Beating the game is all the rage these days �it seems enjoying the game, finishing it and completing it have all fallen by the wayside. Instead of fighting hard to really unlock every single element of a title, many gamers are happy to power through in short order, reaching the first ending they come to and subsequently putting down the joypad.

The act of unlocking every single facet and extra feature is largely considered an aside to the ultimate aim of seeing the final cutscene and getting those credits rolling. While it may be true that side-quests and unlockable features are nothing more than distractions from the main aim, their inclusion adds much more depth to a title than anyone admits.

Companies often consider these features to add "replay value": a tired phrase needlessly bandied about by reviewers and journalists, which only adds to the perception that these are secondary rather than integral

Ask yourself this question: When was the last time you truly completed a game? My betting is that most of you have gotten as far as the end-game, succeeded in seeing the credits and then gone back in fits and starts to maybe pick on the last few outfits, extra weapons and other incentives offered. Few people take the time to really smash the whole thing open by getting every last secret first try. Which is admittedly not an easy task, as well as the fact that certain games do not allow you access to the final ending without first completing the game once and then a subsequent time with all the secrets unlocked as well, but these are few and far between. These secondary objectives are a red herring: they actually add no further value if you incorporate them into the first play.

First and foremost, we must acknowledge that gamers as a whole have a limited attention span, and most developers know this. With an average action adventure game or mediocre shooter you can expect 15 hours of attention from a player before they completely lose interest. Better games obviously command the attention of players for much longer. But a bad game has a limited lifespan in the disc drive and therefore must have a limited lifespan in the game world. So it is in fact more or less pointless to add extra features to an appalling game, as they add nothing to the overall experience.

Integrated, measurable bonuses that enhance the experience ought to be commonplace, but are often tacked on as an afterthought: extra weapons that are available after a certain level is reached tend to be more ostentatious than useful. Alternative costumes are pretty, but Pong was still a great game without the need for "Neon" or "Hip hop" paddles.

Part of the problem stems from power-gaming. The need to feel superior over the games designer is inbuilt into the genetic code of most gamers. However, the degree to which this desire is present dictates the manner in which people play. Some immediately switch the difficulty to 'Extreme' from the word go for that extra sense of winning. Some, like me, are more placid and are happy to explore everything, completing the game on the first go and returning only for nostalgia value, or to replay favourite portions. Others cheat.

Now, I am not going to lie to you; in my younger days I used cheat codes to obtain an advantage over games that I felt were unfair on my admittedly bad playing skills, only when there was a puzzle I could not solve did I look in my big book of hints. But I despise players who use cheat codes to get past all the obstacles in a game to the end and then feel some sense of accomplishment- they are only cheating themselves.

How can it be said that you have achieved victory by defying the laws of the game? How is victory truly earned by unlimited invulnerability and a gun that kills in one shot? The truth is that you have only succeeded in stepping over the boundary between entertainment and ego-massage: by cheating, you have defeated the entire point of competition.

Partly to blame are the game designers themselves, who no doubt in another misguided and desperate attempt to stave off inevitable boredom in their mediocre title by adding pointless god-mods. It is far simpler to create an invincibility mod than it is to improve your programming skills or better a lacklustre game that is hardly worth the time you have put into it. Beating yourself at your own game, bending the rules that you have created to limit and test the player seems an exercise in futility with the cynical aim of masking the glaring gaps in your own ability.

Winning for its own sake is hardly a victory: it is better to lose for your faults and learn to better yourself, than to win for the faults of another.

Iun Hockley
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