| 18 February 2010
It's going to forever be a topic in competitive gaming, and I'm glad that EA Sports brought it up. Is there such a thing as “cheesing?”
One game that's dear to me is Mario Kart. In past versions, I would get called out for SSMTing, or to the commonfolk, snaking. Is it an exploit? The developers must have thought so beause they took it out for Mario Kart Wii.
The term is brought up more in competitive games like Madden, where you could win using one or two plays. Look at what happened during the 2007 Madden Challenge tournament series. During the first four events, everyone came to tournaments with different offensive schemes, hoping that their scheme would get them to the Finals. Then, Kornstar won easily using the rocket catch with the Patriots, and immediately everyone switched over.
The next year, everyone found out right away that the fullback dive was the most effective play in the game. Guaranteed yardage with minimal effort. Run the play repeatedly and it often resulted in clocking plus touchdowns. The only thing that could stop someone was a fluke fumble.
Should someone be obligated to mix things up in a match? Or, is the onus on the player that's continually getting beat?
The guys at EA Sports responded to this question a few days ago:
Because cheesing is within game rules and there are people that will use the corner route all day if they have it, it's going to frustrate the gamers and lead to callouts on cheese plays. Understandable and it does give feedback to the developers on what is over effective in the game. However some of the cheese callouts are premature and isn't actually cheese. A key strategy to any sport is to find the opponent weakness, and attack it as your own strength. This is what coaches look for when they're drawing up their gameplans. And when it comes game time and they are able to pull off a play with great success, they would be very keen to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again until the other team stops them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
So since every cheese play is finding this weakness, and exploiting it, what is there to do when an opponent has discovered this weakness? Try to defend it by adapting. If that idea was taken seriously enough, I bet you it would reduce on a fair number of cheese callouts because they would defend it by calling the right plays. Going for it on 4th down is not cheese play. Going for an onside kick at kickoff to start the 2nd half is not cheese play. (Or Sean Payton just doesn't care) Those two situations are some cases that will claim cheese and were prevented by the infamous Fair Play feature in Maddens of years past. I do feel the term gets tossed around to freely and some users may be being too passive in reacting accordingly.
