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December 15, 2005 6:09 AM

Where do Cheat Codes come from?

After years of cheating with my PS2 games and now cheating with my new XBox, I have come to wonder how these cheats emerge. Do hard-core gamers sit and try all of the button combinations until they find a pattern? Are they leaked from the developers? Does anyone know?

I utilize the cheat codes after I grow bored with the basic gameplay and feel like blowing up everything with the SWAT team shooting at me while I am driving a tank wearing high-heels and a feather boa.

posted by Makebusy7 to sports, hobbies, & recreation (21 comments total)

Most of them are leaks. Cheat codes are necessary in many games in order to enable QA or developers to test the game without having to redo everything from the beginning (at least for level warps) or to make sure that AI works without worrying about resource limitations (ammo, time, lives, etc).

Developers, QA and beta testers will leak the codes and they spread.
posted by plinth at 6:14 AM on December 15, 2005

Some of companies put the info directly into the manuals, while others, like Bungie do not allow cheat codes to be used by the general public probably either by not coding them in the first place or removing the options once the final product is ready.

I think you'll find a pretty divided spectrum of people who either really enjoy cheat codes (like me) or think they should be abolished (like my roommate). I think adding cheat codes into a game, as long as they can't be used in multiplayer makes the game appeal to both sides, so the cheaters can if they wish and the opposed can just forgo the option and play as they please.
posted by vanoakenfold at 6:32 AM on December 15, 2005

I hate to self-link, but I just wrote a blog entry yesterday about the famed Konami Code, its origin, and legacy in the world of video games. Basically the code was created to help the developer of Gradius finish the game and it was left in when the game was produced and released. Since then the code has appeared in more than 50 video games.
posted by Servo5678 at 6:34 AM on December 15, 2005

To follow up on what plinth said (which is correct), the cheats are generally released after the game has been around for awhile, to spark additional interest.

And of course not all of them are for QA/testing reasons, like the feather boa type.
posted by nev at 7:02 AM on December 15, 2005

Actually! In the olden days, cheat codes might have been developer cheats. But now that game development is so sophisticated, all of the "development cheats" are stripped out of the release version. Most development cheats are really workflow specific, and are often liable to break the game.

With all of the games that I've worked on, at the very end of the schedule, when we're close to shipping, we sit down and think of some cheats. Some of them will be bona-fide cheats, like "unlock all weapons" - while others will be easter eggs, funny bugs we saw in development that can actually be turned into a funny little visual thing, sort of like your standard almost-every-game-has-it big head mode.

Cheat codes are designed not to be something that you can figure out. Long strings of button combos that can't be accidentally entered just fiddling with the controller. At some point after the game is released, the publisher or developer will usually leak the cheats to the interweb.
posted by pazazygeek at 7:57 AM on December 15, 2005

! vanoakenfold !

thanks for answering another burning question regarding the existence of Halo cheat codes.
posted by Makebusy7 at 8:05 AM on December 15, 2005

At some point after the game is released, the publisher or developer will usually leak the cheats to the interweb.

Also, in many cases, cheat codes and other gameplay unlockables are released as a part of a PR campaign, especially for magazines and sites that specialize in printing the codes. Some of these codes and unlockables may be "exclusive" releases, held back and released only to certain outlets.
posted by frogan at 8:11 AM on December 15, 2005

About a year ago, someone tied a PS2 controller to his parallel port and used a PC to press all of the button combinations to figure out all of the cheat codes in GTA: San Andreas.
posted by Caviar at 8:13 AM on December 15, 2005

Long strings of button combos that can't be accidentally entered just fiddling with the controller.

...unless by "fiddling" with the controller, you mean something like this, The guy whose website that is claims that he finds GTA cheat codes by rigging the controller to send random button combinations.
posted by sfenders at 8:17 AM on December 15, 2005

damn, I'm slow this morning.
posted by sfenders at 8:17 AM on December 15, 2005

Wow that's h4r9cor3!

