Why Aren't You The Villain In More Games?

[Danceofmasks]

Saints Row ... how much more of a villain can you be?

Hmm .. though you're not the villain per se in a flying sim such as Red Baron, you can play an entire career on the German side and shoot down all the allied aces.

 

[NotSoLoneWanderer]

I personally would like to see a game where you rise to power with everyone thinking your a hero and then when you achive supreme power you turn on the people and become worse than the evil overlord you just overthrew.

Fable 3 and in a less official way fable 2 but beyond that like Yahtzee said I would like to play a sand-box villain game and though it is arguable that most are "villain" games like GTA4 I would like to play a super-villain game where you expand your territory while fighting of established and wannabee super-heroes with a higher degree of customization then saints row 3 will have.

 

[BlackSaint09]

Now I'm not talking about you, the player, I'm talking about the game protagonist. And while you can definately be villainous in some games like Mass Effect and Fable you're end game is usually somewhere on the lines of saving the world. And thats <- generally a good thing.

I was thinking about it and I realized that in most games today the protagonist is usually a complete dick. He's still saving the world but I suppose shoving glass into people's mouths, shoving people out windows or tying a whore to your horse and galloping across the countryside makes me think that this is something an antagonist should be doing. Not that we can't have (loosely defined) "gritty realism" in games but if we're standing right at the edge of the divingboard of a pool of crazy batshit insane whats stopping us from jumping right on in?

The closest I've ever been to being a straight up villian was in Fallout 3. If only because I took the term survival to the utter extreme and was bent on killing everyone I could because that meant that there was no chance that they could kill me later. Don't get me wrong, I killed everybody. I even killed everybody except for the two litte kids (because they're invincible) in Megaton before I blew it to kingdom come. Because if I had blown it to the moon beforehand I couldn't have gotten all that delicious exp and all their stuff. But unfortuantly Fallout 3 karmatically balances itself out because the game gave you the option to massacre in the same hand as the option to save everyone. And thats the problem, its perfectly fine to suffocate an entire village in their sleep because you also could (but won't) fix their house to look better than a shiny car on a warm day, buy them nice clothes and do their dirty laundry.

But Flailing," you might say. "Games do exist where you do nothing but be a massive twat." And while I guess thats true those games are generally shit. For example I had the misfortune of playing Overlord 2 a couple months ago because it sounded like a good idea. Who doesn't want to play as a cruel and satanic overlord that destroys the entire world by throwing little, retarded monkeys at it. The stupid part is that destroying the world slowly becomes more of a day job than anything else. Sure, you're destroying the world but its so tedious by the end all I wanted to do was sit in my evil fortress and mope all day.

My point is in a bucket load of games today you can fuck, maim, torture and massacre your way to saving the known world. I remember thinking at the end of Dragon Age II that Kirkwall must be pretty empty by now; because I had killed thousands of people by then and I still got the good ending. And if you can shoot kneecaps, break bones, strangle people in their sleep, cut off fingers, fuck prostitutes and extinguish entire villages while still being completely "Paragon" whats stoping games from letting us play as Pyramid Head or a serial killer. The MO may be different (mostly bandits and Nazis) but thats exactly what we're doing.

So yes, games do exist where you are nothing but a total and complete asshole. But too few games exist where you are nothing but a total and complete asshole that are actually good. There are games out there that "allow you" to be a total and complete asshole but thats not your only choice. And I've been seeing fewer and fewer games where being a good guy is a hard and difficult slope to climb (like it should be).

I don't know if many of you remember the Dragon Age: Origin's dlc where you get to replay the final battle through the eyes of a darkspawn but imagine if there was an entire game like that. Where your ultimate goal is pretty much to destroy the world. Instead of having the option to help people you could just have the option to not kill them. Which is just as good by some rights. Imagine in Limbo instead of playing as the little large head boy you played as the world itself. And carefully set and set off traps as little large headed boys wandered through them. The death animations wouldn't be anymore gruesome than in regular Limbo but whats stopping an idea like that from taking flight?
...
I guess so 16 year olds won't think that shooting up their school or punching their little sister in the face is a good idea.
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Edit: And to all the people who keep pointing out games where you are an evil bastard (all 5 of them) I'm not saying that there are no games where your an evil bastard theres just a overall general lack of games where you're an evil bastard.

