Why do some people prefer to play the bad guy if given the option?

[Kolby Jack]

When it comes to video games or tabletop games or really anything where you can choose your own path, I always like to play the good guy. I mean, why wouldn't you? One human being granted power above others would logically want to look out for those less fortunate, right? Why is it then that people play evil characters in RPGs or root for the bad guys on movies? Escapism, sure, but if that were the only reason I think they'd play it 50/50, but instead some people PREFER the evil power fantasy, which I can't helped but be a little disturbed by.

It's harmless, of course, but still telling. Even one of my friends, who is an otherwise very nice guy, INSISTS that given the power, he'd be evil and just fuck up everyone's shit. I keep trying to tell him that I don't believe that, but he's very sure of it. I don't get it.

What's the reasoning behind it? Is being a hero really boring? I don't think so. Is it because the world deserves it? What gives you the right to make that call? Power corrupts? I think by now most people should know that catchy phrases aren't necessarily true. At least I should hope not.

 

[Colour Scientist]

I always pick the goody-two shoes option but I imagine people choose the evil option because they find it more interesting.
Playing the good guy, you're more restricted by rules and expectations, the evil character can, for the most part, do whatever they like.

I actually feel guilty fucking over non-sentient NPCs but I'm a total dry balls.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Power does corrupt...or rather, makes other people seem less important. People don't automatically look out for those less fortunate as it is, getting more power is unlikely to change that. But talking about this would derail your thread.

Personally, I often root for the bad guys in movies because often the heroes are rubbish and deserve to lose.

 

[Lilani]

Well, why NOT play the bad guy, just to see what all happens? I play good by default, but sometimes I just want to play a complete asshole to see what I can get away with. Mass Effect is a great game series for this: by ME3 there are characters who live or die by whether you played good or bad, and it can lead to some pretty heart-wrenching scenes, like:

Spoiler: ME3 spoilers

How Mordin dies. If you're paragon and Eve and Wrex last to the end, Mordin will sacrifice his life to save the genophage cure so the Krogan can have children normally again. It's a very satisfying scene, and while sad is about the best way for Mordin go.


But, if you're renegade enough, you can kill Mordin to make sure the genophage cure isn't successfully dispersed. This one is just gut-wrenching to watch, especially as a Mordin fan. Though I do love how they have Shepard throw the gun away after they do it, as though even renegade Shepard wasn't completely okay with it.


Then there is one more possible outcome where Mordin can live. Wrex must be dead and I think Eve too. Without even one of them to take over the Krogan clans, Mordin can be convinced that curing the Krogan isn't the best choice to make, and you can talk him into walking away with you without fixing the cure. You'd think this one would be ideal if you were concerned about Mordin's safety, but you can still see how much he's let down by it. While he dies curing the genophage, it's clear that outcome had the most satisfaction and closure for him.

Anyway, games are a great way to explore moral systems or lifestyles you'd never want to really explore in real life. I don't see why it's a bad thing to indulge this morbid curiosity.

 

[DoPo]

Escapism, sure, but if that were the only reason I think they'd play it 50/50, but instead some people PREFER the evil power fantasy, which I can't helped but be a little disturbed by.

See, that would make sense if the facts weren't that good is over-represented. Given the option of playing a good or an evil character in a game, I'd prefer the evil, simply because the option does not come up most of the time. Even if I were to choose evil every time it came up, the majority of characters I've played would still be good. How do you propose we do the 50/50 in that case?

And then there is the issue that evil is so often dumb as a brick, the choice between good and evil is meaningless. It's a choice between good and lobotomised. I don't think that really counts as evil.

What's the reasoning behind it? Is being a hero really boring?

Technically - no. In practice there are not that many permutations of it out there. A lot of the time it's just this: there is a hero, he saves the world (or the country - whatever). I'd like to explore more than what has already been explored so many times. Since heroism doesn't tend to provide that many options, maybe villainy would. It's also refreshing (when actually handled properly) to see...guess what - an actual villain that is both not villain for the sake of being evil, but has some reasoning behind it, and also evil that does not possess the mental capacity of a frog that has huffed paint all its life.

I don't think so.

Thank you for speaking of my behalf. I'm only mentioning it to make the next bit even more funny

Is it because the world deserves it? What gives you the right to make that call?

