Cheating. Never has a word struck fear into the heart of all fine and upstanding citizens in a similar manner to this one. Cheats are rightly despised. For what is cheating, other than removing the challenge, defeating the object, wasting your money? The quick routeto gratification, rather than the long rewarding one. People that cheat should be shunned. Computer games that cheat, however, should be despised.
Picture the scene. A naive young games player admires Road Rash II. Having played it, he notices how the two player mode allows the removal of aggression towards another person without any physical harm. He sees that, above all, this game is fun. He plays it some more. He notices something strange about the way in which the computer opponents appear to take the lead at any opportunity, but assumes that this is down to his poor games-playing skills. Finally, he completes it. Bored, he notices a cheat to give a super fast bike with unlimited turbo boosts. Flying along the track at over 120 miles an hour faster than the computer bikes, he lasts around two minutes before hitting a tree. He should now be four miles ahead of the second place rider. Within five seconds, he is passed. And again. The light dawns.
The game is cheating. He is not on a level playing field with the automated rivals. When he flies past them at 350 miles an hour, they disappear. They are no longer on the track. IT IS ALMOST AS IF THEY DO NOT EXIST. Instead, the computer places them right behind the player. Travelling at the same speed, not crashing. In return for perseverance, in return for improving his skills, the player is not rewarded. Instead, the computer cheats.
This sudden realisation strikes the player like a 20 tonne lorry. For example. He withstood the temptation of taking the easy way out of the challenge. He did not cheat until he had finished the game. But now, he sees that the computer has been doing so all along. Almost as if it were alive. The player cries bitter tears, long and hard. But not for himself, no. Instead, he cries for the immortal souls of the programmers.
Picture the scene, if you will. It is a meeting of programmers, discussing the game in development.
FIRST PROGRAMMER: The game is too easy. Once the player has realised that the route to success is not to become engaged in fights with his opponents, but rather to streak ahead while they remain in futile conflicts, he will win every time. SECOND PROGRAMMER: We could construct a clever artificial intelligence routine. It could monitor the player's progress, and gradually upgrade the bikes that the computer players ride. As he becomes faster, so shall they. But we will remain scrupulously fair, and simulate every rider so that they may be inflicted with every penalty that could be imposed upon the player. As a result, the player shall marvel at how the game remains a challenge, but at the same time is not obviously contrived. (The rest of the team look at the Second Programmer. He smiles. They raise their arms and point at him. Gradually, they begin humming. The pitch rises. The Second Programmer looks worried, and tries to stand up. He grimaces with effort, and sweat beads his furrowed brow. Unable to move, he glances around himself wildly. Making a supreme effort, he tries to grab the jug of water next to him, ready to throw it at his tormentors. Instead, he screams, then collapses to the table.) FIRST PROGRAMMER: Nah. Too difficult. THIRD PROGRAMMER: I know. We could cheat, and simply put the computer bikes right behind the player no matter how fast he is travelling. In this way, he will have lost in an instant if he makes the slightest error. FIRST PROGRAMMER: I like it. Accept an immediate promotion to Second Programmer. SECOND PROGRAMMER (NÉ THIRD PROGRAMMER): Thanks. (All laugh evilly.)
This, I surmise, is the only way in which this could have happened. Surely nobody could have been so mind numbingly stupid as to deliberately make their game do what they continually despise the players for doing?
Or could they?
You see, Road Rash II is not alone in this regard. Games cheat. Games cheat because the programmers are lazy. See also, for example, Bump ("And" - Ed) Burn. You pass the computer cars with ease. Ten seconds later, they turbo past. Assuming that they have not simply picked up several turbo boosts, and are doing so with a regularity that would stun several clockmakers, the game is cheating. Cheating to increase the challenge. Cheating so that the player, in a fit of rage, rips the disks from his computer and pulverises them into a small pile of blue plastic dust. Cheating in the hope that nobody will notice.
Depressingly, this is almost always the case.
Why is this not pointed out? Are the games reviewers in cahoots with the journalists? (Yes.) Do they simply play the game for five minutes and then give it a mark starting in the mid 70s and rising with every month of advertising that has come before the game is released? (Yes.) Do they simply hate you? (Yes.)
It is truly astonishing how often this happens. Many games with good ideas, attractive graphics, listenable sound, enjoyable gameplay etc. have been ruined by the simple fact the the programmers could not be (Passed over for promotion -ed) producing a simple routine that would ensure that the player was always confronted by opponents that could challenge him in a fair way, instead preferring to go to industry lunches, promotional gigs and drive their expensive cars around.
Basically, the programmers see the public as a device to make money. They know that nobody will play the game for long enough to realisehow despicably unfair it is before buying it. They know that the reviewers will not have spent enough time playing it before giving it a mark to have come to this conclusion. They know, in other words, that they will get away with it.
And we let them.
Now is the time to start a campaign to stop this from happening. Now is the time for people to complain about the fact that their games have been shoddily produced and nobody told them this before they bought them. Now is the time to stand up to the sinister publishing houses and tell them that we cannot be bought with pretty pictures, that we will not be appeased by marketing hype, that we will not buy their games if this continues.
And, of course, we will be ignored.
Because despite all of this, the programmers are right. Their games will continue to sell. Their publishers will continue to be content. And the public will be happy, because they will immediately cheat, and as such will never get good at the game.
The software industry is an evil by-product of the capitalist system. While people have money and behave like sheep, this will persist.
May our children forgive us.