A Site Where Cheaters Can Prosper

Shiny Entertainment’s Web site has pictures of the Laguna Beach company’s computer games, a link for sending company employees e-mail and even a list of job openings.

But the reason many people visit https://www.shiny.com is to learn how to cheat on the company’s games.

Shiny, which created the hugely successful Earthworm Jim game, uses its Web site to publish what programmers call “cheat codes,” but what players call “tricks” or “tips.”

These are secret key combinations that players can punch in at the start of a game in order to gain an illicit edge. Some combinations let players skip levels, others provide an endless supply of lives, extra bullets or the ability to run faster and jump higher.

“We build them in for ourselves, so that we can test a game without having to play it all the way through,” said David Perry, president of Shiny. “But it’s kind of getting to an extreme with cheat codes because [game magazines] just publish them every month. There is even a magazine called ‘Tricks and Tips.’ ”

Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of designing elaborate and challenging games?

“You bet,” Perry said. “It makes people impatient. Every time someone gets stuck, they just get the cheat code and they’re done.”

So why does the company cooperate by publishing the codes?

“There is another side to it,” he said. “Some children might not be able to get past a certain stage in the game, and they’ll call up and say ‘I just can’t do this.’ It’s kind of cruel not to help them.”

In fact, he said, Shiny started publishing the codes on its Web site partly to reduce the avalanche of phone calls the company used to get from players pleading for help. Shiny doesn’t make the codes available right away after the release of a new game, but doles them out slowly over a period of months.

The increasing reliance on cheat codes also reflects the growing popularity of game rentals at Blockbuster Video and other outlets. “If you rent a game, you need to beat that game tonight,” Perry said, “because it’s going back tomorrow.”

Greg Miller covers high technology for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at greg.miller@latimes.com