Really, what gives you the right?

Power corrupts? I think by now most people should know that catchy phrases aren't necessarily true. At least I should hope not.

And at this point your post makes no real sense now. I think it turned evil or something.

 

[Flutterguy]

Depends on the game. Fable I went full horned paragon of evil. KotOR I was the savior of the universe. On The Suffering I screwed up and got a neutral ending.. It was boring. Made sure to never go neutral again.

 

[Xan Krieger]

Being a dick is fun, sometimes there's just a very deep and basic enjoyment to destroying everything. In Fallout New Vegas I'm with the Legion because sometimes I hate humanity and it's fun to know that my actions will destroy it.

In Saints Row 4 sometimes it's fun just to abuse your superpowers and start throwing cars at people or people at people.

Of course I'm good in real life but that's what I love about games, you can be something you're not. I love helping people in real life so in games it's nice to do what I'd never do in real life.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The problem with playing the "bad guy" in games is that it's too easy. I always use the Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction example. Tell me what sounds more fun to you:

1) Shoot a guy and get close to take a picture.

2) Infiltrate his base, fight his mooks, knock him out, tie him up, find a suitable evac area, clear it, throw in a smoke flare, wait for da choppa, carry him over to da choppa and earn twice as much for extracting the guy alive, then worry about your own escape.

I went with the amazing helicopter rescue every time.
Generally speaking I think it's more challenging (and thus rewarding) to play as the good guy. Occasionally I'll do the usual "see how long you can last in a police shootout" thing in GTA or games like that but the fun in that never lasts very long. It's just too easy picking up a good spot and venting everything that drives up to siege you.

 

[DefunctTheory]

Power corrupts? I think by now most people should know that catchy phrases aren't necessarily true. At least I should hope not.

We have thousands of years of evidence that power does corrupt. Most modern government are set up under the assumption (More like certainty) that this is the case.

Personally, I think we play bad characters because most of us are good people in real life. We value society and others more then every little base evil that we have in our souls. So if you're given the option to be evil for once, and satisfy those little urges every once in a while without hurting anyone, why not?

 

[Smooth Operator]

Because animals at their core work on jungle law, kill or be killed is our default. Good guys are just people who actively go against their primal instinct and baddies those that go with it.

 

[DEAD34345]

Being a hero all the time in games is incredibly boring, at least to me. Most good characters are totally predictable and have very little depth. This is probably because their motivations never really need to be explained (Why is he trying to save the children? Because he's good. Boring.). Evil characters on the other hand are doing something normal people usually wouldn't, so they tend to have more complex motivations and reasoning. (Why is he trying to kill the children? He'd have to have a pretty compelling reason to push him to do something like that, surely.)

Besides, you say that if it was just for random escapism people would play evil characters in a 50-50 split, but that's impossible because 99 times out of 100 the good character is the only option. Maybe if the evil option was the norm we'd constantly be looking for more variety by playing the unusual good guys, but as it stands I personally always choose the evil option when it's available, simply because it almost never is.

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

I can only speak for myself, but playing as the Evil or chaotic force is pure escapism. Generally I abide by the rule of law and common decency in my day-to-day life, and therefore being Good is only partial escapism. Whereas if you go around being a badass and effing shizz up, you're really breaking free of constraints. Of course I wouldn't want to do this in real life, since slaughter and mayhem wreck people's lives ... but in the context of something with zero consequences, I will usually take this option.

 

[ExtraDebit]

It depends on your age and what you do for a living, if you're still in school and grow up on disney movies then you're indoctrinated into default good setting.

If you're out in the world for a while and realized good guys in the real world don't always win and in fact most of the time loses, you'll have more appreciation for the cunning and "evil".

However, most games doesn't represent evil properly or doesn't represent every facet of evil. In most games, you only see the hitler type of evil or the dumb type of evil. Real life evil however is more about cunning and ruthless. I've yet to see a game that properly represent Light from death notes type of evil. All we get is Mass Effect representation of evil, just punch people in the face a lot and being a tool.

A real evil person is someone you think is your best friend that fucks you over which you'll never find out and continue to think they're your best friend. A real evil person is someone that cheats and never get caught.

