Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Video Villain

People are talking: video game bad guys are uninspiring and boring!

Why?

Everyone's got a theory. Welcome to mine. My theory is simpler than their theory. My theory is this:

Video games focus on the player.

The key step to making any character come alive is developing them. However, video games have a very focused "presence": your character. It is rare and disconcerting when a video game ships itself off to the other end of the universe to suddenly be from the bad guy's perspective.

Think about all the best villains in video game history. The game almost certainly went to absurd lengths to develop the villain, to give them screen time.

In System Shock 2, the ever-memorable SHODAN was an incessant voice in your head, doling out rewards and ad-ad-ad-adviiiiiiiiiiice, insect. In FFVI, Kefka was continually tromping up and down the world, and every time you saw him, he was packed with (A) world-changing goodness and (B) comedic dialogue. In FFVII, Sephiroth showed up in a huge number of cutscenes and flashbacks, making him more commonly present than many of the party members.

There are lots of ways to do it, but it takes effort. Games aren't movies: cutting away to a situation on the other side of the planet feels strange to us. However, that's far from the only way to develop a villain!

Perhaps I can talk about some of the ways, later. Fun times!

3 comments:

Patrick said...

I'm interested in villains from two perspectives, one that corresponds to Magic Circle, my commercial effort, and Pack Appeal, which is more of an art project with Storytron, respectively.

1) Making the cause of the conflict (i.e. the Villain) ambiguous, leaving potential for passionate characters to be construed as villains, even if they're mere pawns.

2) Making the player question the villainy of their own actions.

Craig Perko said...

Hmm, that's a good point. There are ways to make a conflict interesting without making it either easy or hard, and there are ways to make it easy or hard depending on character power.

These methods should be used in addition to actually developing the villain. Can't forget it is a game!

Craig Perko said...

Playing as (or with) the villain is a very powerful way to introduce him, but it has to be done in an interesting way. As you said.

As for ambiguity, I tend to assume that. All the best villains are not simply evil for evil's sake.