The Compliance Game

Will Riker: Get the damned control chips back in place in the correct order. Now!
Wesley Crusher: It's like a game. How fast can you do it?

— Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Naked Now"

A character is trying to get another character to do something. However, they don't want to — perhaps there's something else they'd rather do, they find the thing they're being asked to do boring, they're afraid, or they're just being defiant (common in a Bratty Half-Pint, but not exclusive to them). So, the first character suggests they play the Compliance Game.

The Compliance Game is any attempt at making a desired action seem like a game in order to get the other person to do it. Sometimes, this is just using Weasel Words to make it seem more fun than it is (e.g. "Let's play 'Fold the Laundry!'"). Other times, the person puts more effort into it, for instance involving things like make-believe, costumes, music, or making it into a competition (e.g. "How about we see who can put the dishes away the fastest?!"). If it's a baby or toddler who they want to eat some food, they might pretend a utensil is an airplane or a train. Sometimes this works, but other times the other character sees right through it.

Usually, the person being offered the "game" is a child, because children tend to have a lower tolerance for activities they find boring, most of them are keen on the idea of games, and they might be too naive to realise they're being tricked. If they're an adult, expect them to be playful, stupid, childish, competitive, or easily distracted.

Subtrope of Batman Gambit and supertrope to The Quiet Game. Compare Moniker As Enticement and Greens Precede Sweets for other common kiddie bribes, Getting the Baby to Sleep for when adults do wacky things to make a baby fall asleep and/or stop crying, and Incredibly Lame Fun for when someone truly sees something mundane as a game. May happen alongside Hide and No Seek if the excuse for getting the kids to leave is framed as a game, or Fence Painting if the thing they want the other person to do is a chore and the way they make it seem fun is by turning it into a game. Truth in Television, especially among parents.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Beast Wars: Uprising: Self-inflicted by the freelancer Bisk, who sees the world as a massive video game and allocates "points" for successful completed "quests". His main employer Gnashteeth (who later renames himself Megatron after the ancient Decepticon) finds this kind of annoying, but tolerates it because Bisk is just that good.

Fan Works

• In "Don't Let the Pigeon Be a Ghostbuster", a parody of Pigeon Series that crosses over with The Real Ghostbusters, the Pigeon wants to join the Ghostbusters, but isn't allowed. At one point, he says, "Let's play Catch the Ghost", but it doesn't work.

Films — Animation

• Finding Nemo: When Marlin and Dory are surrounded by jellyfish, he determines that they need to bounce on the tops of the jellyfish to reach safety. To prevent Dory (who has a very short attention span) from dawdling, he makes it into a race. Finding Dory shows that Dory's parents used similar strategies to help her memory.
• Inside Out: When Riley is seen as a baby, she doesn't want to eat broccoli, so her parents get her to eat it by pretending the spoon is an airplane.
• The Lion King: a villainous example. Scar draws his nephew Simba into a gorge (an otherwise uninteresting place) under the excuse his father will bring him a surprise to "die for", when he actually wants to have him trampled by thousands of wildebeests grazing nearby. Just before leaving Simba alone to call his dad, he advises his nephew to practice his roar before he comes back. This is actually an excuse to keep Simba occupied while he gives the hyenas the signal to drive the wildebeest heard down into the gorge. It also has the unintended effect (still, Scar easily exploits it in two different situations) of leading Simba to the conclusion his roar caused both the stampede and his father's death (the herd rushes down the gorge a few seconds after Simba's roar echoes in the canyon).
• Rise of the Guardians: In a Flashback, Jack's sister is too scared to cross some thin ice, so Jack convinces her to do it by saying they'll "have a little fun" and having her count the steps.
• Steven Universe: The Movie: To prevent Spinel from following her to Earth, Pink Diamond tells her that they're going to play a game in which Spinel stands very still. Spinel, who was created for the sole purpose of amusing Pink, stands in that spot for millennia after Pink leaves. Played for Drama in that Spinel eventually learns that Pink lived a whole life and then died on Earth without her. She realizes that Pink tricked her, figures that Pink never had any intention of coming back for her, and becomes furious.

