Developers talk villains
by Ross Miller 
{ Aug 29th 2005 at 4:00PM }
What defines a villain? As far as I can see it, it is merely someone
with views quite contrary to your own. Bowser kidnaps the princess, but Mario also destroys 8 of his Koopa children and
blows up all of their castles – it is all a matter of perspective. GameCloud has a lengthy piece on the topic of
playing as the antagonist in video games. From Epic Games to Gearbox to Running With Scissors (known for the
politically incorrect Postal series), the article has gathered a diverse crowd from the industry.
The general consensus, naturally, is that playing the villain can be very cathartic and actually beneficial to the player, who can act out his or her aggression in a safe environment. The interesting tidbits lie in the developer’s personal views on playing the villain – while it is a freedom of expression, many do not like to play the villain (I, for one, had a hard time being evil in Fable, of all games). The most poignant quote, however, comes from Tripwire Entertainment’s John Gibson:
”…There has to be a limit though. As with most things, playing as the villain can be taken to unhealthy extremes. In our game for instance you can play as a German soldier during WWII. The Germans were essentially the “bad guys” in that war. But if we took it to the extreme and allowed you to play as a concentration camp guard and participate in the holocaust that would just be wrong. Some games go as far as letting you be a murderer, killing and torturing innocent people. I feel that at that point the game can become psychologically unhealthy for the player and that is not the type of thing we would want to create as a studio.”
What are your feelings on all this? And, for creativity, what video game villain have you always wanted to play as?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Chapu @ Dec 18th 2005 10:08PM
How should villain development differ from any modern antagonist development? If video games are to achieve any higher degree of art, then the obvious resources to study from would be literature and film. Something that would interest me would be a game that really forced the user to decide who the villain was through the storyline. Instead of relying on hacky visual statements like eye-patches and dark clothing, the game developers could actually use Character development that could challenge another level of critical thinking to propogate in gaming... both in game-play and artistic analysis.
Dignan17 @ Dec 18th 2005 10:08PM
Grrr. Sorry, pet peeve of mine, but do people read their own articles back to themselves, or do they let spell/grammar-checker tell them whether or not their work is fine. When I see an error like "Even though we sometime emphasize with the villain," it really breaks my focus on the article. It seems that just because it's online, it's okay to go lax on proper grammar (I'm looking at you, Joystiq and Engadget).
Ryuukuro @ Dec 18th 2005 10:08PM
I never play the villain. At least not on purpose. I'm too much of a goody two-shoes. In a lot of games I try to avoid killing people when possible--although it's a lot of fun when it's the only option!
If I were to play a villain it would have to be some sort of bombastic villain. Either that or someone smooth and sly who didn't let on to anyone else that he was a bad guy.
But being a serial killer and what not? No, that's not for me. Sometimes I do lose control of myself and go on berserker rampages but I always save my gave before hand and then I reload the old game afterwards.
I don't like stealing either but I prefer stealing to killing. And I'm still interested in checking out one of those Theif games. They look like fun, amoral or not.
Joshua @ Dec 18th 2005 10:08PM
lol! I read that line twice and wondered what was wrong with it. Then I said it out loud and realized: EMPATHIZE! lol!
Twist @ Dec 18th 2005 10:08PM
Not exactly a video game villain but he has been in a number of games: Darth Vader (not dark side Anakin, the real Vader). It would be interesting to see Bowser in his own side scroller I guess.