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, 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 the
Scrub and the
Stop Having Fun Guy (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-
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.
Contrast with
God Moders, which are
often mistakenly referred to as
God Modders. God
Moding, with a single D, 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.
