Well, this may sound like a tangent, but I think it touches on some secondary topics here:
Playing for novelty, as a priority, poisons one's mind and greatly limits their potential to say anything of value. Someone who treats their many videogames as a buffet should be dismissed out of hand in any semi-serious discussion (any thread where a good poster contributes and isn't just fucking around).
I think it is commonly overlooked that videogames require a form of discipline (or conditions which force it) to get the most out of them. In a world where people can hoard a thousand F2P/cheap steam/etc. games and fill up their emulator folders (with options to breeze through these games no less), it is all too easy for passion to be replaced by a learned desire to waste time. (And if what I'm saying sounds like something that can be applied outside videogames, that's because it is.)
Some self-titled "core" gamers on GAF don't even realize they are actually treating videogames as "time-wasters" - just like the casuals on phones they may or may not mock. That's not a passion for videogames; that's filling a void in absence of passion - unacknowledged apathy (is it really a surprise GAF has become bigger than gaming for some people?). When you are just trying to waste-time with minimal investment (little patience for any meaningful obstacles), novelty (including false innovation, "art-games", reversing values, etc.) is king, as it is something that can be observed and appreciated even with uninitiated eyes.
I first noticed this phenomenon sometime around my freshman year of high school when a friend of mine did the most amazing thing: he summoned a seemingly endless number of playable arcade roms (countless good games and plenty of peerless classics) onto any school PC he could get his hands on. He then proceeded to play and credit-feed through a dozen of them each day, assuming he didn't get the sudden urge to play something else while in the middle of one. Despite how incomplete his experiences were, he never played the same game twice. Here were some of the best action games released and they had become completely disposable and forgettable. While the credit-feeding no doubt played a big role in this process, I will instead blame two other things. First, the sheer amount of options meant that the optimal rate of novelty doesn't consist of playing of one game, but rather playing as many games as possible in smaller chunks (this is perfectly reasonable to a point, as variety is the spice of life, but variety is not merely novelty). If you don't have the discipline to handle such a large pool, you'll become a insatiable glutton for the next flashy (most novel) thing you know you can have right this instant. Second, he was using MAME to burn up the time he spent at school (another source of apathy), which is a different way to approach gaming. This sounds pretty specific, but I would say it is not too dissimilar from people using videogames to eat up some brief time after work (a potentially energy-consuming ordeal that may leave one without passions if it isn't one) - the most beloved excuse for scrubiness, in any case. Basically, dedication and deeper understanding was never going to be part of the picture.
Mind you, we both expressed our love (and used much of our time) for videogames, but I couldn't help but use these observations to mark an unspoken difference between us (an understanding made at the time that may very well be why I see videogames the way I do now, years later).
Anyway, cheating your way through is worse than never reaching passed a certain level. It is a question of debasing the game or not, which in the process debases yourself. It is better to just play (but never settle) for an easier game or look within to gain an appreciation for your struggling - even if that means, yes, there is less novelty of graphics and sounds to be had because you are only playing the first three levels.
