Cheating, Social Network Games and the Role of Platforms

This exploratory paper answers questions about how Facebook as a game platform influences players' game play, arguing that platforms can shape play as well as cheating behaviors in important ways. It is based on a survey of players of social network games, exploring their attitudes towards cheating in games such as The Sims Social and City Ville. It also includes results from follow-up qualitative interviews, further inquiring how players theorize cheating in such games relative to their existing social networks, Facebook's Terms of Service, and the specific types of games that are prevalent on Facebook. It asks how these features shape player's understandings of what constitutes cheating. It finds in part that platforms do influence how players define or imagine cheating in several ways, including the normalization of new payment models and game play mechanics, differences in how cheating is conceptualized by strangers versus friends and family, and how different terms of service can frame what counts as cheating or not.