Game Exploits

During the lecture on immersion there was a clip of Team Fortress 2 with the physics exploits of the "Demolition Man" using his grenades to blow himself over to the other side of the map. This is an example of a gamer using the physics engine to manipulate game play, people who can commit these exploits call it a skill while others consider it cheating, since it gives other players an advantage.

But is this cheating or a skill? If the ability to do a skill is there, why not use it? If someone can aim or jump more precisely in the game better than you, is it cheating? although real cheats are Aimbot and NoClip, people have the potential to use those in games as well. Is a Game exploit only unfair if only one team can specifically use it? (e.g Flag defenders in CTF or a certain faction in an MMORPG) well, yes. it unbalances the game. no one wants to play a game that you have NO CHANCE at winning.

That's Multiplayer and online play, but what about single player?
no one cares if you use exploit to play thought a game, since it doesn't affect them. Most gamers play though a game normally, then usually try exploits afterwards, so they don't miss out on content, also because means of exploiting game design is difficult and would require you to have a tremendous amount of skill and timing to get right.
take these two videos for example of Speed Runs of Portal and Super Mario 64 for the Nintendo 64. people have beat a game in minutes as opposed to hours (my personal best on a Portal Speed Run was 40 minutes, this guy did it in 9 minutes) 

Portal speed run in 9 minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1U5RUVENNE

Super Mario 64 speed run http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTzs9bcNgMQ

Through memorization, precise timing and attention to detail, these speed runs are possible, small things like running backwards being faster than walking forward.
Is it cheating? Not really, based on these abilities, they have already beaten the game. This is playing the game in a different way, not exactly the way it is meant to be played, but having a similar result of actually beating the game.

So people exploit game design with glitches and level design, but there are some situations where game developers expect you to exploit the level design and find new content, like the Warp Zones in Super Mario Bros (NES). A lot of games Nowadays contain easter eggs with hidden content, some of this content you need to exploit the maps, like in the Halo series, you would have to stack vehicles or grenade jump in order to reach areas outside the map and grab this extra content.

I just think it;s smart for Gamer Developers to give bonus content to people who can go out of their way to find it.

It's like looking underneath your Chess pieces and finding diamonds!

Nicholas Boulton.