God Modders
NO GODMODDING ! JEEZ I HATE THIS
—Redsonic, not knowing he would start a Puzzle Pirates forum fad
The third of the trinity of gameplay Fan Dumb, along with Scrubs and "Stop Having Fun!" Guys.
A God Modder is a particularly nasty variation of a Scrub or Noob, one that has been perfecting their "skills" to the point where they start to act like a god among gamers, infallible in their judgment and knowing far more about whatever game they're playing than older, more experienced gamers.
In a counterpart to the symmetry between the Scrub and the "Stop Having Fun!" Guys (one hates you winning, the other hates you for not playing to win), if the Scrub is the guy who claims that someone else's legitimate tactic is a bug exploit and whines endlessly for it to be patched, then a Godmodder is the guy who claims that his bug exploit is a perfectly valid tactic and will whine endlessly when it's patched.
The contrast between a Godmodder and a Stop Having Fun Guy is tricky to define, but can be viewed as the distinction between someone who cheats to win and somebody who merely plays to win, sans obvious cheating; although "tournament legal" (i.e., non-Game Breaker) bug exploits may be allowed in the Stop Having Fun Guy's mind, the Godmodder relies almost entirely on game breakers or exploits.
Most notorious on MMORPG and other online MUCK games, but can also extend to any game that can be played by more than one person, God Modders usually use unorthodox, underhanded, and oftentimes generally sleazy tricks to gain an advantage, always justifying their actions as just another trick one can use to "properly" play the game. This can include but is not limited to-
- Pulling their own connection when it's evident that they'll lose (and, thus, prevent the loss from counting against them officially)
- Killing their own teammates to get the lion's share of upgrades/experience points, etc.
Fortunately, there are ways to subvert a God Modder without becoming one yourself, but those usually elicit an angry backlash from the God Modder that you obviously had to be cheating in order to beat them. Many times, they lack as much of a clue as they did as normal Noobs, and will often do incredibly stupid things in order to force a win for themselves, which further irritates the other players. They may even have some lucrative cracking skills, which makes them even more dangerous than usual. Fortunately most of these so called "hackers" are nothing more than Script Kiddies, using a cheat program made by someone else. This still makes them annoying, but they don't tend to possess the same level of understanding or sophistication.
Because of how disruptive they can be for a game, God Modders are usually banned from a game's server (if it's played online or through a LAN), or ostracized by their gaming friends. Depending on how skilled the God Modder's cracking abilities are, the typical rebuttal to this ranges from angry letters of discrimination and/or unfair treatment to outright virulent cracks of the network they were kicked off of (or the accounts of their former friends). Best to just stay as far away from their firing line as possible and report them to the game network's administrators at the first sign of trouble.
The term comes from god moderating, a tendency for website and network moderators to go a little overboard when policing the website/network, sometimes to the point of abusing their power. Of course, for the most part, God Modders aren't even moderators, though they act like they are. It can also come from "god modifying", a tendency for players creating a Game Mod to go overboard with their creations. It differs from Godmoding, with a single d, which is the practice of playing a more freeform game in an unfair way, such as using out-of-character knowledge to make in-character decisions, or calling the actions of something controlled by another player. That version's name comes from 'God Mode,' referring to video game invincibility cheats.
Contrast with God Moders, which are often mistakenly referred to as God Modders.