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Getting Good — On “Cheesing” Strategies in Video Games
- Taylor Rioux
- Aug 1
- 6 min read
I stand outside of the fog gate, knowing that a powerful enemy awaits me on the other side. But today, I am prepared. I cast a spell to increase my damage. Next, I use my equipment’s abilities to push it further. Then comes another spell, and finally a potion — all before stepping through that gate. As my player character places their hand against the fog, I know I have already won — all that is left is to execute.
Stepping through the gate, I see a distant foe drawing near. I wind up my spell, and a flash of blue begins to build at the tip of my scepter, which then releases as a beam of concentrated magic. When the beam dissipates, all that remains of the enemy are tiny particles that drift slowly toward the sky as a notification appears on screen to commend my victory.
Who is this fun for? Me. This is fun for me.
An endless number of videos and forum posts are dedicated to the use of "cheese" strategies in games.
But why is this fun? After all, this type of play is often considered “low skill”. There was no intricate dance between combatants; there were no parries or close calls dodged at the last second. I did not get to feel the rhythm of the music as my foe wound up their ultimate attack, and I did not experience the tension of scrambling at low health to eke out a drink of Estus.
Despite missing these moments, I have found something else to latch on to: the process of a plan coming together. There is something so rewarding about the act of preparation as an expression of power, where familiarity with a game’s systems and optimization of abilities allow players to express themselves in their own way. If a character is leveled just right, the equipment used is carefully chosen, and the plan of action has already been decided, the player can come out ahead, and they can know it before the battle ever begins. There is value in that planning and dedication.
So when Nate Shearer asked me (as part of his “Encritification” project) whether the act of “cheesing” is a failure of the game or the player, I had to wonder what constitutes cheesing something, and if these moments are failures at all.
In most instances, a “cheese strat” is simply a strategy deployed by a player that produces results beyond what one would expect for the level of mechanical skill or effort shown. Beating a boss easily through preparation rather than mechanical execution is one way in which the phrase is often deployed, but it can be used in other contexts as well, such as circumventing intended puzzles or pathways through unexpected means.
If a character is leveled just right, the equipment used is carefully chosen, and the plan of action has already been decided, the player can come out ahead, and they can know it before the battle ever begins. There is value in that planning and dedication.
This phrase is commonly deployed as an argument by one party to persuade the other party (or parties) that the technique in question ought not be used on some moral grounds. This is a direct result of many people having tied their own personal worth and personality up into the games they have played and how they play them. They wear the act of beating a game the “right” way as a badge of honor, as a means to distinguish themselves as a true gamer, above the rabble.
But who gets to decide the “correct” ways of playing a game? Developers set the parameters, and players engage with the material through them. Playing the game in a non-competitive environment in a way that values mechanical skill over in-game function is valid, but not something that can or should be extrapolated to all players. Parry builds in Elden Ring are no more valid than sorcery builds, and the only limitation on their value is a personal determination of what feels most fun to each individual player. Posting aura-farming clip compilations of parries and slow walks toward a foe is engaging content, but it is not a prescription for the correct method of play.
So, when is deployment of a cheesy strategy a failure? On the developer side, it may be considered a design failure if the interaction is entirely unintended, but it must also undermine the core gameplay or design ethos. Players using all available tools as intended is not a design failure, even if it trivializes encounters.
For players, I generally hold that the only way cheesing a fight or game could be considered a failure is if they have diminished their own joy or experience through the use of such strategies, and such a determination can only be made by the player themselves. Outside parties don’t really have a voice here, even if they object to the strategies utilized (within the bounds of the game). What one player does in their game should not diminish what another feels or accomplishes on their end.
An example of a Gamer™ using "cheese" as an excuse for their loss.
Multiplayer games have their own concerns regarding balance and player retention when confronted with “cheap” or “cheesy” strategies. There will always be predominant strategies, but allowing for multiple avenues for success is key. “Cheese” strategies that are comparatively too effective or exploit the game in unintended ways must be quickly patched out. Their inclusion is a developer failure, and not the fault of the player. The point of competitive games is to win, and unless pre-established rules are being broken by a “cheese” strategy, a player’s adoption of those strategies is not on the player themselves.
Outside of unintended exploitations, the phrase is generally levied by the types of people you’d see featured on Scrub Quotes. Unable to cope with losing in a way they could not foresee, they cast aspersions on the opposing party to diminish the opponent’s victory. In such cases, the only failure is on the part of the loser who was unable to comprehend the strategy or adapt to it. Rather than finding ways to counter these so-called “cheese strats”, the player makes a plea for their elimination.
But not all communities react in this way. In fact, many embrace these strategies as a core component of the game itself, given proper context. The speedrunning community is perhaps the most prominent of these adopters. Making use of glitches, broken strategies, or exploiting a game’s systems to the fullest effect are all part and parcel of speedruns, and discovery of those strategies and exploits over time is a big part of the fun for those communities.
Take a game like Mario Kart, for instance. Racers are always looking for ways to decrease their time on any given track, and players scour every corner of a map looking for new ways to shave off a second on their time trial, including bypassing track barriers or skipping sections. Finding these is a labor of love — the people engaging in the practice are doing so because they love the game and they love to compete in their mastery of the mechanics. In doing so, these players construct a whole new layer of narrative over the game — one born not from the script, but from the act of play itself.
Story is quite often pigeonholed as the written, explicit narrative of a game as dictated by cutscenes or text boxes. But in video games, we shape our own stories through our play. What abilities you use, how you build out your characters, the strategies that you employ — or don’t employ — all tell a story. They shape our experiences as players. More than that, they can shape the perception or thought processes of the character we play.
Having your RPG character lean into taking the path of least resistance at all times can become a defining trait, something you can embody through play as much as selecting choices on a screen. Conversely, maybe your character (or yourself) likes to do things the hard way, getting up close and personal with a foe and whittling them down over time.
Opening up these avenues for expression ultimately allows players to craft their own story and form attachments to the game, its characters, and its systems. This is true even if one approach is ultimately more powerful or less mechanically intensive than the alternatives.
What abilities you use, how you build out your characters, the strategies that you employ — or don’t employ — all tell a story. They shape our experiences as players. More than that, they can shape the perception or thought processes of the character we play.
I’ve come to understand that players engaging with the systems at hand and trivializing them does not necessarily constitute a failure on anyone’s part, so long as the interactions utilized are intended. In many cases, I don't see the unintended interactions as a big failure either, unless the game is in such an egregious state that bugs are easily triggered or the game is fundamentally broken in some way.
The developers have made a work of art and asked players to abide by specific parameters of play. There is a level of buy-in that must be accepted as a baseline, but ultimately, how those players then engage with the games is up to them. It is a conversation between the creator and the interpreter. As long as the player is having fun — multiplayer caveats aside — nobody has been failed by the execution of a plan.
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