I suppose the only real reason why there are WAAAAAAAAAAAAY more games where we are tasked with A) saving little kittens from trees, B) commiting genocide on the bad guys C) Saving kittens from trees while commiting genocide on bad guys is because the videogame are generally guys from past generations who grew up in an age were heroes and that shet still had some novelty... I think.
Otherwise i kinda dont enjoy playing as the bad guy. I dont know its just that when my actions arent ethically and morally justified i just cant do it. Lets take Fallout New Vegas for instance. After i heard what the MO of the Legion was i pretty much turned monster on theyre rear ends. Only while i was theyre at one time i saw a Legion lad running toward me unarmed. As i aimed down my sights i noticed that he wasnt just armed with a power glove and coming to punch me in the face, no he was just a child. I almost instantly moved the mouse to the far right seeing as i had already told my index finger to shoot.
I cant be a dick worth shit. In real life its hard not to be a dick, in videogames its hard to be one.

 

[Spitfire]

My point is in a bucket load of games today you can fuck, maim, torture and massacre your way to saving the known world.

That's a good point. If acts of villainy have no consequences when it's the protagonist who commits them, then how can the player really become the villain?
The answer, in my opinion, is by being able to disobey the rules that are established in the game's universe.

Games that give you a choice between Good and Evil are fine and all, but more often than not, it's not very rewarding to pick the Evil option, precisely because you have the option to do so.
In order to truly become a villain in games, you have to be able to do things like, kill important characters without facing the "game over" screen, or mock up the game's storyline and pursue your own. It's why starting a shootout on a busy boulevard in a GTA game is so much fun, despite the game giving you no indicative to do so. Compare that to picking the monotonous Renegade option in a Mass Effect conversation, and it becomes clear how confining Good and Evil options really are.
The reason why you won't see that level of freedom very often in games, however, is because it's something that's very difficult to implement, and in story-heavy games, most people don't enjoy playing as a villain, even when they're able to. For the developers, it's a waste of precious time and resources to develop content that very few people will play.

 

[Axolotl]

You don't play a villan in many games because unless you make it camp to the point of being a cartoon (as games like Dungeon Keeper, GTA, Overlord and so on do) then being a realistic villan is dull, monotonous and worst of all unpleasant. Any realistic depiction of genocide, torture, murder, slavery and rape simply won't be fun, just depressing. Now not all games need to aim at being fun but they aren't particulerly interesting either, sure you can tell good stories about villans but actually being one would just be dull. For example MacBeth is one of Shakespeare's greatest plays and is great to watch but actually being MacBeth would just be dull and not fun.

Look at the truly villanous people in history; Torquemada, Cromwell, Robespierre, Hitler and so on. They can be interesting to read about and interesting stores can be told about them but can you imagine a game about being them? It wouldn't be fun and it wouldn't be interesting. I could maybe see a sim game focusing on the idea of the banality of evil possibly being interesting but it still would be unpleasant and would ultimately be a very limited experience.

 

[Manji187]

Well It's kind of hard for people to be the villain. People don't naturally like to be rooting for the bad guy and destroy the world, because in the end the good is supposed to triumph and evil be vanquished. It's a cultural thing. There are a few of us who would like the chance to twirl the mustache of menace. Think about it though.

No villain ever thinks of themselves as a villain. They might think what they're doing is wrong, but ultimately for the greater good. So a straight villain would be a psychopathic asshole. They're the stuff of cartoons. Easily identifiable foils to the heroes so they can be the laughingstock of children.

That's why video games don't do the straight-up villain approach. We don't identify as people. Still, the new Resident Evil game, Operation Raccoon City has you playing the U.S.S. Umbrellas black ops team. You go around killing Leon and Claire.

Yeah, would I like to play a villain? Yes. Could it be done seriously? No. Why do you think Overlord 2 had so much humor?

No villain ever thinks of themselves as a villain...you got that right. That's why it would be interesting if all the shit the player did "for the greater good" would somehow come back to bite him/ her in the ass big time.

That whole groups of people would unite to slay "the Tyrant" for whom apparently the ends justify the means.

It would be great if all of this would come as a complete surprise....a revelation...that you're actually the badguy while all the "for the greater good" crap was accepted almost unquestioningly.

Now that would be a refreshing change of pace.