Okay, maybe this is getting into the darker side of adventure gaming, but I'm curious... what's your favorite moment of deception in a game?

I don't mean by other characters, but where you had to fool another character to "borrow" an inventory item or solve a puzzle?

The hardest was in Gabriel Knight Three, when I had to steal, my friends passport. Really hard and really went against my personal grain.
Charllotte

I enjoyed Oliver Lavisheart's disguises in 80 Days.

I guess I'd say when I had to fool that scientist at the abandoned house by using blue ink from a fountain pen in a flask of water to make him think it was that oxidant, or whatever chemical compound that he needed in order to solve a puzzle or get some info. This was at the manor in the third chapter of The Black Mirror (first game in the series) that I was playing at a friend's house this past Tues evening.

To tell the truth, I didn't feel right about fooling this scientist, but, I guess the game world has bizarre rules about getting ahead, just as the real world has similar bizarre rules that people have to follow in order to get ahead.

Another such rule I recall recently was tricking the blind man in the Salted Cheek pub of Alter Ego, another game that I played recently.

Interesting responses. Maybe I worded it badly, but what I wasn't looking for moments which you disdained. If there was a moment where you must plot a clever trick, and it felt justified, that's fine.

I for one, like the freedom. I don't want to be judged by the main character for what I make him or her do. I was actually annoyed by one game in which the character felt so PC and ethical and had to justify borrowing every item.

One of the moments I liked because it was so outrageous and brilliant, was when in one game you had to move some traffic signs to cause a truck full of diapers to go off road. This of course was to soak up some water, so you could buy an island (on an ultra-tight budget), and evict the owner. It was so you end up saving the earth.

Lately, I've been playing casual games, but the ones I've played seem to be lacking in that sort of thing.

You may be coming up against a generation of very strict "manners" type of discipline here, Coreoverload. I found I almost couldn't make it through The Last Express just because it felt so rude to sneak into people's compartments in the train while they were at dinner! I had to keep telling myself: "It's only a game!"

Becky,
You're right, that we have to keep telling our selves it's a game. So is our generation showing, ie, age? If so, so be it. I still play and hope I've only done so in games.
Charllotte

Since I've played so many games that demanded it in order to get to the end of them, I have no feelings of guilt whatsoever in sneaking around, stealing and altogether misbehaving

Must confess I have no guilt.
Oh, aside from the little rat-strapped-to-dynamite ploy in Niberu. I didn't care for that much.

As for a favorite, I'd say in Egypt II, when you have to sneak past the pacing guard:)

Oh, that rat puzzle was terrible. I hated having to do that! I also didn't like making that poor guy think he'd won the lottery in Secret Files: Tunguska. And locking Stan in the coffin in Monkey Island 2 was quite disturbing, as well as sending Ben off to the bear in Runaway 2. (Interesting that in spite of these things, MI2 and Runaway 2 are both my favorites in their respective series.)

Now, I actually love sneaking around in games, which may say something about me, I don't know. Of course, I would never do anything like that in reality, because it is unethical not to mention I'd have no interest anyway, but for some reason, in games I find it so much fun to sneak around and discover other characters' secrets. I loved the sneaking section in GK3, going through each characters' room when they weren't around and discovering clues. And to go way back, in The Colonel's Bequest (Laura Bow 1) one of my favorite parts of that game was finding the secret passageways and listening in on the conversations. Maybe it's just the unraveling mysteries aspect that appeals to me.

"And locking Stan in the coffin in Monkey Island 2 was quite disturbing"
Oh, not for me !! I thought that was hilarious

[ I must be pretty evil, eh ?? ]

Actions taken in a cartoon-like comedy game feel different to me than actions taken in a realistic, serious game. I guess that means my moral system is too relativistic?

Now I'm not sure whether I AM evil or not ????

Think about Alter Ego, Mad. How did you feel about being a complete jerk in that?

Gil.

Yep, these days (now that I'm en route to becoming a computer tech w/ networking skills, mind you, my school goal is to get educated in this field so I can get a job) I no longer take my gameplay as seriously as I did before I signed up to go back to school this past April of 2011. In the past, back when I had to rely on others to come to the house and fix my computer I took my gameplaying so seriously that I wanted to actually live my game adventures, such as waking up in the morning, getting dressed, eat breakfast, and then leave the house and go out somewhere in real life to do what we do in adventure games for about a day, and then return home b/c in those days, I had no job, and the games were the only thing that I had (although I had my mom, my friends, family,) to fill the boring days siting at home and collecting monthly Social Security Disability checks.



