheating allows casual players to complete games at much-accelerated speed, and this is especially helpful nowadays as typical Role Playing Games (RPGs) can take well over ten hours to finish. For single-player games, this is largely a matter of taste. On the other hand, as internet-based multi-player games, such as MMORPGs are becoming more and more popular, cheating in those types of games is often prohibited. In many circles, the purchasing of items or currency is also considered to be cheating
Cheating in video games involves a video game player using non-standard methods for creating an advantage beyond normal gameplay, usually to make the game easier, or may also create unusual effects which do not necessarily make the
game easier to play, such as giving characters different appearances, such as large heads. Cheats sometimes may take the form of "secrets" placed by game developers themselves.
Cheats may be activated from within the game itself (a cheat code implemented by the original
game developers); or created by third-party software (a game trainer) or hardware (a cheat cartridge). (Source: wikipedia.org)
