Top 5 Most Interesting Gaming Villains of All Time (Part 5) - Feature

Interesting villains in videogames can be surprisingly hard to come by.  Thanks to the veritable bevy of clones, cheap knockoffs, strange Japanese games, and sheer, unadulterated crap on the market, it’s easy to find one’s attention wandering when pondering which bad guys are actually worthy of the title, and thus your time.

But of course, like moustachioed, beret wearing wheat being sifted from the generic, nuke-possessing, stupid-name-wielding chaff (how’s THAT for a metaphor?), there are a few examples of true, interesting, honest-to-Bill-Gates villains just waiting to receive your worship and adulation…before executing you in true villain style, no doubt.

For you see, complex characters (good or bad) are always about motivation; a bad guy that wants to destroy the world simply because he was christened Baron von Evilpants III is not going to be anywhere near as interesting as a character who wants to destroy the world due to the unbridled torment and infinite pain caused by selling his soul to the Chaos God of Confectionary for immortality and an endless supply of Tiny Teddies.  Even when they’re our enemy, we still want to know why they tick, and we definitely want the ticking to have some sort of significance.   

So in order to honour those villains (or really, the writers behind them) that stimulate our collective minds, and to help you all get your evil on, I’d like to present to you this, the first part of my Top 5 Most Interesting Gaming Villains of All Time; they may not always be the nastiest bad guys you’ve ever come across, but they’re definitely more than just the clichéd, caricatures you see in so many games (and movies, and books, and…).

Alas we’ve reached the end of the list, but at least we’re going to go out with a bang.  I hope everyone is ready for a bit of a swerve, because Tim Sweeney’s Top 5 Most Interesting Gaming Villains of All Time is about to make you it’s bitch!

   

John Romero - Doom II, id Software, Ion Storm, Midway, various others (PC/OTHERS/REAL LIFE)

      

In my defence, I’d like to go on the record by stating two things: Firstly, I never actually stated that the villains in question had to be IN the games; secondly, Romero was technically the final boss of Doom II, so he still counts anyway (for those not in the know, the Icon of Sin boss in Doom II is killed by firing rockets through a hole in it’s head; the splash damage from these rockets hit Romero’s decapitated head, thus killing the boss - see the video below).

For those not in the know, John Romero was sort of the first real “celebrity” to grace the gaming industry.  Don’t get me wrong, many people were well known and popular throughout the industry, but Romero cultivated a kind of rock star image for himself which made him stand out.  At first, his budding celebrity was somewhat justified; this guy was directly involved in multiple genre-defining classics, especially during his stay at id Software; Wolfenstein 3D, Doom I and II, Quake, Heretic, he was involved in them all, as well as numerous popular titles on older systems (such as the Apple II).

In retrospect, however, it seems somewhat obvious that Romero’s seemingly constant successes and growing popularity went straight to his head, leading to him leaving the studio to help found brand-new industry giant Ion Storm.  Romero would be heading up the development of new first person shooter Daikatana, and the patron saint of FPS would ensure that Daikatana would be the greatest game ever; in fact, in what has to be one of the stupidest (and most likely to backfire) advertising campaigns in history, Romero assured us all in 1997 that he was going to “make you his bitch.”

  

The problem was that Daikatana’s budget and development schedule ballooned rapidly out of control, and no one was being made anybody’s bitch until three years later when the thoroughly awful game was finally released.  Unfortunately for John and Ion Storm, the only bitch-making going on was done by the media; Romero and Daikatana were lambasted in a way that still sees it regularly feature on “Worst Game of All Time” lists, although it must be said that the game nonetheless made enough sales to at least recoup the money spent on it.

Daikatana’s failure, combined with the similar failures of other Ion Storm properties (such as the criminally underrated Anachronox), as well as some stupidly extravagant spending practices, led to the Dallas studio being shut down and Romero packing his bags; since then he’s travelled to numerous different games studios, and appears to have generally screwed up royally at those as well, including apparently being fired from Midway.

What’s the moral of this sad story you ask? I mean, making fun of John Romero has become something akin to insulting David Hasselhoff these days; all too easy.  It’s not that Romero is untalented; he definitely has to be to have had so many hits to his name, and to have completed so much genuinely quality work.  Rather, I think that Romero is another example of a very typical celebrity fad which occurs in the various entertainment industries all the time.

How many talented actors have we seen attempt to direct a movie and fail miserably; how many singers have screwed up when trying to be actors?  Tonnes of them, and I think John Romero is just another example of this phenomenon. Hubris baby, hubris; a game designer does not a rock star make.

Romero is a talented game designer who has been responsible for numerous hits, but he didn’t do all the work himself, and making Doom and Quake didn’t automatically ensure that everything he touches turns to gold.

What makes Romero such an interesting “villain” of gaming is the fact that he allowed his own ego to get in the way of what he gets paid for; making good games.  He’s obviously a talented guy, and it can be hoped that he will redeem himself with future endeavours; but in the meantime, he’ll always be remembered as the guy that was more focused on his playmate ex-girlfriend and customised Ferrari than he was on actually making games that weren’t crap.

“To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero!”  

                  

And thus ends the Top 5 Most Interesting Game Villains of All Time; I admit that there were many, many villains that could have been listed here, but I thought this was a nice little mixture of the well known and the somewhat out there. 

What do you think? Drop me a message or an email and let me know.

  

- Tim Sweeney

  

(Please note that all images and videos appearing in this article series are not my property, but were instead sourced from Google Images and Youtube for non-commercial purposes; if there is an issue with my making use of these, please contact me and they will be removed immediately)