For those of you who don't know, there is a way in Battlefield: Bad Company (BFBC) to exploit a game mechanic that allows the exploiter to get way more points than would normally be possible. A lot of people call using a glitch to get tons of points "boosting."

I won't tell you exactly how to boost, but it is sufficient to say that if you flip over a vehicle and repair it continuously you can get a lot of points. If, in BFBC, you see someone driving around a vehicle away from the action, trying to flip it over, they are probably trying to boost.

I've decided to make a couple tutorial videos for BFBC because I am a big fan of the series and I think a lot of people are not that familiar with some of the finer details because there has only been one other Battlefield game for consoles. Eventually, I will make a video for each kit discussing the kit's strengths and weakness, and hopefully giving some helpful tips.

So I've been recording video of me playing BFBC and while I was playing I noticed someone on my team boosting. Normally, I don't give a second thought to boosters, if they want to cheat in games that don't involve me, let them. But, when you're screwing our team by just goofing around the whole match, that upsets me. I did my best to stop the guy, check out the video below.

Here is the url: http://youtube.com/watch?v=7e1eAisrBsg

I tried to give the guy negative feedback but he is already off my recently played with players list because this happened a couple days ago.

Personally, I dislike boosting but not to the point I get really upset about it. However, if you're not helping our team because you're too busy trying to get your buddy to help you boost, that bothers me.

It is probably impossible for game developers to completely stop boosting considering that people in random matches in Halo 3 would let other people kill them so everyone can get their achievements. The same thing has happened in Team Fortress 2. People make maps just for getting achievements, so it is not console specific. But when people take shortcuts to getting an achievement or rank, it makes the whole system irrelevant.

Other than making the game perfectly so it would be impossible to boost, it could be possible for people to get banned from Xbox Live or the Playstation Network. The only thing would be that if there was a false positive, if Microsoft banned someone that actually didn't boost, that person would be really pissed off and the community would probably be upset.

Developers could do a lot more to stop boosting. Specifically, they could stop making items unlock when you get a certain amount of points or kills. I think this is one of the biggest reasons why people boost. They want all the guns, outfits, etc. You know almost everyone you see with the samurai sword in Halo 3 cheated to get it, but it still looks cool. But the question is, is it more fun to boost and get a cool, hard to unlock if you don't cheat item, or is it more fun for that item to be unlocked from the beginning. I actually think it is more fun to cheat in this case.

People will always find ways to cheat but the only realistic way to prevent a big percentage of that cheating is for the community of gamers to stop it themselves. Sometimes, stopping people from boosting is easy, like in BFBC. If you see someone out of the action, trying to flip a jeep, go get in their way for a while and they will eventually get frustrated and stop. When it is more difficult to stop the person, the best thing you can do is take a screen shot if you can, or give them negative feedback. The community uprising against boosting obviously hasn't happened (there is a still a lot of boosting going on). I think the reason we don't do more to stop boosters is that the community as a whole doesn't care. Most people want to get to the top rank as fast as possible and unlock all the achievements and items even if they have to cheat. I can't fault them, everyone has a right to play the game how they want after spending their $60.

In the end, it is a myth that the gaming community and game developers are outraged about boosting. A select few are, but most people don't care that much, as long as the boosting isn't so bad that it breaks the game. Personally, I'm going to continue to try to stop people when I see them boosting in BFBC, but I am not going to send out a bunch of angry emails or posts about it.