The evolution of the villain in video games

     My paper will focus on, as the post's title suggests, how the role of the villain in video games has evolved in complexity over the past few decades. For the purposes of the paper and simplicity (and the sake of not spending more time and disposable income then I have handy), I'll stick with referencing specific games I've actually played, and making generalizations therefrom, rather than trying to encompass a broader sampling across platforms I don't or haven't owned and subgenres I don't play.

     First, I'll examine the video game as a tool for imposing and relaying narrative structures. In the earlier days of gaming, the games were simple (in complexity as regards to graphics, programming, and similar attributes, not necessarily in terms of skill to achieve victory), as were the stories they conveyed. Take Space Invaders or Galaga, for example. Wave after wave of alien ships descend, you shoot them, they attempt to shoot you, and that's about it. There's no narrative coordination worth mentioning just the pre-imposed condition of shoot or be shot, without any development on either the hero's side or the villain's.

     As a child, in a generation where growing up with video games was still a new-ish thing, that was novel enough to suffice. As I've aged, however, demands for more to the story have risen, much as I demand more, generally, from other sources of entertainment; novels,  movies, television, etc. Currently we demand games that offer a more grown-up feel, in terms of narrative structure. This springs from a desire to legitimize gaming as an adult pastime, rather than the poor, child-associated obsession it used to be ( and by some, may well still be) viewed as. Video games, like movies or television, have evolved to become (so I tell myself, rationalizing like mad) an art form, telling intricate, memorable tales as well as simple ones. Like the written narrative, they encompass generations rather than excluding them.

     I'll mention that the role of the hero is left two-dimensional to some degree by design, as it essentially is just a rough sketch, an outline in which we fill in ourselves. The villain, by contrast, is (or should be) a complete and fleshed-out personality, with its own psychology. I'll note Kant's theory of evil, and that said theory offers the opinion that what we see as evil is rarely so in the eyes of those performing the actions. rather, it can be seen to be a degree of selfishness greater than we generally allow ourselves, as a society, to indulge in. The selfishness comes through objectification and dehumanization, of course, but lacks within the eye of the perpetrator the moral wrongness that we associate with evil, instead often encompassing a ruthless sense of necessity.

     I'll mention some of the various villain tropes lending credence to the concept of villains with psychology, ones we see already in other media and indeed in life. I'll identify with those tropes various villains that fall in the category from games I've played. In general, I'll tie these elements together with the concept of advanced narrative structuring that we desire from our imagination-stretching pastimes.