How do you usually play your character(s)?

[CrimsonReaver]

Instinctively. First play-through, I don't typically play a character; I play as myself. If there's a character creation option, I tend to set the stats and select the skills that most closely fit who I am, not who I imagine myself to be or who I wish I were. When choices in-game crop up, I approach them as I'd likely approach them if I were in that situation. As such, I tend to hover mostly in the gray, with a slight leaning toward good.

If the game was enjoyable/interesting enough to warrant replay, or there are multiple endings depending on choices made, then I'll go back through once as extreme good and once as extreme evil.

 

[MarkB]

I tend to always play a good character on my first run through a game. Whilst I don't enjoy going outright evil, I may try for a more ruthless approach on my second go-around (Bioware does this nicely with the Paragon / Renegade alignment axis in the Mass Effect games).

However, I often tend to find that I peter out about halfway through a re-play of a game if I'm playing the callous type, far more so than if I'm going for the virtuous path.

The one game where I could never make any real headway choosing the not-so-good (let alone evil) path was Planescape: Torment. That game just somehow makes one invest so much in the character that I don't think I could live with myself if I tried to go full-out evil through it.

 

[El Mahdi]

Other-other: I play only to achieve the objective of the game.

Playing good, evil, or neutral rarely factors into how and why I play a video game.

Tabletop RPG's however, are a completely different story...

 

[Pentius]

Oh, and then there's Dwarf Fortress, where I generally go between "Evil" and "Really Evil".

 

[Jhaelen]

I make my decisions either based on what I'd do or what I imagine the protagonist would do. I never replay games and tend to end up playing good/neutral.

 

[Mallus]

Let's see...

... my Fallout 3 PC was a bat, and then later fire sword-wielding, angel. Also, ninja.

... my Shepard was almost all Paragon, with just a hint of Renegade. Or a Picard 5 on the Picard-Bauer Scale.

... my Hawke was... complicated. She was mainly snarky good, but she values her friends more than well thought out systems of ethics, having forgiven both Isabelle for stealing the Qu'ran and Anders for blowing up the Pope, so I'm not sure where she falls.

So I play (mostly) good when it's just me and a CPU.

 

[Arkhandus]

I always take the heroic options in such games, at least on my first playthrough.

After that I might do a mixed, second playthrough where I choose whichever options seem like they'll yield the most/best loot/info/XP/etc. In some games, like Infamous 1 and 2, I've done a second playthrough with the evil choices to unlock the second ending and evil-specific powers, like Arc Lightning. But I've still gone through the heroic paths first in games like Infamous 2, The Force Unleashed, Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, X-Men Destiny, etc. As with gaming in general, I prefer to play heroes and only rarely play villains.

Oh, and I love sarcasm/snark in general, so I sometimes just choose the snarkiest options in games (like The Bard's Tale on PS2).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Like others, I usually take the "good" route on the first playthrough. If I play again, I'll usually "explore" the jerk/evil dialogue and action choices. In the latter example, I might also sometimes just go crazy evil and massacre entire towns just to see if I can take down the entire city guard or the equivalent and to see NPC reactions. Before resetting back to last save point, of course. I did that a LOT in Baldur's Gate 2, actually.