A real evil person in real life while playing a game may very well play as the good guy not because they like being good but because there is no such thing as "good" and "evil" in his mind, only which option yields the most favorable outcome.

Most games being the good guy yield the best rewards. That's what real "evil" people do, we seek out options that give us the most profit and options moving forward and not trying to hurt as much people as we can as portray in most games, we do however have no problem with killing or seeing people die and suffer if it benefits us.

 

[Scarim Coral]

I can assume that playing the good guy can be quite boring at times since you are doing the lawful and noble thing. I mean it's nice to break away from that and to be rebellious.

 

[Robert Marrs]

Its fun to be bad. You can be as bad as you want in a video games and all the consequences are virtual. I love being the bad guy in video games and I pick it the first time if its an option. I wish more games would have an evil character as the main character.

 

[Mikeyfell]

Most people aren't evil in their every day lives (Except for every employe of EA)
and the point of escapism (Recognize that word?) is to do things outside of what you normally do.


Have you ever been put on hold with customer service and thought to your self: if this was a video game I'd put a big obsidian box around your spawn zone and kill you in the woods!

In my experience though playing evil doesn't offer any benefit. because in most cases accepting a side quest is inherently a good option. So the ludonarative dissonance kicks in when I think: If I was really an ass hole I wouldn't help these people at all!

 

[Zeterai]

There's an episode of Red Dwarf, titled Angels & Demons. At one point, an evil version of Rimmer has Lister cornered with a holo-whip. He goes on at length about all the horrible, horrible things he intends to do to Lister, which culminates in being asked why, just why he's so damnedly evil.

The response was very simple - "Because... I'm not a very nice person".

I play the evil one in games, when possible and when it's a viable option, because I happen to like being able to do, say, and be things that I cannot be otherwise. That's realistically one of the stronger points of games. I wouldn't make for a very good Sith if I had to be concerned about peoples' feelings, but Dark-side Revan is an excellent surrogate for it. The Sith Warrior in TOR is even better - if I recall right, you've got the option to Force Choke or stabbity-stab virtually everyone you get into a dialogue with, even before you get the right abilities to do so.

Why do people ever do lethal options in games? Wouldn't the Doom Guy (Corporal Flynn Taggart) have been a better person if he'd sat down and rationally discussed his grievances with the forces of Hell? It might have been an interesting literary piece, but dull gameplay - instead, we murdered everything that got in our way. As we do with most games. Because taking a shotgun to your problem areas in life is wrong, but doing it in a game is acceptable. And you can get an achievement if you're flashy enough with it, most times. This is the logic behind my High Chaos run in Dishonored, and for that matter, the reason people play Chaos and Chaos Marines.

In fact, it all boils down to three simple words, the three words that can explain any question of motivation, regardless of circumstance. Why do people commit virtual atrocities? Because they can.

 

[BobDavis]

People always like the villain more. Just compare to movies in the past. The joker in batman, etc.

 

[Vrach]

One human being granted power above others would logically want to look out for those less fortunate, right?

I'm sensing you were not a grade A history student, were you?
(Not meant as an insult, just a joke, but seriously, power corrupts far more often than it makes nice guys)

Why is it then that people play evil characters in RPGs or root for the bad guys on movies? Escapism, sure, but if that were the only reason I think they'd play it 50/50, but instead some people PREFER the evil power fantasy, which I can't helped but be a little disturbed by.

Because nice guys are generally boring. I've always played the goody two shoes kind of characters growing up (I tried some evil options, like in KOTOR, of course, but my first/real playthrough was always good), but in more recent years, I've found that a bit of "evil" (in the black/white scheme we mostly have in games) goes a long way to make a character more interesting. Mind you, I still don't play pure evil kind of characters, but my latest creations in RPGs have generally been of the attitude "treat them like they treat you". Meaning I'll be nice most of the time and help save the world, but I won't hesitate to play dirty, get payback on anyone who stabbed me in the back and stuff like that.

Pure evil characters in gaming are mostly good for laughs really. It's like playing Hitler on steroids, like in Fallout 3 where you blow up a town to provide an amusing fireworks display for an old coot. No, no one (I dearly hope) is that evil, but it's kinda hilarious to roleplay such a character for shits and giggles, seeing how disturbingly far you can go.