The Washington Post is running an article on cheats and walkthroughs in gaming. Recently Slashdotted "How Strategy Guides Affected Gaming" argues that with all the online and print assistance developers have had to make their games much much harder.

The Tips and Tricks section of MobyGames has always been a bit of an adopted step child. It's there, but it is not great. Do MobyGamers cheat? Is using a walkthrough considered cheating? As for myself I have been playing a lot of Dead Rising. The game is amazingly hard and to make matters worse it is not entirely clear what the heck you are supposed to do. Without consulting a walkthrough I would of put the game down long ago. What would it take to make MobyGames Tips and Tricks top notch?

Well, I do check on guides if I get stuck for long enough. I get enough frustration at work, thank you, without the need for some extra on my free time.

It would be very hard to compete with gamefaqs in this area. I think you'd need a new angle on the whole thing. I don't know, maybe at least a better search facility so that if I'm stuck in a specific location in a game, I don't have to read the entire walkthrough?

I think we need a section for just that: stratgey guides. I would definitely contribute, and I know we could definitely get a few people from GameFAQs to post their guides here. Almost all guide makers invite you to ask them to put their guides onto your site, so long as you dont do it without their permission. It would be nice to see MobyGames become a mini-GameFAQs. The traffic would be nice too.

Also I think the Tips/Tricks section needs to be cleaned up. The Easter Eggs should probably apply to trivia, so I think that should definitely be removed, but that just my opinion.

But if we want to improve the Tip & Tricks section, we need a complete section for Guides.

we're working on it

If anything, I've found most games to be easier than those from the old NES days. Though there are some good exceptions.

You are talking about the "Universal Hint System". I found it through gamefaqs, so, probably you already know it.

I only cheat when taking screenshots for Mobygames.

I'm not sure whether a full guide section is that important, since it's no use trying to do everything by yourself. I find GameFaqs sufficient enough with all the documentation it holds inside. I somehow always saw the Tips & Tricks section to be trivial, and holding stuff like easter eggs inside : )

We did discuss cheating in the past and I think most people thought that looking up help in a walkthrough when stuck wasn't cheating. I could be remembering it incorrectly, though.

Personally, I do my best to avoid walkthroughs unless I just can't get past something no matter what I try. I also don't cheat by using codes or cracks or anything like that. I will admit that if I use an emulator, I will often use save states that allow you to save even at times when you're not supposed to be able to. And, yes, I do agree that doing that is cheating. But, it's as far as I'll go... I still have to do it on my own... it just lets me not have to keep going way back to try again every time I fail. Hardcore gamers tend to consider all forms of save/load to get past parts to be cheating... even if it's a built-in option rather than an emulator option.

Personally, I like the challenge of beating a game without any help, so I avoid cheats most of the time. Like some of the guys who posted earlier, I'm looking for a solution in walkthroughs, if I get in gaming situations where frustration beats the fun out of it. Especially adventures are candidates for consulting a walkthrough, when I run around between different screens for an hour without a clue of what's to do next.

There are very few games where I actually "actively" cheat - by using codes or savegame hacks, for example. If I just want to toy around with the house-building in The Sims, I use a money cheat. Another example is Hearts of Iron, the game is really great, but way to hardcore for an occasional strategy-gamer like me. A little cheating gives me the chance to win.

As long as the AI is your only "opponent", I would consider cheating a strictly legitimate option in gaming. Everybody should decide for him- / herself if and how much cheating is used to get the most fun out of a game.

I personally think that gaming is supposed to be fun. Whatever gives people most fun is ok with me. If someone thinks they are better than others because they don't cheat, pfffft! That's just a form of snobism.

As a sidenote: I had to cheat in King Kong. I was in a place I couldn't figure out how to proceed. I checked a walkthrough and lo and behold, I must have hit a bug because an event that should have happened didn't trigger and that's why I was stuck.

I'm about this close: "--" to cheat in Rune, I've been stuck on the same level for weeks, I can't find a way to open a certain door. None of the walkthroughs I have read have told me about getting the door open, so I presume it's a bug. I don't know why, but I generally feel bad about cheating, even once, in a game to finish it. Even though the problem is most likely in the game.

Ah, a correction.I didn't cheat in the "use a cheat code" sort of way, just that I checked the walkthrough. Thankfully I only needed to play that one scene again to proceed.

Although I generally think cheating in single player games is ok (as I wrote earlier), I have to agree with you when it's about cheating in a game myself. I guess it's a pride thing. There's always a little pride involved when one beats a game and this feeling is spoiled if you couldn't win entirely on your own.

Personally, I just feel like the challenge is lost when you cheat. Note that I'm not including walkthroughs as cheating unless you print it out and put it next to your computer in a game like Myst and follow it step by step. Using cheat codes to become invincible, or have unlimited money, or unlimited weapons/ammo... that just takes away all the challenge for me. I mean, how is a game challenging if you can't die in an FPS game? Or if you have unlimited money in a sims game that uses money as a major part of the game?

Now, if it gets to a point where I have a choice of either quitting the game and never finishing it because I couldn't get past a part, or cheating just to get past a part I am stuck at... then, I would probably consider cheating. But only until I was past the part I was stuck at.