A majority of people who play Facebook games such as FarmVille resort to cheating to advance their own scores and they think that it is all right to cheat in a social network game, a new study suggests.
Researchers polled 151 social media gamers between the ages of 18 and 70. They asked them to respond to questions about why people would choose to cheat on a social media game.
"Clearly, rules are not the same thing for every player," said Mia Consalvo, a professor at the Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.
"For some participants, specific actions or practices do not determine what is cheating - instead, they define cheating by the purposes or motives behind those actions or practices."
The majority of survey respondents reported at least some kind of cheating: they admitted to playing social network games to help friends (65 per cent) or family members (58.3 per cent) advance their scores, and to asking friends (52.1 per cent) or family (50 per cent) to play a social network game in order to advance their own scores, and to adding strangers (53.9 per cent) to do the same.
A high number of participants admitted to purchasing currency to advance play (40.2 per cent), creating multiple accounts (31.1 per cent) and logging into someone else's account (20.6 per cent).
The use of cheat codes - a means of cheating requiring greater technical skill - was a much rarer practice among participants, only 8.2 per cent admitted to doing so.
Not surprisingly, the study participants were not quick to criticise various forms of cheating in Facebook games.
The harshest condemnation was reserved for the type of cheating that requires technical know-how.
Cheating in social network games, it seems, is hard to define and varies from player to player - and from game to game, researchers said.
"Players believe cheating might be different based on the platform on which play takes place. They believe social network games are not 'real' games, so you can't cheat at them," said Consalvo.
When Consalvo and researcher Irene Serrano Vazquez asked players whether cheating in a console or computer game is different than cheating in a Facebook game, roughly a third of respondents answered that it is different in some way.
The study was published in the journal New Media & Society.
