As the semester winds to a close, I find myself looking back at our class from a big-picture perspective. What, if anything, will I take away from all of the reading, projects and discussions throughout the semester? What has this class taught me?

It occurred to me this week that one thing in particular that has changed my perspective on gaming is something that I have thus far in life failed to really internalize, and that is: the intentionality of video games. In other words, the most poignant lesson I will take forward with me after this class lies in the fact that every single aspect of every single video game was intentional — there is almost no such thing as a passive feature of a game, because games are 100% coded.

The fact that everything is intentional in video games served, I believe, as the true foundation for this course. Not only does this say a lot about the game world designing process (I distinctly remember the moment when we paused Portal to contemplate the texture of the wall and the lighting in the room, raising the point that someone actively created those aspects of the game), but it also has much to say about many social themes in games.

For example, our discussions of violence and sexism in video games were even more important through the lens of this intentionality; game designers have to answer for the way they depict their characters and world, while authors and filmmakers might get away with these phenomena because they draw upon society in real life. That’s not to say that video game makers don’t use real society as a reference point, but it is slightly different, because video games are typically in made-up worlds that don’t have to adhere to real life. In this sense, it becomes a more pronounced choice on the part of developers to extend societal issues such as violence and sexism into their games.

Additionally, I have developed a refined appreciation for the unique way that video games exist at a crossroads of media. It draws upon traditional forms of narrative for which literature is known, and it has grown over the last few decades from a toy-like phenomenon to a cinematic form of art – complete with creative world design, beautiful musical scores and engrossing story. And, of course, it is interactive, which makes it arguably the most advanced form of media that we have today. And it is only getting more expansive in scope.

So, the intentional nature of game design is probably what I will appreciate most about video games from now on thanks to this class. Also, I believe that this artistic medium is only going to become more and more exciting over the decades to come, as evidenced by the material that we examined in this class. Considering everything, I have no doubt that this is an exciting time for video games.

After doing some research into the matter, it has come to my attention that there is a slew of cheat codes out there that can be used in Civilization IV (as is the case for pretty much all PC games, it seems).

With the stroke of a few keys, these cheat codes allow the player to do almost anything you could think of. You can place a city automatically wherever you want to, you can manipulate population, culture and production, you can weaken enemy units, and you can change the era instantaneously – all actions that effectively bypass the challenges that make victory something that must be achieved through hard work and critical thinking. You can even change desert into grassland and promote your own military units to the point where they are virtually unbeatable.

First of all, I think it would be helpful to define what cheating really is, for the sake of argument: to cheat is, according to the dictionary, to “act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage.” With this in mind, it is pretty much indisputable that using these cheat codes in a multiplayer context would indeed be straight-up cheating. The cheat-code phenomenon is, understandably, universally banned in the online gaming community.

Fair enough. But, what if the player is only playing against AI? What if the player has no interest in competing against other people, and instead prefers to use the game in his or her own, personal way? Or, at a the most basic level, can you really cheat yourself in a video game? I think these sorts of questions are important to raise in the context of the video gaming world, and they are where the black-and-white nature of the debate on cheating sort of falls apart.

Thinking about these issues reminds me in particular of the many childhood years I spent playing The Sims. I never really was interested in playing out my Sims’ lives and making families. I was always most interested in endlessly designing and constructing things, because I chose to make it a building game rather than a dollhouse game. I learned the cheat codes for getting instant and infinite money very early in my Sims gaming days – so early that I didn’t even understand that they were “cheat codes,” but just considered them to be as much a part of the game as anything else. I don’t think I was cheating by using these codes, and I won’t ever budge on that, because The Sims was a really important part of my childhood and was simply too fun to have been played the ‘wrong’ way.

I think Civilization is inherently more structured than The Sims has ever been, in the sense that score and competition are much more important in the former than they are in the latter. But still, if the player is not playing directly against other real people, I have trouble considering these cheat codes to really be “cheating.” I don’t think I would use them, because most of the ones I have seen for Civilization IV are ways to get around the gameplay mechanics that make the game fun for me. But, I don’t think there would be anything immoral about using them. I could even envision a situation where using cheat codes as a form of “training wheels” would be appropriate for someone who is just trying to learn how to play. After all, the game is so really complicated, and it was a lot to take in the first few times I played. By using automatic city placement or infinite money, it could definitely be helpful to a novice player if they’re just trying to figure out what’s going on.

So, yes, you can obviously cheat in video games, and Civilization is no exception, but I think cheating in the traditional sense of the word can only really manifest itself when competing against other players – either directly or for high scores. But when the player is alone or playing against AI rivals, I see no reason to consider things like cheat codes to truly be cheating. I think one of the absolute best things about video games is how unlimited they are, and I’m not convinced that cheat codes can bring down something so wonderful.