We want to trust our friends and family, but sometimes they lie to us. Sometimes, they troll us. What follows are the funny (and tragic) stories people shared with me about gaming gone awry. No one will be surprised to learn many happen to involve a big brother being a jerk.
This all started when I was scrolling through the Dark Souls subreddit and found this gem:
Immediately after sharing this story on Twitter, a follower shared a similar story of deception:
In Metal Gear Solid, smoking cigarettes slowly depletes your health over time. Poor guy!
The game was afoot. I put out the call for more of these stories and was rewarded by learning some of my followers are total monsters and others may need to look into therapy sessions.
I frequently stream horror games on the Internet, and one of my biggest fears is my wife will burst into the room and scare the crap out of me. So far, this hasn't happened, but she keeps the threat alive. One day, it will happen. One day, the Internet will watch me cry on a livestream.
This one's so cruel because it's so damn believable. In Eternal Darkness, players expected the game to mess with them. In fact, one of the sanity effects is where the TV appears to turn off!
Justin, you have bad friends, but I have to respect their commitment to the joke, especially since there's an implication this happened multiple times, and you went on hours of pointless quests.
You, sir, are one of history's greatest monsters. Thank you for doing what you do. That said, I'm surprised people had the dedication to head back to shore. Don't you have to tap a button to swim at full-speed, too? Does that mean people were tapping a button for eight minutes? Dude!
Truly a classic. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I fell for that during Counter-Strike one time.
I believe I've saved the best for last, though it comes with a caveat. There are spoilers for Earthbound. If you haven't played one of the greatest JRPGs ever played, you might want to skip this one. Then again, it's so damn funny, I'd recommend you just keep on reading anyway.
Last warning! Spoilers for Earthbound are coming! Alert! Alert! I'm no longer at fault!
Okay, here we go.
So, you know how the final battle requires you to finally use the "pray" option? It's a mostly useless battle tool for healing a few HP, but you quickly forget it even exists. Thing is, it's the key to finishing Earthbound, and part of why the ending's so touching. Please keep this in mind...
Please continue, Donald.
This is all I can think about while reading this tweet.
Step up, Kotaku! How have you been trolled? Or, more likely, how have you trolled others?
You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.