Raph Koster says, "Cheating is a Matter of Perspective"

Cheating is in the eye of the hacker, right?

Notable game designer and virtual worlds veteran Raph Koster discusses the nature of "cheating" and how it's affected by changing perspectives in this interesting blog post.

Frankly, the definition of cheating has grown a lot more lax over the years. The early mud culture was very big on avoiding spoilers, at least in the quest-oriented muds. (Many of the quests were, of course, much more complex and more like adventure game puzzles). People were granted the powers of game admins based on levelling to the top of the game — and it was presumed to be important that they had intimate knowledge of the game, so powerlevelling someone was looked down upon.

Read more at Raph's Website.