Not me, but there’s a great example of this in chess.

There’s an opening called the Bongcloud. You move the pawn in front of your king out for your first move, and then for your second move you move your king up a square. It’s memed as being the strongest opening possible, but it’s actually almost the worst 2 opening moves you can possibly make. Because modern chess does have a large online component and the current best players are young and like memes, it has been played in tournaments, which means that if you play it in an up to date chess programme the programme will name it as the Bongcloud.

A lot of people seem to think that it’s called the Bongcloud because you’d have to be stoned to play it. But almost all chess openings are named after one of three things: a person, a place, or an animal. In this case, the Bongcloud is named after a person - Lenny Bongcloud.

Lenny Bongcloud is a now-inactive user of chess.com. He would always open with the moves described above. That’s because, unbeknownst to them, Lenny wasn’t playing the same game as his opponents. They were trying to checkmate him. He was trying to walk his king to the opposite side of the board as quickly as possible. If he gets checkmated, he loses. If he gets his king to the other side of the board he counts it as a victory and resigns.

So, yeah. One of the oldest known games in the world has an opening the “official” name of which comes from a jokey alias adopted by someone who was deliberately playing the game wrong.

I beat X-COM: Enemy Unknown by sniping the final boss in the first turn with an 8% headshot through a door. In the process, I skipped what I discovered later was a room full of aliens you were supposed to fight before taking out that enemy.

Well, given that a lot of people in this thread are basically just saying " go sight seeing / abandon storyline and embrace roleplaying "…

I’m gonna go with basically “do anything” in Kenshi.

There is no thing you are supposed to be doing, beyond possibly ‘don’t die’.

There is no main storyline to follow.

You… just exist.

You can sure find a lot of things to do, places to see, and people to meet, basically quests to undertake… but that is all entirely up to you.

So there is no wrong, or right way to play Kenshi.

The world just kind of… happens to you, and then you react.

Or, maybe you have some notion of what you want to do, and then you try to do, and then the world happens to you during that.

Imagine either a single player MMO, or an immersive sim that focuses on an immerisive world of factions and individuals, which can play out many possible ways, which you can guide and steer those outcomes… but nothing ‘has’ to happen, there are no threads of prophecy that cannot be severed.

Theoretically, you could kill basically everyone… maybe?

You could build a city, run some kind of farm or mining operation, become a warlord, raise and command an army, wander as a trader or trading caravan, hunt for lore and artefacts, become the strongest warrior, best thief or assassin…

… or be eaten by cannibals or beak things, experience robot racism, be taken captive and forced into literal slavery at a prison camp, have your limbs peeled off, replace them with robot limbs, get incinerated by a misfiring orbital laser platform… or befriend a mentally challenged … sort of bugmanthing who has been outcast from his hive, but is very endearing…

Or just be friends with a bonedog.

I have actually seen one Japanese youtuber basically just turn their playthrough of Kenshi into a kind of semi-improvised anime.

They’ll have 15 to 30 minute episodes and write in some dialogue for their 2 person party, and then have a vocaloid type thing speak it, and they’ll do like ren py visual novel framing / blocking, overlaid on top of the game, with more detailed drawn art of the characters.

Unexpected shit happens fairly frequently, and they just roll their characterization along with it, into a semi ad libbed plot/narrative.

That… is a ‘way’ to play Kenshi.

Oh man this made me dust off an old memory

There was a PS2 game my dad had called Dirt to Daytona. It’s a racing game where you’re supposed to play the career mode going from driving dirt track beaters to modifieds, trucks and finally becoming a pro nascar racer. You can tweak the cars, paint them, and try to get sponsors to fund you before your money dries up.

It was a cool game, but all I did was play the quick race mode. I would turn off all the caution flags and played it as a crash and pit manuver simulator lol

In Super Sprint arcade, on the track below, once I get enough lead up on the 3rd or 4th lap, I would enter the red arrow 360 loop and then just keep spinning the steering-wheel left. This makes the car do 2-3 donuts around the loop, until going out of control backwards to explode into the barrier.

Always worth it.