Films — Live-Action

• Blood Brothers (2007) has the Establishing Character Moment for Mark, a Hitman with a Heart. Assigned to kill several rival mobsters in a crowded restaurant but noticing three little boys playing in front of him, Mark then calls the boys, challenging them to a game of hide-and-seek. As two of the boys run off to hide under tables and the third closes his eyes to count to 100, Mark expertly guns down all his targets and leaves without the children seeing him.
• The WW-II film, Heroes Of Telemark ends with Professor Rolf Pedersen trying to evacuate the children on a soon-to-be-sunk ferry loaded with German superweapons by convincing the kids to partake in a "drill game" with the vessel's lifeboats, moments before it goes down.
• Mary Poppins: Mary, the nanny to Jane and Michael Banks, gets them to tidy their shared bedroom by having them play a "game" called "Tidy Up the Nursery", all the while singing a song about how a bit of positivity can turn any chore into a game, just like adding sugar to medicine.
• National Treasure: When fugitive Ben Gates can't get into the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia to see the Silence Dogood letters, he has his friend Riley go instead and he recruits a young boy to go in and out, searching for the exact letter of the alphabet he needs from particular words in particular rows so that he can crack a code. Riley pays him for each sequence he brings him back, so he's excited to do it for him. The villain Ian notices the kid running back and forth and gives him 100 dollars to tell him what letters he gave Riley.

Literature

• The protagonist of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer managed to have his friends pay for the privilege of repainting his fence.
• Charlie and Lola: In "I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato", Charlie gets his little sister Lola to eat her food by giving it crazy names and claiming that it comes from other planets.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In "The Last Straw", Greg complains that his grandfather bought him a "laundry hoop" for Christmas. It was a plastic hoop attached to a net, and he claimed it would make putting his clothes away more "fun", but Greg says that Grandpa essentially bought him a chore.
• In Dr. Franklin's Island, after Semi and Miranda become convinced that they can't escape Miranda, who Copes By Pretending that there's hope and things aren't all bad, tells her friend that they're going to pretend to be volunteers. Semi initially thinks that's insane but sees Miranda's point, that if they're going to die they don't have to die screaming. Conveniently, acting like volunteers rather than going berserk as Semi tends to on her own means they're treated better, allowed to wait out the Slow Transformation in a replica hotel suite rather than in straitjackets in cells too far apart to let them talk to each other.
• Fudge: In "Superfudge", after Fudge hides his baby sister Tamara "Tootsie" Roxanne, his big brother Peter gets him to show where she is by playing the "hot, cold" game (saying "hot" when he searches and gets close to finding her and "cold" when he gets farther away).
• In a Henry Huggins book, Henry and his friend are assigned to look for bugs for biology class. They get the little neighbour boy to help by saying, "Let's pretend we're scientists looking for specimens".
• Peek-a-Boo Poo: In the sequel, the mother tries to get Heidi to use her potty chair by putting a teddy bear on it and saying, "Watch Teddy."
• The animals in Protector of the Small are much smarter than normal, enough to want to help Kel against her enemies. Kel has to explain to her dog and sparrows that training exercises are like a game, not like real fighting, and they shouldn't attack her opponents even when she gets bruised.
• Pigeon Series: Attempted in "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus", where the Pigeon is trying to persuade the viewer to let him drive the bus. At one point, he says, "Let's play 'Drive the Bus'," but this doesn't work.
• Warrior Cats: When Bluefur (who would later become Bluestar) needs to bring her kits to RiverClan in the middle of the night, she tells them they're playing a game called Secret Escape, and they need to be very, very quiet while sneaking out of the camp or they'll get caught.

Live-Action TV

• In Dollhouse, there is a particularly creepy example involving an adult. Joe Hearn rapes his charge Sierra several times when she is in her Womanchild Empty Shell state; he tells her that it is a game.
• The Haunting Hour: Played for Horror in "Uncle Howee". The titular character, a creepy kiddie show host, comes into the real world to punish Jared, a Big Brother Bully who's been cruel to his little sister Cynthia. Uncle Howee makes Cynthia disappear and challenges Jared to locate her, but he calls the situation a game named "Find Your Sister Before Mom Gets Home and Grounds Ya for the Rest of Your Life!" Jared ultimately loses and, in a Karmic Transformation, is forced to become a puppet character on Uncle Howee's show forever.
  Uncle Howee: If you find her, you get to keep her—if you don't, well, I guess you'll have some explaining to do.
• In How I Met Your Mother, Lily and Robin realize Barney will practically do anything if they challenge him (with Barney proclaiming his trademark "challenge accepted!" line). After having fun getting him into a bunch of antics, they try to challenge him to run an errand for them. Barney doesn't actually go for it until they challenge him to also pick up a girl while doing it.
• Star Trek: Enterprise: In "Desert Crossing", Trip's heatstroke is making him very sleepy but Archer fears that Trip would go into a coma if he fell asleep. So, he makes Trip stay awake by playing a game where they name countries beginning with different letters. When they get to "X", they argue over whether Xanadu counts.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: In "The Naked Now", Wesley wants to get Data (an android) to sort some pieces of technology. However, he doesn't want to do it as he's malfunctioning and essentially acting drunk, so Wesley says, "It's like a game", which entices Data to do it.

