- 18 days
It’s more likely because cheat codes were development / QA tools to make testing the game easier. They got left in because they were behind hidden, strange button sequences etc, removing the code risked breaking something that would be harder to test without the codes, and they can be fun.
With better development tools, debuggers/profilers, and easier ways to distribute builds, they stopped being left in the game. And with the gamification from achievements/trophies, cheats would devalue/trivialise unlocking achievements etc and break their purpose.
- OwOarchist@pawb.socialEnglish18 days
cheat codes were development / QA tools to make testing the game easier. They got left in because they were behind hidden, strange button sequences etc, removing the code risked breaking something that would be harder to test without the codes, and they can be fun.
That’s maybe how they started, but between then and now was a time when developers would very specifically add in cheat codes that had nothing to do with development or debugging, and were often just extra things added in to make the game more fun to play. (See ‘paintball mode’ in Goldeneye N64 for a prime example of that.) But those kinds of cheat codes seem to have fallen out of fashion.
- 18 days
And Gandhi goes nuclear.
Edit: Sorry, was thinking of the nuclear dudes in AoE I.
- 18 days
Sid himself ultimately admitted that the bug was possible. We should decompile the original and figure it out once and for all.
- 18 days
Not sure where you are taking that from. Wikipedia has
Later, in an Ars Technica interview, Sid Meier similarly stated that the bug was possible, “but it was not intentional”.
On September 8, 2020, Sid Meier’s autobiography, Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games, was released, containing confirmation that the Gandhi software bug was fabricated and a detailed background of the urban legend’s formation.
So this sounds like the statement you refer to was not “ultimate” but still part of creating the hoax.
Edit:
Quoting the translation of one of the sources here:The myth was also refuted by Brian Reynolds, the leading game designer of Civilization II - in a video for People’s Games, his quote is mentioned, that the game has only three possible levels of aggression, and not 10 or 255. At the same time, at the first level there was not only Gandhi, but also other leaders, which in this case should lead to similar bugs with many other factions.
[…]
It all started with Sid Meier’s Civilization V. In it, India really had the preference for nuclear weapons to other forms of warfare at a point close to the maximum - at level 12. John Shafer, the leading game designer of the fifth “Civilization”, made this parameter so high solely for the sake of a joke.Article goes into it a bit more, but summary it all started with Civ5 in 2010, where it was an intentional (joke) decision not a bug.
All nuclear ghandi stuff dates to civ5, it did not exist before that time. Then in 2014 someone on reddit made up the hoax and publications just ran with it.
- 18 days
Didn’t think you’d get torn apart on this one, did ya. I’ve found most games these days do MTX pretty fairly. Even f2p typically at worst will be xp bumps in leveling.
