Most console and PC gamers resort to applying cheat codes to advance their levels during gameplay, but it is often treated a sin within gaming communities to do so. With social media games, how serious can cheating be?
Researchers from Concordia University have found that players do not take cheating on social media games such as FarmVille seriously. Often, cheaters even prosper and reap more rewards.
In a study featured in the journal New Media & Society, Communications Professor Mia Consalvo, along with researcher Irene Serrano Vázquez, asked 151 participants who were 18 to 70 years old to answer questions about cheating.
The participants were asked how they decide on the fairness of bending the rules on FarmVille, what methods similar to cheating they were aware of practicing, and how different cheating in a traditional PC and console game would be compared to cheating on social media games.
The results were divided into two classifications. The first included players who believe that cheating is equivalent to violating the expected social behavior of players. They believe that using different methods would be unfair. The second consisted of players who merely defined cheating as an act of playing past the formal rules.
Consalvo noticed that the rules are clearly not consistent for these gamers.
"For some participants, specific actions or practices do not determine what is cheating—instead, they define cheating by the purposes or motives behind those actions or practices," said Consalvo.
Most of the participants admitted to some form of cheating. Some chose to play social media games in order to help friends (65 percent) or relatives (58.3 percent) progress in a level. Some chose to request friends (52.1 percent) or relatives (50 percent) to play to advance their scores. Others added strangers (53.9 percent) to do the same.
Other respondents said that they purchased currency to advance their game (40.2 percent). Some created multiple Facebook accounts (31.1 percent) while others logged into someone else's account (20.6 percent). Using cheat codes meanwhile proved to be an unusual method among social media gamers (8.2 percent).
When asked which of the examples above were considered "cheating," 69.9 percent of the participants said it was the use of cheat codes; for 54.4 percent, it was the use of a snag bar that allows an external program to collect items in the game; and for 50 percent, it was logging into someone else's account to advance one's own play.
Participants believe what is considered cheating differs across gaming platforms. The respondents are not, therefore, "cheating" in social media games because those are not "real" games for them, the researchers found.
Consalvo hopes that future research will further discuss how the real identities of players affect their attitudes and ethics toward various gaming methods.