Music

• The Wiggles: In "The Toilet Song", the singers try to get the viewer (who they assume to be a toddler) to sit on the toilet for the entire song by calling it the "Toilet Challenge".

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner, "Play Date": Homestar tries to plan a meet-up with others in the cast, but it seems they're all busy with other plans or in trouble, and the only one left is Strong Mad. Unfortunately, Strong Mad's idea of "playing games" is too intense for Homestar, and tries to tone it down:
  Homestar Runner: (tired and bandaged up) Okay, Strong Mad... We're gonna have a little something I like to call "Migraine Time". We can play your new favorite game: "Feathers... & Cotton." Ready? Go. (He places a hot water bottle on his head)
  (As he's talking, a whistling sound is heard off-screen, until after he's finished, at which point an asteroid crashes through the ceiling of Homestar's house and crushes him)
  Homestar: WAAAAUGH!!!
  Strong Mad: THIS ONE'S NOT MY FAULLLLT!
  (Nebulon rises from inside the asteroid, with his usual stock sound effect)

Webcomics

• The xkcd strip "Board Game" shows Cueball making a board game club do his taxes by presenting them as a board game. According to the Alt Text, they are more thorough than people whose job is to help with filling out tax forms.

Web Original

• In this Aha Parenting article about games, two of them are tricks to get the child to do something you want:
  • One of them is pretending to search around for the child's "strong voice" to get them to stop whining.
  • The other one is saying goodnight to each body part to get the child to go to bed.
• Homestar Runner, "Play Date": Homestar tries to plan a meet-up with others in the cast, but it seems they're all busy with other plans or in-trouble, and the only one left is Strong Mad. Unfortunately, Strong Mad's idea of "playing games" is too intense for Homestar, and tries to tone it down:
  Homestar Runner: [tired and bandaged up] Okay, Strong Mad... We're gonna have a little something I like to call "Migraine Time". We can play your new favorite game: "Feathers... & Cotton." Ready? Go. [He places a hot water bottle on his head]
  [After he's done talking, a whistling sound is heard off-screen, and an asteroid crashes through the ceiling of Homestar's house and crushes him]
  Homestar: WAAAAUGH!!!
  Strong Mad: THIS ONE'S NOT MY FAULLLLT!
  [Nebulon rises from inside the asteroid, with his usual stock sound effect]