Thanks again for the answers.
posted by Makebusy7 at 8:19 AM on December 15, 2005

I think in modern games, cheat codes are being phased out in favor of "unlockables." Things that used to be available via cheats are now earned in gameplay, which I think is both good (extends replay value) and bad (I just want the costume! I don't want to play through the game eight more times!). Cheat codes used in development are often stripped out because they're either too good (insta-win!), or because they don't have time to test them properly.

pazazygeek: But now that game development is so sophisticated...
The tools are indeed more sophisticated, which makes stripping out cheats easy. The game development itself? Still very much in the stone age, IMHO.
posted by Sibrax at 8:25 AM on December 15, 2005

On the other hand, people do occasionally discover cheat codes themselves (I have, some of my friends have).

May I also say that, even if developers don't want to include a god code, or an unlimited ammo code, or something like that, every game should have a level skip, for areas that are so frustrating that people just give up trying to beat them after hours and hours of trying.
posted by Hildago at 8:31 AM on December 15, 2005

Everytime I hit that point, Hildago, I walk away from the game for an hour or two, come back, and usually solve the offending problem/level/miniboss on the second or third try. Had to do that with Jedi Outcast to maintain my sanity.
posted by TeamBilly at 8:51 AM on December 15, 2005

Wow and I gave up on Destroy All Humans after just three levels - 9% - of gameplay. I think I have ADD or something.
As a matter of fact, I don't think that I have EVER finished or "beat" a video game.
posted by Makebusy7 at 9:37 AM on December 15, 2005

The existence of cheat codes is an interesting side-effect of gaming culture, isn't it? When you get down to it, it seems like most game designers use the hardcore gamer as a muse, yet most people just want something they can pick up and have fun with for a little while.

Invincibility, unlimited ammo, etc. are one way to make a game that's designed to appeal to dedicated gamers still fun for everybody else. In my opinion, finding new ways of doing this -- or taking a different approach to design altogether -- will be one of the things that really propels games forward as a medium.

I've been playing a lot of games with my eight-year-old son lately, and his interest in completing the tasks laid before him is secondary to his desire to just play around in an artificial reality. I apologize for the derail, but watching him (and Christmas shopping!) has really gotten me thinking about these things lately.
posted by Eamon at 9:41 AM on December 15, 2005

When submitting a game to be approved by first-party (Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft), a list of all cheat codes is mandated. Cheat codes can often leak to the public from these venerable institutions.

It is also mandated that debug "cheats" are completely removed from console games when they're submitted, stuff like xyz coordinate generators, or on-screen processor usage graphs. As mentioned above, most cheats that you see in a finished version of the game were put in for the end-user's pleasure, rather than remaining from development (although the debug stuff does sometimes slip by).
posted by Durhey at 9:47 AM on December 15, 2005

While plinth's answer is quite correct, there is one other thing that cheat codes are occasionally used for nowadays: marketing. Occasionally, cheat codes will be placed deep inside a game and released months after the game comes out in an attempt to spark renewed interest in the game.

Factor 5 and LucasArts have done this in the past with the Rogue Squadron series, for example.
posted by dotreptile at 12:23 PM on December 15, 2005

Durhey: Are you sure?

My copy of Bloodrayne 2, when I do the "unlock all cheats", offers me all sorts of wonderful "cheats" such as "ODE [Open Dynamics Engine] Debug" and "Show Collision Geometry".

There're actually more debug options than there are play-altering cheats. Although, having used the ODE for amateur game development, I must say that watching their debug data was fabulous.
posted by Netzapper at 2:55 PM on December 15, 2005

What platform were you playing BloodRayne2 on? PC? It's possible that they left debug cheats in on the PS2 or Xbox or whathaveyou, but if that's the case, it's likely extremely rare.

Sometimes games get shipped to the shelves and they don't have time to put the cheat polish on the game, could be the case here. Someone else mentioned that you need to give all of this data over to the first party (Sony, Xbox, etc) to pass their standards testing, but there's no such standards testing for PC games, which might explain it.

That's usually the sort of thing that would fail you at first party, but sometimes minor issues get pushed through to meet the shelf date.
posted by pazazygeek at 3:03 PM on December 15, 2005

Nope, it's definitely the PS2 version.
posted by Netzapper at 5:11 PM on December 16, 2005