Of course, this is a double-edged sword, as poorly-educated fools with a thin grasp of the English language can in some cases serve as an annoyance so powerful, not even disembowelling their virtual avatar can appease the recipient of their whiny pleas. It’s ridiculous to even assume that such poor players can disrespect your playing ability with a straight face. They’re lying to themselves, and no matter how many times you kill them or explain to them the farce that is their ability to suck, they’ll continue to rub in your face that time they barely killed you because you went to make a sandwich and left yourself in a vulnerable position. Damn them.

And the language, too; trash talk begs originality, as an over-use of the F word bounces off most targets in very much the same way a rubber-coated bullet doesn’t. Terms like “faggot” and “bastard” get thrown around almost as frequently, as does the more British and surprisingly potent combination “faggot bastard”, whereas “arsebag shitehook” is somewhat more rare. Adjectives are equally important in trash talk, with adjectives describing actions second most prevalent, behind “fucking” and its millions of potential uses. Consider how many times players online have called you a “fucking noob”. It gets dull, doesn’t it? Now consider how many times you’ve been called a “cow-fingering arsebag shitehook”. It’s a significantly lower number, isn’t it?

Like I’ve said, trash talk is important for keeping players in the game. A careful balance is required in order to keep the player determined to prove himself to the other players – after all, true gamers don’t game to prove themselves to friends or family, they game to prove themselves to absolute strangers – while not frustrated enough to ragequit. Originality in trash talk helps: more original slurs can be more entertaining than aggravating, helping both sides of the balance, whereas the more vulgar and “traditional” comments tend to be seen more as bad sportsmanship and the mark of a sore loser, ruining a game experience for all involved.

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1. I killed the little sisters.

Scary little girls creep me out. I don’t like seeing them in games and film, and when they do happen to crop up, they really ought to leave ASAP. Unfortunately for me (and them), there were an awful lot in BioShock, with the temptation of killing and harvesting them always on my mind. I don’t believe I’m a bad person; they just scared me and I wanted their damn ADAM. I regret it now, after experiencing the “bad” ending and realising saving the Little Sisters would have resulted in a better outcome.

2. I blew up Megaton

I’m a gamer, and like many other gamers, I love explosions. Especially huge nuclear explosions. Fallout 3 tempted us gamers by giving us two options: defuse the nuke lying in the middle of the post-apocalyptic town, or detonate it and wipe the entire settlement off the face of an already barren planet. Since I’m writing this now, you should be able to guess which I chose.

3. I drowned Guest 273

Rollercoaster Tycoon is a lot more intense than people give it credit for. Theme parks are a dangerous place, and not everything’s fun and games… unless you particularly enjoying picking up guests and dipping them in your artificial lake like some kind of sadistic god. Those tiny pixelated eyes of the anonymous theme park goer were surely contorted with sadness when I accidentally left him in the lake too long. That little red notification of “Guest 273 has drowned” will stay with me for the rest of my life.

4. I kicked Ned Flanders and ran from the law

The Simpsons: Hit & Run is like the bastard child of Matt Groening’s brainchild and adult-only video game Grand Theft Auto. Sending popular Simpsons characters on dubious jobs involving minors driving cars and collecting illegal Chinese fireworks, Hit & Run had an interesting feature: kicking people. Yep, if crushing them with your vehicle isn’t enough, you can disembark and kick them over. They won’t die, so you can just wait until they get back up and kick them again. Unfortunately the police don’t like this, and too many public beatings could mean a car chase. Blowing up the police cars sounds like a good solution to this trouble, and that’s exactly what I managed to do. Yeah, I’m a virtual fugitive. I kicked Ned Flanders and then I ran from the law.

5. I didn’t resuscitate my girlfriend in time

Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is definitely one of the best DS games available in terms of narrative, graphic style, and innovation. Unfortunately I’m not the most open-minded person in the world and I failed to resuscitate Mila in a particularly tense sequence. Sure, I quickly hit the power button and redid things better, but I can’t help feeling that in one virtual Hotel Dusk dimension, Kyle Hyde left alone, and I’m responsible for that.

Now that I’ve shared five of my grievances, feel free to do the same. What have you done in a video game that you regretted either immediately or in the long run? Anecdotes from non-linear games are preferred; “killing GlaDOS” or “euthanising my only friend” aren’t great examples because everybody was forced to do them to complete the game (in this case, Portal). Be original. What did you consciously decide to do and why did you regret it?