My eldest son, R, asked me this week, "Mom, why do you hate boosts?" I was playing a game on Facebook, Zuma Blitz, which I let my younger son, B, play on my account frequently. When B plays, he turns on the maximum number of "boosts" -- special powers that boost his ability to win. When I play, I turn them all off. Yep, I hate boosts.
The fact is, for almost a month I have been trying to write a blog entry about this very topic. Why do I hate boosts? Well, first of all, let's call them what they are: cheats. They are little, socially accepted cheats, to help you get around the rules in order to score higher in computer games. It used to be that such things were straight-out called "cheat codes," but I guess they have softened that name to make it sound less dishonest. But you know, I miss the days when people simply played games by the rules. I think of my grandfather, during World War II on his battleship, playing checkers. He placed second in the ship-wide competition. He didn't use any boosts. There was no, "I'll spend 5,000 checkers-points for the ability to move directly ahead," or such. Can you imagine?
My boys have tried unsuccessfully to convince me to buy them some device that plugs into the Nintendo DS. They gave up asking, so I have forgotten what it is called. Apparently this device carries cheat codes for a number of DS games. They borrowed one from a friend at one time, and B delightedly told me about how his character in one game had now obtained unlimited lives, and could jump higher, and could swim. I listened to him boast, but I asked, "Where is the fun in that?" He looked at me like I was crazy, and went to tell his brother about it.
Isn't most of the fun in a game found in legitimately beating the challenge? Where is the challenge, if your character no longer is bound by the rules?
One of my former favorite Facebook games, Bejeweled Blitz, started off as a great challenge. Two of my friends were fantastic at it, and every week I fought hard to try to match their scores. I could never stay at the top of the leaderboard for long, though, as one or both would inevitably outdo my score.
Then they released a new "beta" version, in which each round allowed you to win "coins," which could be redeemed to purchase... BOOSTS. Start the round with a 2x score multiplier! Add a few seconds to the game! If you wanted, you could spend actual money and buy more coins. I played the new game for a day or two. Once, when I didn't have enough coins to purchase any boosts, I was playing the old way, with just my own skills, and I beat my high score. I was so excited, and when I posted my score, I wrote that I "hadn't even used any boosts" and suddenly I had an epiphany. My high score, for which I had "worked" so hard, looked the same as any other score from outside. I looked at my friends' high scores, and wondered how many boosts they were using, and which ones. And right then I realized that a boost was a "clean" name for a cheat.
I sent a message to the developers, complaining that boosts ruined the fun of the game. I saw on their wall several comments from other players with the same complaint. But soon the old clean version of the game disappeared, replaced by the new one. I refused to use the boosts, letting the useless "coins" accumulate. Sometimes I would see the high scores others had, and would succumb to the unspoken peer pressure for a few games, but it always made me feel sick.
Last week, I broke the 3,000,000 coin mark. I haven't played anywhere near as regularly as I once did, or I'd probably have double that. But I decided that I'd finally had enough. Just for the fun of it, I decided to spend all those useless coins and leave the game in a blaze of glory. Sure enough, I got the high score for my team last week. But it was such an empty victory. It has taken me a lot of wasted time to drop the balance below 2,000,000. And frankly, I don't care enough to keep trying.
My awareness of cheats has increased because of it. Yesterday, I caught part of a reality TV show where three teams of bakers were trying to make the best decorated cake. As the teams worked, they pulled the team leaders aside for two events. The first event -- which I missed, actually -- seemed to involve making a cake that looked like a poster. The second was a taste test, from their special cake. Now, if the competition is about making a fantastic cake, I could see the point of the second "minor" event; a gorgeous cake that tastes awful isn't worth the sugar rush. The first event, however, seemed kind of forced. ANYWAY, the point was that the winners of these two events got to pick a team to penalize in the main competition -- by taking away 30 minutes of work time from that team. The same team won both events, and the leader chose to penalize the same team both times. Now I don't know how much time they had in all, but to lose a full hour of competition time? How can that count as anything other than a cheat? Now by this time, I was pretty "into" the program, rooting with all my heart for the team that had been so unfairly hindered -- and that team won, by the way. But I am so disgusted by the way the competition was dirtied that I will not watch it again.
If you want the "minor" events included, that is just fine with me. The taste test, in particular, should be part of the final score of the cake, absolutely! But to give any team an unfair advantage, or disadvantage, based on the whims of a winner... No. How does that get everyone to do their best? How does it encourage good sportsmanship?
Suppose that my team had lost the competition, perhaps by a narrow margin. (I believe they may have won by a narrow margin; it is hard to say.) What would they walk away saying? "If they hadn't stolen an hour's labor from us, we would have had them." "We were robbed!" (Yes, they were.) There might have been cordial congratulations, but "unfair" would have been seething under their smiles.
A friend of mine asked on Facebook about another reality show tonight; "Who was eliminated?" Another friend responded that the person eliminated was "saved" by the judges, so would be going on in the competition after all. The judges on this show didn't used to have the power to "save" a favorite, to essentially say, "The rules won't apply this time." They do now.
Why do we settle for this in our society today? Have we become so competitive -- no, that isn't fair to the term "competition." Have we become so determined to win at all costs that we've given up on honesty and fairness? Why is it so acceptable to bend the rules here, and break them there? Why do we put up with it in our computer and video games and on reality shows, and then act so shocked when people expect to get away with cheating in other areas?
I believe in being honest. THAT is why I hate boosts.