Me, I didn't mind the rat puzzle in Tunguska - after all, a rat is only an animal, and an animal is not equal to a person, that is, people are a lot more valuable than animals are. But that guy and the lottery thing in Tunguska - I haven't played this game since way before this past April, but I'd imagine that, if you did this in real life that lottery guy would be upset, and/or very angry that he was fooled. However, the very first time I played Tunguska in 2008 tricking the lottery guy never bothered me, but today I believe it might give me a twinge of guilt. But this would never stop me from playing the game. After all, these games can always amount to fiction stories.



Speaking of being ethical, since one of the computer books I ordered a year ago at this time talks about being an ethical computer tech, I took this seriously, and this is likely why doing unethical stuff to people in games is starting to make me feel a bit guilty these days - but like I said above, before I got serious about becoming a tech, being unethical in games never bothered me one little teeny tiny bit.



Me, having recently played Alter Ego, I played the thief (Tim) and the righteous guy (the Detective), I felt sort of dirty playing Tim, but this never bothered me before starting school this past semester; and when I played the Detective I felt a lot cleaner.

Interesting. IMO, the detective was a dolt. Dumb as a box of rocks. But I don't suppose that counts as being sneaky or deceptive.

Gil.

After about five minutes of Alter Ego I gave up on it so I never got to feel anything

Well, I thought it was hysterical the first time I played it. But after I played it numerous times, I started to notice things like the fact that I couldn't let him out afterward and he would probably suffocate in there, that is if the third game hadn't rectified that. I started noticing the darker aspects of the game more, but that's also what made it my favorite in the series as well, so it wasn't that big a deal.



Well, the first two games really weren't cartoony from my point of view, except for some minor animations in the second game. I preferred that style overall, but I've accepted that Monkey Island is a cartoon series now, and it's still a lot of fun.




The rat puzzle was actually in Nibiru. And, eh, cruelty to animals really bothers me. It actually bothered me a lot more than the other things I've mentioned, although the lottery thing came close. Locking Stan in the coffin and sending Ben to the bear by contrast, didn't really bother me so much as I noticed that they were disturbing from a somewhat detached point of view. Don't know what that says about me. And of course, none of these instances turned me against the games at all.



I'll have to play Alter Ego sometime. It's a game I always wanted to try but never got to. As an actress, I always really enjoy playing morally ambiguous characters, so I have no problem and even enjoy taking on their roles in games. Again, not sure what this says about me.

That's kind of an odd thing to say, IMO...Humans are animals too, after all. Even if I accepted the idea that all animal life has less worth then human life(which I don't) rats are VERY close to us biologically, if you compare them to cockroaches and the common cold. I kill colds all the time and have no remorse, cause colds have no nervous systems and can't feel anything. It's different with vertebrate animals, esp. mammals. To be honest, I don't really get why some people think humans are so special and are more "valuable"--sure, we've built rocketships and invented government. But what does that have to with whether we deserve to live, pain-free, more then any other sentient animal? I care much more about my well-being as an organism then whether I've built submarines. Pain is pain, and death is death, if you've got a brain to feel it with.

Anyway, on topic, there's the fact that you're always reading people's journals in adventures. ALWAYS. That's not particularly good behavior, is it?

No, but it's soooo interesting. Why doesn't reading people's letters and diaries feel like prying, when breaking into their railway compartments DOES feel like prying?

"Why doesn't reading people's letters and diaries feel like prying, when breaking into their railway compartments DOES feel like prying?"

It DOES? My only problem is that I might get caught. Maybe I should go buy Thief Gold and see how I do. I seem to have the temperament for it.

Gil.

I think I "bought in" to the Last Express a bit too much. I felt like I was really there.

By the time I played Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express (which takes place on the same train) I felt much more comfortable ignoring people's privacy. Besides, Poirot told me I could.

Now that you mention it, Poirot (as evidenced in Evil Under the Sun) never did mind rummaging through people's things to discover clues. I feel better now. <g>

Gil.

How can actions taken in a fictional game setting be compared to what might be done in real life

In real life, I can't stuff a ladder down my pants (even if I wanted to) and obviously I wouldn't dream of locking a living being in a coffin !!

But within the fictional scenarios of a game, as far as I'm aware from all the games I've played, almost any action can be considered as possible .... including poking and prying one's way round.
Because it's fictional