Not me but my friend. In any game that has a crafting component they will hone in, ignore the story, and just play the crafting. If it has a marketplace they will sell their creations and basically become an NPC shopkeeper for other people.

New Super Mario Bros. (For the Nintendo DS), in the multiplayer battle mode.

There is a multiplayer mode where you fight over collecting stars in 6 different maps, using the main game’s mechanics and powerups.

In one of these maps, there are bullet bill launchers. One of the powerups is a mini mushroom that makes you tiny, and when you are tiny you just harmlessly bounce of enemies when you jump on them instead of killing them. That lets you ride the bullet bill, repeatedly bouncing off it. The multiplayer maps loop, so you do this indefinitely, and every time you get back to the launcher, it will add another bullet to your train.

My brother and I would deliberately avoid collecting stars, and instead try to make the longest bullet train and try to stay in the air as long as possible.

I’ve never completed the main quest line in any Elder Scrolls game.

The majority of my playtime in Oblivion was spent breaking into NPC houses and stealing their shit. I’d stalk targets based on who had the most valuables in their pockets when I’d see them wandering in the cities. I basically played the game as a stealing simulator, only ever completing the Thieves guild quest line and the Dark Brotherhood line when I wanted to be add some murder to my thieving.

I don’t think this is uncommon with the Elder Scrolls games.

Sorta along the same lines, but, I love how differently my husband and I play Rust. He’s on his official server doing what the game is meant for, and I’m just on my pVE building a villa/farm.

We need the farm update on console. I need pies and chickens. With the jungle update, my Lenovo Go can no longer handle Rust at all, so I’m back on console. It’s missing some of my favorite features for farm build. I want to chase a chicken for that elusive egg fresh after wipe! And the flowers! Oh…

The Witcher 3 is just an RPG minigame you can play between rounds of Gwent.

Picking up taxi passengers in GTA V is fun. Especially when I drive them off a cliff.

Honestly, any “hard game”. I really love hard and challenging games but time isn’t in my favor (work, commuting and other responsibilities). So when I play a hard game (example Silksong) and I’m genuinely stuck, I’ll just use a Trainer or WeMod to get past it and after that stop using it and continue the game normally.

I love just driving around doing nothing in Cyberpunk 2077.

Back in the early Sim days (~97?), I lived with a bunch of friends in a duplex and shared one house computer (always on, seeding, etc.) that had a perpetual session running. Any housemate at any time could pop down to check on their Sims, some more than others. Me, though? Not at all.

It took them months to talk me into it, and even then I gave in, exasperated. So, I decided to be the weird house. Started with a second floor on stilts/pillars and made the first floor a hedge garden & statuary promenade with a pool out back. At first, it was funny to see the random burglars have no idea what to do with a front door that opened directly to stairs —and that’s only if they found the front door before wandering into the hedge maze. IIRC, they despawn eventually (environmental effect, not actual Sims), but I didn’t expect the neighbors to wander over and into that maze…

Quite a while went by before I logged in again to check on my crime family, and it was really only inspired by a few housemates complaining the game was losing their Sims or something. When I looked in on my house, I soon found their Sims… A couple of them had yet to succumb to their neglect, but most died of starvation and/or fire inside the unintentional maze under my house.

Oops 😅🥹

Stellaris. I cheat and mod to put my empire in the middle of the galaxy and have extremely overpowered player-only technologies. Then I just explore the galaxy and guide the AI; usually picking a favorite and try to help them grow e.g. a peaceful uplifted species in a very hostile galaxy. I’ve also done this in multiplayer where I played a bit of a Game Master role. Built a quest line as part of my custom mod that had lore and let players slowly discover me and the galactic core (cut off from the hyperlane network; this was all custom scripted before mods like the birchworld existed on the workshop)

When I was a kid I would play driver 3 but I hated the driving part and would mostly walk. I also played a skateboard game and ditch the board, dress up like a spy or specops guy, and run around roleplaying various scenarios in my imagination (because I didn’t have any games at the time that would let me stealth or run on rooftops, which is all I wanted)