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• How Are Video Games Bad
• Why Cheating In Video Games Is Bad People

September 28, 2015 by middleearthnj

Cheating in American high schools is widespread. A recent ABCNews poll of 12- to 17-year-olds provided these statistics:

Cheating so thoroughly plagues gaming that it's long been common to type out 'VAC' on Twitch in reference to Valve's cheat sniffer in jest or seriousness when a player scores a beautiful headshot.

• 70% of teens say at least some kids in their school cheat on tests.
• 60% have friends who have cheated.
• 30% say they themselves have cheated, rising to 43% of 16- and 17-year-olds.
• More than 50% say cheaters don’t get caught.

In our previous blog, Cheating in School, we provided several facts, consequences, and prevention tips for adolescent cheating. In today’s blog, we wanted to offer parents some specific ideas for talking to your teen about cheating.

You can print out these ten reasons to give to your teen and use them as a way to open a discussion.

Top Ten List for Why Cheating is Wrong

1. Cheating is the same as lying and stealing. Each time you hand in schoolwork, you are basically telling the teacher that you completed that work on your own. That’s either true or, if you cheated on the work, it’s lying. Cheating is also stealing because you are taking someone else’s work and calling it your own.
2. Cheating causes stress. When you cheat, you inevitably worry about getting caught. The stress of getting caught increases when you consider the possible consequences of your actions, such as getting in trouble at home or receiving disciplinary actions from the school. Even worse, you may have to develop a story to cover up your cheating, which can lead to getting trapped in a web of lies because it’s so difficult to keep your story straight when it never happened. It can be very stressful if you get caught in a lie, or if you thinks someone knows about your cheating and might tell someone else.
3. Cheating is unfair to others. Have you ever played a game by the rules only to have a friend who was so intent on winning that they cheated? Cheating is very frustrating when you are playing by the rules. When you cheat in school to get better grades, it’s unfair to the kids who actually studied and did the work. You may also receive unfair recognition for the better grade, when it is not deserved.
4. Cheating is unfair to you. Accomplishment feels good and helps build self-esteem and self-confidence. When you cheat, you are basically telling yourself that you do not believe in your own abilities. You might get an A on a test or an assignment, but you’ll know that you really didn’t earn it. Cheating just makes you feel bad about yourself.
5. Cheating hampers progress. Learning tends to build on itself. You learn basics first so that you can use those basics in more complicated problems later. If you don’t know the basics, then you will have to continue to cheat, or start over learning the material from scratch. Every time you cheat, you’re not learning skills and lessons that could be important later on.
6. Cheating is disrespectful. Teachers work hard to share knowledge to help you be successful in academics, career, and life. Cheating shows a lack of respect for the efforts of your teacher and your classmates who did the work.
7. Cheating kills trust. It only takes getting caught cheating one time to ruin trust. Even if you never cheat again, those in authority will always have a hard time trusting you and will likely be suspicious of your work. When others hear about your cheating, their opinion of you will be compromised.
8. Cheating can become a habit. People who cheat don’t usually do it one time. It becomes a habit that follows people throughout college and into their careers. Just like gambling or stealing, cheating can become a part of who you are and spread into other areas of your life. Cheaters tend to lose perspective as to what is acceptable behavior and demonstrate a disregard for others.
9. Cheating eventually leads to failure. By skipping the hard work involved in learning, you will never develop the important traits of persistence, dedication, diligence, and sacrifice. Success takes hard work, and cheating is the easy way out. Eventually, you will find that it is difficult to achieve your goals without these important skills.
10. Cheating is embarrassing. Your actions define who you are to those around you. When you cheat, you are expressing yourself to others as lazy, incompetent, untrustworthy, selfish, unintelligent, and disrespectful. In addition, many schools are developing tougher stances on cheating. Imagine your embarrassment when you are suspended for cheating or you discover that school personnel informed college admissions officers of your actions.

Final thoughts…

Schools and parents must both actively discourage cheating if we have any hope of stopping this epidemic. Studies show that America is lagging behind other countries in academics. Our nation will not be globally competitive if we raise a generation of undereducated cheaters. Parents and teachers should emphasize the importance of integrity.

The global video game community has a cheating problem, but not one anyone's really aware of.

I'm not talking about the existence of cheaters. People cheat at video games all the time, either with their own sneaky maneuvers or through cheats you can buy online, and frankly, I don't give two shits about it.

But a not insignificant number of people care deeply about whether cheaters cheat, and that needs to be put to rest.

Today's big cheating scandal involves a fella named Dream who may have cheated in order to beat Minecraft faster while doing a speed run. A group of people claim Dream modified his game in order to beat it quicker, and these people are furious. Like, delusionally furious.

Just how furious are they?

They're so furious, they wrote a 28-page paper, structured and filled with footnotes like a peer-reviewed research paper, discussing their evidence for him having cheated. This paper uses complex formulas, multivariate analysis, and a whole lot of fluffed up jargon to pretend like what they're talking about is important.

But it's not. Whether or not someone cheated at speed running Minecraft does not matter and never will matter. On the totem pole of Things to Care About, Minecraft cheating is buried deep underground below celebrity marriages and TikTok.

How Are Video Games Bad

Cheaters will always cheat. Making a fuss about them only encourages them to cheat more because it gives them more attention and notoriety. And when it comes to speed running a video game—especially considering this man Dream isn't even claiming to have the no. 1 world record—the truth doesn't matter.

My 1.16 run was just rejected after research due to it being 'too unlikely to verify'. A video was made by a head mod and Youtuber Geosquare, using my name and clickbaiting 'Cheating Speedrunning' in order to get easy views. Definitely a response soon. Total BS!

— dream (@dreamwastaken2) December 11, 2020

If they get found out for cheating, then they can have the 'Fastest Speed Run Time With Cheats' title and someone else gets the 'Fastest Speed Run Time Without Cheats' title and everyone can shut up. And if they never get discovered, then they deserve an award for being that good of a cheater.

Cheating in tournaments where millions of dollars are on the line is a little different. Earlier this year, a 17 year-old kid who'd previously won $3 million at a 2019 Fortnite competition was accused of cheating when he taped together two keys on his keyboard to run faster.

But unless there's millions of dollars on the line, cheating in video games doesn't matter. (Even in tournaments, it only sort of matters.)

Why Cheating In Video Games Is Bad People

I understand cheating can take some of the fun out of gaming for people. But if that's the case, simply don't watch the cheaters. Focus on the goody two shoes and save yourself the time of reading about or thinking about any gamer who cheats.

Cheating in video games is absolutely fine. Whether you're doing it in Call of Duty with friends or alone in Grand Theft Auto.

People spending their precious living hours poring over data to try to prove someone cheated in a Minecraft speed run (again, he's not even claiming to have the world's fastest time, he's just claiming to have one of the fastest times) is not fine.

The people who put together this 28-page research paper are obviously intelligent. Imagine what they could achieve if they applied themselves in a useful capacity. We might have even gotten the vaccine sooner.

Why do I care so much about this to slam words onto a blog post? Because seeing this cheater drama in my gaming news feed is really boring and I'd like it to stop.

In conclusion, cheating = fine / whining about cheating = not fine.