But as far as my own play, well, I’d rather find ways to beat the game myself. I know people who are exactly the opposite, though– another friend of mine will buy a game and immediately figure out how to get into God Mode so he can just play through and see the story and so on.

Exploring the insides of games from the outside, though? I don’t think I’ve played many games that I was interested in enough to try things like that, except perhaps… No, I can’t think of any off the top of my head. (Well, the Neuromancer video game on the C-64, a million years ago…)

I think I approach games a little differently, though– I tend to find working within the guidelines and mastering the application of the games’ rules to be an interesting challenge in itself. It’s only when those rules appear to be misdesigned that I’ll use cheat codes or whatever, and then, as often as not, I discover that I’m actually approaching the problem the wrong way– for example, in Far Cry, when you get to the top of the carrier on the way to capture and escape on a rubber raft, you can either shoot your way through dozens of guys and a helicopter at the end of a serious ammo drought and without any healing or anything in sight (requiring you to shoot probably 15 guys without taking any damage), or, I discovered later, you can just run off the edge, land in the water, swim around the carrier and shoot the chains and drop the rubber raft into the water next to you.

I dunno. Maybe if I spent more time dissecting games…