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Cheats and Spoil-Sports
The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a "spoil-sport." The spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle…the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with others.- Johann Huizinga, Homo Ludens
The final two categories of players are the cheater and the spoil-sport. Up to this point, we have had to look very carefully at the players' behavior to decide whether or not they are violating the formal system of the game and are actually breaking the rules. With these final two categories of players, things become more explicit. What defines the cheating player? The cheater breaks rules. Unlike the unsportsmanlike player, who merely violates the implicit, unspoken rules of a game, the cheater transgresses the operational rules, the actual rules of play. The cheater is the player that secretly moves a piece when her opponent looks away from the board, the player that steals Monopoly money from the bank and hides it for future use, the player that uses a non-regulation golf ball in a tournament in order to gain a little more distance. The cheater surreptitiously takes actions that are not proscribed by the rules, in order to gain an advantage.
Does cheating destroy a game? The unexpected paradox of cheating is that, as Huizinga points out, the cheater is still in some way playing the game. The cheater breaks rules, but only to further the act of winning. So while the cheater sheds enough of the lusory attitude to disrespect the authority of the rules, the cheater still has faith in the sanctioned conflict of the game: being the victor still has meaning to the cheater. This may seem like bizarre behavior. What is the point of hanging onto the authority of the quantifiable outcome when the proscribed steps for getting there are thrown out the window? It turns out that the cheater is only one step removed from the dedicated player. It is possible to sympathize with a cheat, for he or she too has a passion for winning. A cheater craves winning, but too much, committing crimes in order to attain the object of desire. Of course, the motivations for cheating are many. Cheating might grow from a desire to beat the game system itself, to show up other players, or to reap rewards of glory external to the game. But no matter what the psychological motivation for cheating, all cheating behavior shares a particular set of formal relationships to rules, goals, and the magic circle. The spoil-sport is the category of player furthest from the standard player. As game designer Mark Prensky explains, "What spoils a game is not so much the cheater who accepts the rules but doesn't play by them (we can deal with him or her), but the nihilist who denies them altogether."[2] The cheater breaks the rules but remains within the space of play. The spoil-sport is more destructive, refusing to acknowledge the game altogether. The spoil-sport is the frustrated player that knocks all of the pieces off the Chess board, the player that reveals the hidden information of Charades, the player that answers when it isn't his turn, the player that hacks into the game database to erase all of the player records. The cheater is a conniving actor, a spy within the magic circle, carefully pretending to obey all of its regulations even as he breaks them. But the spoil-sport has no such compunction. His destruction of the game does not require concealment, because the rule structure that would condemn his action as illegal is exactly the authority the spoilsport wishes to undermine. When a set of Chess pieces are placed in their proper positions on the board and a game begins, the pieces gain meaning. But if, during a game, the action of a spoil-sport wipes the Chess pieces from the board, meaning is violently erased. Removed from their grid positions, the Chess pieces merely represent a collection of scattered figurines. The spoil-sport returns the game to its pre-game state as a collection of parts, no longer the embodiment of the space of possibility set out by the rules of the game. The spoil-sport, more than any other kind of player, demonstrates the fragility of the magic circle. Not bound by a faith in the game, an interest in the lusory attitude, a respect for the rules, or even a concern for the outcome, the spoil-sport is the representative of the world outside the game. Armed with a powerful lack of belief, the spoil-sport has no qualms about ruining the play of others. The cheat may hack into a multi-player deathmatch to up his ping time and secretly improve his play performance. But the spoil-sport will unleash a virus that brings the game servers to a halt, making play impossible for all players. [2]Marc Prensky, Digital Game-Based Learning (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), p. 119.
