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Summary
Score list hacking is not an 3l33t (elite) sport. Real "hackers" look down on this group of people as if they were barely functional script kiddies. This is because most score lists can be hacked with no real work or knowledge of computer systems. The rest of the world considers score list hacking to be nothing more than cheating, and despise score list hackers because they just make life more difficult for the honest players.
While these arguments are valid, reverse-engineering a game and altering its hex code—to then use it in a DNS spoofed attack against a web site, in order to inject a script that redirects players to another web site, which installs a backdoor via a vulnerability in Internet Explorer—is not your typical script kiddie hack. SQL injection, covert channels, and XSS are all very popular subjects in the security community. Each of these types of attacks is serious enough for Bugtraq, DEF CON, and Black Hat. Just because the vector is a score list, that doesn't make it less of an issue. In fact, one could reason that it's more of an issue simply because no one expects to be attacked when playing games. An attacker's best chance for success is to make victims think they're safe, and there's no better time for this than when the victim is goofing off and playing games!