   Why is it fun to be evil?
  It's a pretty simple question. I've never been a fan of playing evil characters. I think mostly because I associate evil with cheap and cowardly, where I associate good with in-your-face, against-the-odds stubbornness. The good hero is always ready to face stronger opponents, and go down fighting with what little power he has left, while the evil villain is always thirsting for power itself, taking advantage of the helpless to get it. For me, it's not much of a contest. It's far more fun to go down fighting monsters and demons than to beat up or slay innocent people.To be fair, though, I've also never enjoyed role playing heroes that are unrealistically selfless. I like heroes that are fighting against evil because they're just fed up. Or heroes that are just as bloodthirsty as the villains, and fight evil just to get their fix.I'm looking for other perspectives - people who can help me understand why role playing an evil character is fun. What good comes to you, as a player, when playing an evil character? Is it usually more of a non-gameplay atmospheric/aura effect, or does it always tie directly into the game's rewards for being bad? How would a game that includes good-vs-evil choices be better than one that doesn't provide any options to be evil?If you don't need something, would you steal it anyway to boost your reputation/alignment/evilness? If you like a certain character and want to save them, would you let them die to gain -1 alignment?Any opinions welcome.   
  That's simple...Let's say someone is annoying you...by being good you are forced to endure more of their annoyance. You don't like their annoyance so being good is punishing yourself.by being bad you can shoot them and end their annoyance, plus get retribution. You are being rewarded for being bad by both seeing that there is justice and you don't have too be bothered by that person any more. This also releases chemicals in your brain to condition you more to this response...Basically being good is punished more often than being bad is, but being bad has worse punishments if caught...though if you're not caught it's more rewarding.   ;  I never ever found fun to play (or to pretend) I'm an evil character. Probably just because I find it harder and way more challenging to build rather than to destroy.On the other hand I've meet kids in my childhood who completely identified themselves with evil characters and really enjoyed characterizing them, leading me to the conclusion that the fond of towards evil behaviors comes imprinted into the human nature even before a person is able to fully comprhend it.If we difine evilness as: Finding pleasure in destroying anything that has a constructive purpose or anything that is beautiful, then, that's exactly the kind of thing an evil person would like to do.   ;  I think most people don't enjoy playing 'evil.'  I think the RPGs of the past 20 years have conditioned a whole generation of nerds to think that following the good & righteous path will get them greater rewards.  We know from experience that turning down the poor farmer's meager offer of 500 gold for saving his cow will cause him to instead offer us his family's priceless +5 sword of ultimate doom slaying, instead.  We know that the powers at the end of the Good tree are more powerful and/or useful than those of the evil path.  We also know that any sacrifices that must be made to be Good are trivial and easily recouped.  In short, we've learned that there is no penalty to being Good, and in fact a much greater reward.So I ask why should people be evil when there is no incentive to do so?   ;  The only 'evil' character I enjoyed, was a Kahjit Vampire Assassin I had for Oblivion, but the reasons I enjoyed it was nothing to do with the actions really. He was so acrobatic I spent most of my time on the roofs of houses and other generally inaccessible places. Also the Thief and Assassin Quests were pretty cool and exciting affairs with a fair number of challenges beyond the normal hack and slash.Also we tend to make the definition of good and bad rather clouded. We would all generally on first ask agree killing is bad, but when presented with a few situations would say 'except then', problem is where do we draw the line for the 'except then'. Pretty much the same could be said for denying someone their freedom.Also for the destroying anything that is beautiful or constructive, this harks very much of Hinduism, the problem is this falls down with your first breath, your body will instancely start killing all those wee germs, they are alive to you know. Or that plant you eat or that beef burger... (I mean no offence to any Hindu friends just making an observation :) )Probably the closest to 'evil', if you want to call it that, I'm not really a believer in Good and Evil just right and wrong, then it might be someone who pursues selfish self-fullfillment no matter the consequences.The only reference I can think of for right and wrong is religious texts, must of our societies are based on them in some form, with either bits added or removed.   ;  Not all evil people are psychopaths. They may have an abused childhood but that doesnt mean they will start killing innocents or go killing someone else so easily without talking it out first. 1) most games lack in story development, they prefer they easy way, making mindless villains, they have no goals , they have no way to justify their thirst for power.a) and i really really hate, when i see the "villain kills his minions because they failed" card. Because that is so unrealistic, stupid, and it has 100% chance of backfiring on villain. What were the developers of those games thinking ? its such a cheap way of manipulating the crowd to identify evil as psychopathy or mindless killing. I see they did a well job getting you misinformed. Same for "killing innocent" card.if villain has 100% desire to kill his minions,1) he will try to supress it (based on his willpower).2) since he has no choice but to kill his minions (i see no reason why this will happen), he will use the "send your minions to an imposible mission and let them die trying" card. Then he will use hypocrisy to : a) grief for their death. b) seem sad. c) will try to take revenge for their death d) blame the killer (hero) as a villain, how easy it was for the hero to remove the life of the villan's minions. This will cover the villain's tracks and make the crowd, despise the hero.  Lets see a comparison of evil vs good (using smallville example):Superman tries to save the world. He defeats the villain.1) an natural disaster fells on villain (e.g the building collapses on villain), superman fails to save the villain. So in fact clark kent is evil, because he wanted to kill the villain and used the natural disaster as a disguise for his murder. (he allowed the disaster to kill the villain when he could have stop that, that is no diffrent that murder and illegal also).2) Supposing now that Clark kent should go to the jail (maybe he was feeling guilty about 1 and went to police and revealed it or maybe because the villain managed to frame him by forging false evidence), what would you do if you were clark kent now ?a) allow yourself to go to jail (not resisting), sit and wait and let the world get destroyed by a psycho villain. The world may get destroyed but you get retribution from humans that didnt allow you to leave from jail. Later, when the world is destroyed, you will hope that the villain has obtained the ultimate power / domination and satisfied his psychotic desire.b) Resist jail. People now hunt you, they consider you a villain, they come with meteorite (to make you powerless). Lets suppose that the meteorite doesnt kill you, but slows you down, you can still shoot fire from your eyes, do 1 hit ko punches. You cannot run from this situation, you have less moving speed than your opponents. You cannot destroy the meteorite, even if you try to resist by using your enviroment in order not to harm humans, humans in the end will outrun you. Lets see how will you handle 100.000 police officers. An army of 1.000.000 soldiers that will soon come to the crime scene. b1) Will you kill them and escape ? you are a evil villain.    if you choose this path, please narate what will you continue doing from    this path.b2) get captured and go to a.c) ???????? (is there another way). Please narate. 3) supposing that the villain gets defeated.a) you kill the villain. You are evil, you commited a crime and humans will hunt you forever (like batman).b) you sent villain to jail. He gets out of jail after a month throught the legal system or he decides to use his powers to escape anytime. Thus bringing the end of the world this time, because he cant fail repetedly. He will succeed or this game is stupid and unrealistic. So as evil i defy the following term :a hero that tries to achieve his goals (save the world, innocents or protect someone else) but he may use illegal ways of achieving them.Now the final and most revealing question, who the real villain is ?lets suppose that you defeat the final villain in a game, yes !!!!!!! now everything is leaving in peace, its like heaven. You try to settle down, stop your adventures.The sociaty however no longer has villains, lets suppose that everyone in the sociaty is 100% good now, there is no chance that something bad will ever happen.you make a relationship with someone else, this doesnt please you as you prefer the war and battle you had in the past, the excitement of defeating the bad ones. However now there are no bad ones.choices :d1) become a psychopath villain ? and then what (describe) ?d2) kill yourself : it is hard for you to hold your godly powers, so you kill yourself to save the world from you. You cannot live happily never after forever (suffering from living in this boring world).d3) get bored. later you will have to choose another answer.Lets investigate the following scenario also:What is right and wrong. You are in a situation, its something you will believe its correct, and something that someone else things its wrong. what would you do (you have goldy powers that even a sneeze can kill others)?With great power comes a price you have to pay. You are less willing to listen to other people (weaklings that are wrong and you cannot convice).lets suppose that a minor