The idea that one can “cheat” in a single player game is absurd to me. Cheating is something that only applies to group dynamics. Unless there is more than one of you, who exactly is cheating whom?
Even if I accept the metaphor of “cheating oneself” (do I have a split personality?), there is no cheating going on. Why?
Because the person who plays the game has their own “rules” of enjoyment and those rules trump all others. If anything, they would be “cheating themselves” if out of insecurity due to social tyranny they put up with a bunch of pointless and/or frustrating game mechanics that lower their enjoyment of the game just so they can “beat” it and acquire a false sense of self-worth through the approbation of others.
That is actually what the cheating oneself metaphor is really about. It's about a negative mental state that arises from a failure to meet external expectations. It has nothing whatsoever to do with you individually. Absent the thuggish competitive society we live in such a concept would never arise internally.
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