Using Cheatcodes

Why cheatcodes
Many games have cheatcodes. It seems to have become almost standard and players tend to complain if a game has none. But actually this is a rather strange development. If you wonder whether you should add cheatcodes to your games you better first ask yourself some questions: Why does my game need cheatcodes? What is wrong with the game without them? What benefit would the player have when I add them? And why should I not simply turn them into game features?

There are a number of reasons that people use for having cheatcodes; some good ones and some bad ones.

Add some fun
Cheatcodes can add some simple fun to the game, especially for people that have already played the game for a while. These can for example be cheatcodes to change the looks of certain objects, show some movie, add a little sidequest, etc. They do not really change the game play. Be careful though. An important aspect of games is that you want to get your players immersed in them. And for many games you want to achieve something called suspense of disbelief, a state in which a player is willing to temporarily accept the game world as real and important. Suspense of disbelief is fragile and surprises can easily destroy it. So a funny cheatcode can destroy it and reduce the motivation for playing the game. In this case consider adding cheatcodes as an unlockable item. This means they will have played the game through 'properly' and be able to enjoy the cheatcodes later, as a reward, without disrupting gameplay.

Create a player community
By leaving hints that cheatcodes might exist you can create a player community of people that try to find these codes and distribute them. Player communities are important for games. Finding cheatcodes becomes a kind of game in itself. To achieve this you will need many cheatcodes but they should not have too much impact on the game.

Avoid stagnation in the game
For example, in some games there always is a cheatcode to go to the next level or get extra health or infinite ammunition. This is normally a very bad reason for having cheat codes. It is mainly done to make sure everybody can finish the game. But your game design should actually enable this. So often this is just a bad remedy against bad game design. Don’t use it! It will ruin your game. Once people find out (and they soon will and distribute it) people with use the cheat, even if they can actually play the game without it. This will reduce the difficulty of the challenges which are an important element of the game experience and, hence, this will reduce the fun in the game. It also normally destroys any useful highscore list.

Change the focus
As I indicated before a game has a particular type of focus. Also a game offers a particular type of challenges to the player. Some players might not like that. You can use cheat codes to change that focus. For example, The Sims is all about time management. You might not have realized that but it is the primary game play element. Your Sim has a limited amount of time in a day and you decide how he spends that time to balance his desires. Part of the time you need to spend on working to make sure you have enough money to decorate the house. Now some people like such a management game but others would much more prefer to build nice houses for their Sims and decorate them in beautiful ways. In such a case a cheat to have infinite money and access to all objects helps to make the game interesting to such players as well. In The Sims there still is enough interesting game play if you have all that money. So it does not really disturb the game play badly which makes this a reasonable cheat. The question though remains why you need a cheatcode for this. Why not simply add a game play mode in which the focus is different. You can then more carefully balance it by e.g. disallowing other aspects of the game instead, to make sure both playing modes have their own advantages.

Extend game play later
You can add a cheat code in a game that is impossible to find. Then, later, when the game is already available for a while, you can make the cheatcode known. If the cheatcode is interesting enough (perhaps changing the focus of the game (see above)), it will result in people starting to replay the game. This will give you as a creator additional attention from the player. Such method could become particularly useful if you are going to publish your next game.

Programmers joke
Often cheatcodes are just programmers jokes. Sometimes the game designers do not know the cheats exist. But the programmers do not realize how badly they can ruin the game play with the cheat codes. So cheatcodes should be considered as game features that the designer of the game should think about very carefully.