Western Animation

• Bluey:
  • In "Fruit Bat", Bandit's two daughters Bluey and Bingo don't want to go to bed, so he persuades them to do it by having them pretend to be on a rocket as he carries them upstairs. Then, when Bluey doesn't want to take a shower he encourages her to by having her slide on the floor and pretend to be a penguin afterwards. Finally, when the girls protest being put to bed, he lures them in by promising to play a game where he reads a bedtime story and pretends to fall asleep.
  • In "Dunny", Chilli tells her daughters to use the word "toilet" instead of "dunny" (which is an Australian slang word), as "dunny" is "not the word the Queen would use". When she claims she would give the girls chocolate if she said it, they try to trick her into saying it by roping her into a game of Pass It On and using "Oh man, I need the dunny!" as the phrase. Chilli, however, pretends she couldn't hear it properly.
• Charlie and Lola: In "I Will Not Ever, Never Eat a Tomato" (based on the book), Charlie convinces Lola to eat her food by pretending it's from other planets.
• Coconut Fred's Fruit Salad Island: In "Five Nuts and a Baby", Fred attempts to feed a baby, which was actually a fruit bat in disguise. The fruit bat refused to eat the baby food, so Fred pretends that the spoon is a flying saucer place and a real one came along to put baby food in his mouth.
• Crawford's Corner: In "Crawford Puts on His Coat", Crawford encourages the viewer to put on their coat by framing it as a dance involving laying the coat on the ground and putting it on sleeves-first.
• One episode of Daria sees Daria roped into babysitting a pair of insufferably cheerful kids. Having no particular skill with kids, she at one point resorts to having them play "Lichen", a game where they compete to see who can lie still and silent the longest, allowing her time to summon Jane for help.
• In the 1956 Walt Disney short "In the Bag", the park ranger first tries to get the bears to clean up the park by making it a game.
• Esme & Roy: In "A Dino-mite Lunch", Tillie becomes too obsessed with playing with her toy race cars and refuses to eat anything. As such, Esme and Roy make a pretend drive-thru so that Tillie can move the cars past it and properly have lunch.
• Kaeloo: In "Let's Play Simon Says", Stumpy, Quack-Quack, and Mr. Cat make a huge mess in the living room out of discarded snack packages. Kaeloo wants them to clean it up, but they refuse, so she tries to make them clean it up via a game of Simon Says. Mr. Cat isn't fooled, but the game gets Stumpy and Quack-Quack to clean up the mess immediately.
• Little Princess:
  • In "I Want Baked Beans", the Princess wants to have baked beans for lunch instead of the pasta that's on offer. The King tries getting her to eat it by pretending the spoon is a plane, but she says, "I'm too old for that game."
  • In "I Want to Cook", the Princess wants Puss the cat to be her food taster, but he refuses to eat anything. She eventually gets him to eat by pretending the spoon is an airplane, since it's what her parents do when she refuses food.
• The Loud House:
  • In "Along Came a Sister", Lincoln gets Lynn to stay still by tapping her and saying, "Freeze!".
  • In "The Crying Dame", Lily is Too Unhappy to Be Hungry after her siblings throw out her toy. Leni tries to do the "here comes the plane/train" trick (though, being The Ditz, she gets it wrong and says, "Open your airplane. Here comes the tunnel.") but Lily's still not hungry.
• Martha Speaks: In "Martha's Life in Crime", a thief named Carlotta Bumblecrumb tries to get Martha (a dog) to steal an autographed baseball by telling her to "fetch the bally". However, Martha chases the ball around instead.
• In Munro, four year old Munro does a self-inflicted version to do his daily routine at boot camp. He interprets doing drills as a game called "Face" ("Right Face", "About Face", etc.), and doing chores as a game called "Get This Man's Name" (where someone would pick soldiers out for duties around camp). Being only a kid, and surrounded by adults who refuse to see him as one, nobody bothers to correct him.
• My Little Pony: In "A Bird in the Hoof", Fluttershy thinks that Celestia's pet bird Philomena is sick because she's molting and has a cough. She tries feeding her homemade soup, but Philomena refuses it. Fluttershy tries pretending the feeding spoon is a train, but this doesn't work.
• The Owl House: Played for Drama. After the Draining Spell is activated, everyone in the Boiling Isles begins to die slowly and painfully. King is then left with the choice to free The Collector — a childlike god who is the only one capable of stopping the spell. As the entity is solely interested in playing games, King convinces them to save everyone by suggesting they play a game called The Owl House, which requires an entire island's worth of players. Unfortunately, this subsequently results in the Boiling Isles becoming The Collector's personal playground.
• Peppa Pig:
  • In one episode, Peppa's cousins Chloe (who's about elementary school age) and Alexander (a baby) come to visit. The family tries to spoon-feed Alexander, but he refuses until they pretend the spoon is an airplane.
  • In another episode, George, who's a toddler, refuses to eat a salad at lunch. Grampa Pig solves the problem by arranging the vegetables into the shape of a dinosaur, George's favorite animal, prompting the little tyke to devour the whole thing.

Real Life

• In a particularly horrible real-life example, Nazi scientist Josef Mengele tricked countless children into going along to the gas chambers by telling them that they were playing a game called "walking to the chimney", with the promise of sweets if they "won".
• A tragically common tactic used in asymmetrical warfare is for a guerilla to tell a child to take something to a particular spot as part of a game, and naturally the item will turn out to be a bomb. Examples of this tactic being used are brought up in places such as post-invasion Afghanistan and Iraq. A particularly insidious version involves telling the child that they'll get a reward once the "game" is complete... with said "reward" being the honour of being martyred and rewarded in the afterlife.

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