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?