In single player games, cheating affects only the longevity of play. But in online games, cheating threatens the delicate social construct of multiplayer play. If each person pursues a certain set of skills at their own pace, then it can be upsetting to see someone leap ahead or even affect the value of items and cash in the game by ruthless replicating.

A NYTimes.com piece Do Cheaters Ever Prosper? Just Ask Them examines cheating and game balancing in online multiplayer games, with glimpses into some mass-market multiplayer online fare: Rise of Nations, The Sims Online and Star Wars Galaxies.

One person's "cheating" is another person's "advantage playing." Some users argue that if games build in repetative tasks required to get ahead, then it's only fair that players should be able to use macros, software programs running on top of games to automate click-click-clicking. And still other folks point out that they are playing a conniving character who would work to succeed by any means necessary.

Cheating in shared game environments issue was covered more explicitly from a game designers point of view in a year 2000 piece "How to Hurt the Hackers: The Scoop on Internet Cheating and How You Can Combat It" from Game Developer Magazine (free registration required). There, Matt Pritchard quotes Greg Costikyan: "An online game's success or failure is largely determined by how the players are treated. In other words, the customer experience -- in this case, the player experience -- is the key driver of online success." His short version was, "Cheating undermines success." Whose success? The largest pool of shared success - the mass of players and the game creators who want them paying subscription fees.