Comic for Friday 9/9 (Early High Res)

I thought I'd start the weekend by trying to rile everyone up in a debate. :)

Do you consider using a crosshair overlay (adding a center dot to your aim where the game doesn't include one) cheating?

Personally, I'd put this one in the cheating column. On the cheating scale, it's definitely one of the most benign cheats, (I'd argue it doesn't even provide much of an advantage), but it still constitutes using an outside method to gain an upper hand over other players.

Now, you can add a crosshair overlay to games with a third party app, or you can get some monitors with it as a built-in setting. Or you can even just go super old-school, and stick a bit of tape or blue-tac on your monitor as an aiming device.

None of these methods are actually altering any game files, which leads people to argue that it isn't cheating; its no different from upping the contrast of your monitor to see in darker games, or using a fancy mouse with better precision to get an edge, they say.

And I understand that side of the argument. I can almost see it from that point of view. But most games also have a brightness/contrast or mouse sensitivity slider in their settings, so I'd argue that adjusting those elements to personal preference falls within the game designer's scope of what they wanted possible in their game (even if upping the contrast to see enemies in shadows is outside the spirit of the intention).

But if a game doesn't provide you with a persistent "here is exactly where your bullet is aiming" reticle, it would be because the game designers chose not to include one for gameplay reasons. For instance, sometimes only the scope of a weapon provides that much pinpoint accuracy, meaning you're balancing precision for the smaller field of view of a zoomed-in scope.

However if you can always track your center point, and you're now able to hip fire with greater accuracy without the scope/ADS, that feels like you are operating at an advantage beyond how other people may be playing.

Now obviously, if you stick a piece of tape on your monitor, no one is going to know. There is not an anti-cheat system on the planet that will catch that. So you can do this with impunity. But I don't think the lack of looming consequences lessens the fact that this is, no matter how miniscule or irrelevant (and it is, to be sure, such a barely-over-the-line cheat), still an attempt to play unfairly. In spirit.

That's my thought on the subject. I know the people that believe in its use can argue passionately in its defense, so I'd love to hear your opinions on crosshair overlays via external methods.