Here are a few more pranks you can try on your gaming buddies on All Fools Day. Or heed them as a warning to be guarded against.
11. Split Personality
Strike up a text conversation with a gaming buddy in a manner completely unlike you. You can do this by using grammatically perfect language with an extremely formal tone if you usually commit a lot of typos and use slang, for example. Try getting them to reveal some personal information. Arouse their suspicions enough to make them doubt if it’s really you. You can even try changing your avatar or User Picture to something completely unlike you to add to the charade. Challenge them to verify your identity by calling you up. When they call, pretend to not even be chatting with them and ask them to read out the chat to you. After they have done so, suggest that you might have been hacked and at the same time send a message over the chat that you have now successfully hacked their account. While they panic about this on the phone to you, you can now start laughing hysterically and inform them that they have been fooled and it was you all along. They might need a bit more convincing though. You also risk being falsely reported as hacked.
12. Start a Flame War
This one is specifically for online gaming communities since many who frequent these are vociferous fanboys. It’s best to do this with a new account. Just make a controversial statement and defend it stubbornly while others counter you. Keep at it until the argument escalates and then sit back and grab some popcorn while others argue pointlessly over some trivial thing such as which gaming platform is better. This does require you to have trolling skills and the ability to keep a calm mind even in the face of some furious mudslinging and personal attacks; otherwise, you will become a victim of your own troll. Once you’ve been entertained enough, post April Fools and grab some more popcorn.
13. The Ghost Player
This one is for gamers who live close by and needs a willing partner to help you out. Rehearsal also helps. Start a game with some other friends and then let your partner control your character. If using voice chat, you might want to use some pre-recorded messages for this. Now, just pop over to your friend’s house while they are playing with ‘you’ and express surprise at that. Spin a ghost story to serve as an explanation and ask them to sneak to your house to investigate. Meanwhile, signal your partner to play a recording of previous gameplay on your gaming screen and call them to join you in your ‘investigation’. Let your friend see the game being played by itself and express shock before you reveal that they’ve been fooled.
14. The Rigged Controller
This requires you to rig a controller’s battery such that pushing and pulling on a piece of paper can complete or break the circuit. Invite your friend over to play and hand him a working controller while using the rigged controller yourself. Lose a few games of versus to your friend and demand to switch controllers. Before handing over the rigged controller to your friend, break the circuit. When they return it saying it doesn’t work, confront them by completing the circuit and demonstrating it works. Hand it back after breaking the circuit again. Repeat a few times suggesting there might be some problem with them, or that the controller doesn’t like them, before letting them know of the prank.
15. Don’t touch the Remote
Invite a friend over or visit their place to play on the console. Install one of those Universal Remote apps on your phone or get a Universal Remote of your own. Place the TV’s remote in front of them when they start playing. Switch the TV off when they reach a critical part of the game with your Universal Remote. Before they can react, start cursing loudly and grab to remote to turn the TV back on. Be prepared for some rage, especially if this happens a few times.
16. The Voice Command Gamertag
Repurpose the voice commands of the Xbox One to your fiendish needs. Make a Gamertag that reads like one of the Voice Commands such as Xbox Go Home or Xbox Off. Then join multiplayer or coop matches and hinder your teammates’ movement by blocking doorways or trapping them in corners. Friendly Fire must be off so that the poor souls get annoyed enough to shout your name and accidentally command their console to obey. You can also annoy your opponents by camping or indulging in rage inducing activities. Acknowledge the prank in any love letters they send you.
17. The Easter Egg that wasn’t
This prank needs you to either modify a screenshot to show a fake Easter egg in a game or even make a video showing it. It helps if you have a few friends in the know to back you up. Give instructions to access the Easter egg in such a way that people are likely to harm their in-game characters in the attempt. When they confront you after a few deaths in the attempt, drop the fool bomb on them. Bonus points if you spread this over the internet.
18. The Switch prank
This is an old trick that works better with discs. You can either switch covers to let your friend borrow a different game than what they want or replace the original disc with a blank one. On a PC, you can try renaming shortcuts or changing their destination while keeping the icon same. You can also add non-Steam games under an alias for a game not available on or soon to release on PC with a Beta tag to make it look more authentic. Half-Life 3 is a favourite for this troll.
19. Don’t look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
Bet your friend to 100% a game with some believable high stakes on the bet to make it hard to refuse and yet remove any suspicion of it being a prank. If they agree, proceed to gift them a really bad game like Bad Rats, Secret of the Magic Crystals, etc. or something which will take a really long time to beat 100% like The Crew, Just Cause 2,etc. After they have spent a good enough time trying to win the bet, inform them that they have been taken for a ride. Alternatively, you can gift a used game key or even a fake one, ideally as a doctored photo. Using something with multiple possible combinations such as O and 0, l and 1, etc. works even better.
20. The Zoned Out Co-op Partner
Start a co-op game with a friend and play along until you reach one of those areas where your friend must be trapped and dependent on your actions to progress. For example, in Portal 2, have your friend set up for a long fall between two portals after which you are expected to switch out one for them to make a jump. Now, do nothing and let them be stuck in limbo. Take in their reactions when they run out of patience before you tell them that they’ve been pranked. You can lengthen the suspense by giving excuses such as your control device is not responding or that you have to attend to an urgent call, but the aim is to keep them waiting in limbo before you own up to pranking them.
Do these invoke a feeling of déjà vu? Then something must be wrong with you. Proceed to page 3.