villain with 1 hp that does 0 dmg per hit resolves in the "law of the most powerfull" and comes and hit you. You will kill him ?So you have seen the "good heroes" in games until the destruction of the villain. After the hero has no meaning in his life. You were tricked by games without considering whats after that. The games end as they are in a deadlock situation they cannot resolve. "The end : we have encountered an unexpected error in our system. The system reached a state of which cannot address. we are sorry for any inconvience we have caused. We will successfully try to resolve this by deleting your character and forcing you to go to new game. Enjoy doing anything from the beggining starting at lv1."Also there is no line to difference good and evil. Everything is not black or white there is something intermediate. Whoever said it is simple, lets see how you address these problems.;  Beer goggles. It's a consequence free opportunity to unleash yourself from inhibition, to try out behaviors that you would never try out in ordinary life. Here's an anecdote for you. Hollywood actors known for playing bad guys in the movies often turn out to be good guys in real life, for example, Robert De Niro. The notion is that as good guys in real life, they were outside, observing, the behaviors of bad guys they encountered. The converse doesn't hold. Tom Hanks, for example, is a good guy in real life too. On the other hand, Christian Bale, Russel Crow, not so much...   ;  Coming at this from a different angle, some of the players of the sandbox game Dwarf Fortress are downright scary. The forums are rife with stories about the unusually detailed wound system (generally in the context of adventurers assaulting random townsfolk), requests to add slavery to the game, requests to be able to tell fortress dwarves to attack non-hostile elves, killing elven trade caravans with drowning chambers or magma, discussions of committing genocide against elves...in general, replace "Elf" with "Jew" and it's Auschwitz all over again. Clearly a lot of the players are having fun doing this, and while I find it a bit disturbing, it is just a videogame. I suspect much of the fun comes from being able to take these actions which are not only normally disallowed by society, but also not possible in most games. In other words, it's the variety that the player relishes. Most games, after all, force you onto the "good" path because there is no other path. And in the games where you do have a choice, the good and evil sides tend to be ludicrously stereotyped, which tends to make them not very interesting. So games where you can be creatively evil, or interestingly evil, will have more potential interest to them than ones where the evil path requires you to do pointlessly evil acts ("Slaughter this village!" "Why?" "Because it's there!" "But I'd be destroying the only convenient store and you won't let me loot it anyway." "Shaddup and do it!") or ones that don't even have an evil path.   ;Quote:I'm looking for other perspectives - people who can help me understand why role playing an evil character is fun. I like playing evil characters in single player RPGs because it adds variety. Works my mind a little more to go 'what would this character do?'. I usually prefer playing good characters, and I won't be evil when playing with others. No amount of 'but my character is evil!' justifies ruining someone else's fun.   ;  Some interesting point of views in here.Just to be clear, I meant for this to strictly be about fictional role-playing evil. I seriously doubt evil people would get much satisfaction out of being bad in video games.I left one extremely important question out: What do you think the most important positive feedback of role playing a bad guy is? I've come up with a list of some likely possibilities, but feel free to add your own:1. To get a thrill from making (fictional) people suffer. I actually doubt many people get this. Or if they do, it probably doesn't last long.2. Bringing down self-righteous good guys who are hell-bent on stopping you. This can be fun, occasionally. I've always enjoyed battle with the police in the GTA series.3. To avoid playing as a pansy do-gooder who has too much tolerance for other people's crap, and goes out of his way to do lame non-profit chores for lazy nameless idiots that he just met. Believe it or not, a character doesn't need to be evil in order to avoid being this.4. Unlike the good side, evil doesn't need a tragedy in order to set a goal. It just does whatever it wants, whenever it wants, to further itself, while the heroes are all waiting for something to go wrong so they'll have something to do.5. To fall out of line. Most heroes in games are selflessly motivated. They're usually pointed in a certain direction by someone else. For example, Link from Zelda. Occasionally, Link will set off to find treasure or the master sword, but he's usually doing something for someone else. Evil is always doing something for itself. So in a way, the entire game would be more personal. There's no reason a hero can't be selfishly motivated throughout an entire game. It just doesn't happen very often.   