I've never liked an 'evil' char or side in game.
One issue they need to address is what it means for their game.
Is it the psychotic type kill everythig, or the selfish backstabber, or simply the head of a large organization that dominates everyone to make them serve it?
A lot of times evil is mixed - you find a drug lord who builds schools and hospitals.
The Koch brothers are evil - but they donate to science and PBS while running the second largest private company in the US.
People can't easily agree what evil means a lot, so we get a lot more of stereotypes.
'Evil' isn't that common as a stereotype in the real world.
Jeffrey Dahmer felt great guilt over what he did; he could only kill while drunk, and he tried to save a body for a long time to avoid killing again. Disgusting, but happened.
On the other hand, isn't something like voter suppression - going on now - 'evil'? But not exactly great videogame stuff.
A lot of evil is done in the name of fighting other 'evil'. That's why enemies feed off each other a lot, each justifying their actions by things the other side does wrong.
I think evil in videogames is probably best as parody, not taking itself too seriously, over the top such as Dungeon Keeper.
But it could be done where you have to do bad things to gain - lying, stealing, etc.
A historical note - early in WWII the allied generals were pretty determined to fight a 'clean war', in avoiding things like atrocities killing civilians. Years into the war, the people who were in favor of those things started to get more power; people seemed to just get tired of trying to avoid them, to get numb about war, and killing masses of civilians became pretty routine and excuses were easily accepted.
One issue they need to address is what it means for their game.
Is it the psychotic type kill everythig, or the selfish backstabber, or simply the head of a large organization that dominates everyone to make them serve it?
A lot of times evil is mixed - you find a drug lord who builds schools and hospitals.
The Koch brothers are evil - but they donate to science and PBS while running the second largest private company in the US.
People can't easily agree what evil means a lot, so we get a lot more of stereotypes.
'Evil' isn't that common as a stereotype in the real world.
Jeffrey Dahmer felt great guilt over what he did; he could only kill while drunk, and he tried to save a body for a long time to avoid killing again. Disgusting, but happened.
On the other hand, isn't something like voter suppression - going on now - 'evil'? But not exactly great videogame stuff.
A lot of evil is done in the name of fighting other 'evil'. That's why enemies feed off each other a lot, each justifying their actions by things the other side does wrong.
I think evil in videogames is probably best as parody, not taking itself too seriously, over the top such as Dungeon Keeper.
But it could be done where you have to do bad things to gain - lying, stealing, etc.
A historical note - early in WWII the allied generals were pretty determined to fight a 'clean war', in avoiding things like atrocities killing civilians. Years into the war, the people who were in favor of those things started to get more power; people seemed to just get tired of trying to avoid them, to get numb about war, and killing masses of civilians became pretty routine and excuses were easily accepted.