This is true for the most part, for me. The exception is in some RPGs I might do a second playthrough afterwards trying out the evil option, but my real full playthroughs are pretty much always good.

Depends.

If the game gives me a choice, I play good. There's nothing I can do, it's just who I am, I guess. The best (or should I say "worst"?) I can manage is a sort of rouge-ish character, Robin-Hood-type thief or the occasional pragmatic Renegade interrupt in Mass Effect.

If the game doesn't give me a choice, it's a bit different. I have no problem playing Dungeon Keeper, for example, or any other game where I have to be evil in an amusing kind of way. In more serious games, I can also play the evil part, as long as my character is presented in a sympathetic or at least relatable way.

I'm struggling, however, with straight out, irredeemable evil. The best example would be Lucius. That premise is just...I can't...I can't play that. I can't enjoy that. The first time I read an article about that game and the author described one of the puzzles, I actually felt disgusted. I wouldn't want to play that, even if it was free.

And I'm not saying that this game shouldn't exist, that you shouldn't enjoy that game or that I would think less of you if you did. Some people can easily slip into a completely different persona in game and that's perfectly fine. Point is, I can't. When I'm playing, I'm always playing an extension of myself in the game, which makes it impossible for me to go full blown, irredeemably evil.

I had trouble doing it and I was like amok with ending up with good choices anyway but I quite learnt it and I often like it more than good side. I just need to remind myself that it's just game and my victims are just pixels, not real people.

I find it very interesting in theory, but in practice it seldom works, because even when playing a villain I'd like an opportunity to identify with their personality and their motivations, and more often than not they - or the options on how they can behave - are very one-dimensional and their behavior and motives are implausible and dumb. So I think the fault is rather with bad writing and game design than with me not liking the concept per se.

Usually if I'm doing evil stuff in a game it means I'm not really taking it seriously. That's OK for dungeon keeper or Overlord (where you're not meant to take it seriously) or for when I've played a game loads and just want to see what happens (but even then I feel uncomfortable being really evil).

However, I do often take options that aren't strictly the goody two shoes ones. My characters may not be evil but they often aren't exactly the embodiment of all that is good either.

I have to admit I like being the goody goody, because that just seems to be in my nature....
But I can still go full renegade (in the Mass Effect series at least), but sometimes I do feel bad about it. And with full renegade I don't mean being an asshole now and then, it's about genocides and the like...

Oh good, now this forum is going to find out what a big pussy I really am. :P

I have tried and tried and tried and I just can't do it. I've played KOTOR as a Sith dozens of times and the farthest I ever get is Tatooine; I can't even bring myself to be mean to Jawas. Even when I'm not a bad guy. It always made me sick in Diablo 2 when my sidekick died, like I had let him/her down.

Carmageddon doesn't bother me for some reason though, or Postal. Hmmmm, better tell my shrink that one.

Depends, I usually feel bad whenever I do something evil in a game.

I recall playing Fable 2 and having a family and being good; and then going around killing random people in Bowerstone and Bloodstone (also used prostitution there too); and also trying to make myself look like the devil by eating a bunch of impure food. It's different depending on mood. Later on when I played the game I wanted to reverse all the evil I had done, somehow, or at least not look like the devil.

My main playthrough of Fable 3 was purely good; I don't recall ever killing a single civilian or doing anything evil. Then I did a second playthrough, an evil one, and I found it difficult to continue on.

On Fallout 3 I usually tried to be a good guy too. I found it much more difficult to do anything evil on there; it seemed more real to me than the Fable games. I did sometimes go on Megaton (and other places) killing sprees to test weapons and endurance, lots of fun really; I'd always load my save from before the carnage though.

Those are just a few examples, my playthroughs of Fallout 1 and 2 were similar to Fallout 3, in that I tried to be good, but did go on random innocent killing sprees and loaded the time from before I started them eventually.

Not at all. I LOVE evil paths if they're well done. Same goes for characters like, say, Kratos.

I don't mind playing villains from time to time, it has a lot to do with the given context of character actions and the tone of the game. In Fallout 2 I was role-playing basically lawful evil character, a bastard who had no problem committing to good deed only if there was some cash for it.

This is very true. Often the writing is such that the only official characters to play is as an insufferably goody character or a complete dickhead. You do sometimes get a bit of leeway for a good character to do more gray things.

Oh and even "good" characters seem to have no problem taking anything that isn't bolted down ;)

I assume these games don't do anything to make you get too attached to the people in them, they don't treat them as many-facetted personalities but rather deal in stereotypes or disposable dummies, and maybe even reward you for "evil" or chaotic deeds. Most story-telling RPGs punish you for being evil, even when you're allowed to play a villain and even when you're rewarded with xp and items for evil deeds, because at heart they're still moralistic and want you to believe that their worlds are full of "real" and "deep" characters with feelings. You might argue that this isn't the case with your Diablo henchman, but maybe you get kind of attached to him because he's helping you and the advantage in protecting him is greater than letting him die (which you might register as failure on your part, not as something amusing, since it's more challenging to keep him alive).

Anyway, that's what I meant when I was talking about game design. Most attempts at letting you play a villain are half-hearted because the devs are not fiendish enough to really mean it and try to make players feel good about the bad things they're doing. And the more a game relies on story-telling, the harder it becomes to create plausible ways to seduce the players to act destructive towards the rich world the story-telling creates, and most of the times, the authors don't really want you to destroy it (while at the same time thinking that destruction is the only possible face of "evil", everything else would be too complex).

Yeah, that's a good example of how games can train players to act good or evil and feel good or bad about it. Stealing and looting isn't registered as evil in RPG, as long as noone reacts to it, so players can both feel good and do bad things - because these things don't have any real impact in the game and players are not confronted with the consequences of their actions.

You can do that? SHIT. Man I'm gonna have nightmares about that now.

Mostly i play goody, sometimes it try both paths; like in Jade Empire i tried both ways - ying an yang; first character overly nice and second ultimate abomination, heartless evil and child eater.

In Dark Messiah, Might and Magic you must betray your own father if you want to be goody, so i played as a good son of Demon Lord :) (which s evil path of course)

PS: It must be noted that in most games, where you can choose between light or darkness, path of the light is favored by developers. It does not apply in some games, like the ones i mentioned here: Jade Empire and Dark Messiah.