The widely varying experiences of players of digital games challenge the notions that there is only one correct way to play a game. Some players routinely use cheat codes, consult strategy guides, or buy and sell in-game accounts, while others consider any or all of these practices off limits. Meanwhile, the game industry works to constrain certain readings or activities and promote certain ways of playing. In Cheating, Mia Consalvo investigates how players choose to play games, and what happens when they can't always play the way they'd like. She explores a broad range of player behavior, including cheating (alone and in groups), examines the varying ways that players and industry define cheating, describes how the game industry itself has helped systematize cheating, and studies online cheating in context in an online ethnography of Final Fantasy XI. She develops the concept of "gaming capital" as a key way to understand individuals' interaction with games, information about games, the game industry, and other players.Consalvo provides a cultural history of cheating in videogames, looking at how the packaging and selling of such cheat-enablers as cheat books, GameSharks, and mod chips created a cheat industry. She investigates how players themselves define cheating and how their playing choices can be understood, with particular attention to online cheating. Finally, she examines the growth of the peripheral game industries that produce information about games rather than actual games. Digital games are spaces for play and experimentation; the way we use and think about digital games, Consalvo argues, is crucially important and reflects ethical choices in gameplay and elsewhere.

数字游戏玩家的经验千差万别，这对玩游戏只有一种正确方式的观念提出了挑战。一些玩家经常使用作弊代码，查阅战略指南，或买卖游戏账户，而其他人则认为这些做法都是不允许的。同时，游戏行业努力限制某些阅读或活动，并促进某些游戏方式。在《作弊》一书中，米娅-康萨尔沃调查了玩家如何选择玩游戏，以及当他们不能总是以自己喜欢的方式玩游戏时会发生什么。她探讨了广泛的玩家行为，包括作弊（单独和团体），研究了玩家和行业定义作弊的不同方式，描述了游戏行业本身是如何帮助作弊系统化的，并在《最终幻想11》的在线民族志中研究了在线作弊的背景。她提出了 "游戏资本 "的概念，作为理解个人与游戏、游戏信息、游戏产业和其他玩家互动的关键方式。Consalvo提供了电子游戏中作弊的文化史，研究了作弊书籍、GameSharks和mod芯片等作弊辅助工具的包装和销售是如何创造出一个作弊产业的。她调查了玩家自己如何定义作弊，以及如何理解他们的游戏选择，并特别关注了网络作弊。最后，她研究了生产游戏信息而非实际游戏的外围游戏产业的发展。数字游戏是游戏和实验的空间；Consalvo认为，我们使用和思考数字游戏的方式至关重要，反映了游戏和其他方面的道德选择。