study on online cheating
Here is a quote from a recent study on online gaming that backs up my suspicions :
In terms of cheating in games, 30% of the participants reported never cheating in games, the majority (70%) of gamers cheated at least occasionally. The mean score on game cheating was 2.80 (SD=1.80). Seventeen per cent of the participants fell into the category of frequent cheaters (score of 5 or above). Consistent with the existing literature (Consalvo 2007, Webb and Soh 2007), these results indicate that game cheating is a common behaviour among young gamers in this study. Moreover, the researchers conducted six focus group sessions to study game cheating with late adolescents nine months after data collection for this survey study had been done. Participants in the focus group were experienced gamers who were familiar with game cheating. Their age ranged from the age of 17 to 29 (M=23) and their gaming experiences were between 1 and 20 years (M=10.5). Out of 29 participants, 18 indicated that their friends and they themselves cheated very frequently, 2 said they did it sometimes, 5 said they did it infrequently, and 3 said they had never cheated. The focus group result also showed that all participants viewed game cheating as something ‘everyone is doing’ and ‘If you don't do it, you will lose out’. This further validated our assumption that game cheating is a group norm in the gaming community.
Here is the link to the entire study. Very sad what kids think is normal now....
