Is it possible to make a non-animated rope for game engine? I need a wire rope (cable) for my crane in BGE. Multi-segmented rope of capsule-shaped pieces as rigid bodies continues to stretch, pull apart, and deform despite my efforts. This rope will need to wrap around a winch, over a pulley, and down to a hook. A keypress activates the winch, reeling in or letting out rope, allowing the hook to travel up or down.
The rope doesn't even need to look like much...a straight line is sufficient, since it will be viewed from a distance.


Alternatively, a single line from the winch (Top of the crane on the right side) to the sheaves (Pulleys on the left, at the end of the boom) would work...IF there is a way to make a single line expand and contract the distance between the sheaves and the hook when the hook is lowered or raised. This would be a way to 'fake' the look of the rope.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Separation


split the rope into hanging part (maybe two or more)
winch part
hook part (if even needed)


Now you can care each part individually. As you already wrote: it just needs to look like.

Hanging Rope

Assuming the rope is always straight:


small cylinder with origin at one of the caps
scale along it's length axis to change length
trackTo actuator to let it connect to a target object


Assuming the rope bends

Assumption: binding with less detail (no loops and high detailed waves etc.).


armature with a certain number of bones (e.g. 10)
skin mesh as cylinder (with enough vertices to deform with the bones)


Now you can use fixed actions or you manipulate the armature (e.g. via IK) get the animation you want. Be aware this does not consider any physics. Your animation technique should make it look like physics is involved.

You can use some wort of ragdoll methods. (You have an invisible physics model and copy the result over to the visible rope). As you said this is not the best option due to stretching.