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Have you ever played a game that made you hate its antagonist so much that you wanted to defeat him not only for the sake of finishing the game but mostly because you really wanted to kick his ass ?

How do you think a game can induce the player to get this kind of feelings ?

usually when i play games i like the antagonist more than the protagonist

the only antagonists i don't like are the ones that are stupid or goofy rather than evil or intelligent. example: ozzie from chrono trigger

i think it's easier to make an antagonist "annoying" than to make the player dislike the antagonist for his evil deeds, because typically we don't care about what who dies since we know it's just a videogame. example: i didn't hate sephiroth for killing aeris at all, i was happy to get rid of her

i prefer games where the antagonist is intelligent and deceptive and manipulative, and mostly stays in the background and is rarely shown, but also has nobility is only doing evil things for what they see as some greater good. example: krelian in xenogears, or leon silverberg in the suikoden games; or another way to put it is i prefer liking the antagonist over disliking the antagonist

Does Moneybags from Spyro count? I don't think he could be called a villain, and he's certainly not the main antagonist or a threat, but he could be called an antagonist since he constantly finds ways to collect gems from you. And in the end of the third game, it was pretty awesome to find out that I could chase him down and take back all the gems he took from me.

So, I guess if an antagonist continually takes something from you that you earned and need, it really would make a player want to beat them.

Tying what I've said with this, I honestly haven't even taken the time to finish Final Fantasy 7 myself, but I know my brother thought it sucked not to have Aeris anymore. She is really useful for healing, after all. (Plus she's meant to be liked, being a character that the creators actually thought through. Story in games shouldn't be ignored.)

(http://i54.tinypic.com/20hvpjn.jpg)

@stevobread - don't want to turn this into a ff7 thread, but that was exactly why i didn't like her, she was too nice / feminine. also characters were so customizable in ff7 that you can make anyone into a healer by giving them  the heal=all materia combination

and i'm definitely not saying story should be ignored, story is really important, just that i personally tend not to care when villains do evil things in games, because i'm usually not too attached to the things they do evil to. for instance in lufia 2 or lufia 1 (i forget which) the sinistrals would destroy entire towns, but that doesn't bother me at all compared to when i read about actual real towns getting destroyed (e.g. in war)

I can't really claim to be a writing expert or anything, but in my personal experience all "hatable" antagonists successfully execute one thing and one thing only: They fuck with your values.

Some real life examples: I was only eight years old when the 9/11 attacks occurred in my country. I remember seeing the television screen, witnessing all of the grown-ups in a universal state of panic, and wondering what the heck was the big deal. I mean, a building blows up every other day in the cartoons! And it's like a thousand miles away too. What's so bad about it?

So let's summarize. Major catastrophe occurs. I don't care. Why? Because nothing of value was personally lost.

Fast forward a couple years or so. I had recently picked up Final Fantasy X (my RPG gateway drug), and was nearing the endgame. My cousin also had the game, but was still in the first few hours of it. So one day my cousin comes over, brings his memory card, we get through a couple dungeons together and—wait, he just saved over MY game file!!

My parents said they've never seen me so enraged before. Or since. Which is understandable. I had sunk, like, 30 hours of my time into that game! 30 whole hours!!

Anyway, back to villainy. If you just want people to hate your character, this is really all there is to it. Just find what is important and valuable to the player, and destroy it. To go back to FF7, why did people hate Sephiroth? Because Aeris was their waifu.

What's really cool about this method is that you can also apply this to personal values too! For reference, you can turn to your country's next political election for an exclusive sneak-preview of real villains! Why are they villains? Because they hold values that I do not, and since I am always correct they are therefore stupid and incompetent and probably don't bathe regularly either.

Well, there you have it. At least these are my observations on how to make an antagonist that fills the player with high-octane vitriol. Of course, this method doesn't make writing antagonists any easier (if anything, it makes it harder, as you have to work overtime to instill values that you intend to take away later). It also doesn't guarantee that the antagonist is any good, just hatable, so watch out for that. But whatever. These are just my thoughts and opinions; feel free to take 'em or leave 'em. Toodles!

In my experience, I have hated no antagonist more than Frank Fontaine.  At first, it all seemed like you were just going after Ryan like a traditional video game.  Kill the bad guy because he's bad, and here's some reasons why.  But no.  It didn't stop there. You find out that you've been played.  I knew what would happen, and it STILL pissed me off.  I didn't just want to kill the bad guy to finish the game.  I wanted to KILL the bastard.  I have never hated an antagonist more or since. 
 
Though, some of my favorite antagonists imo are the ones who think they're doing good.  Ozy from Watchmen (Not a video game, but whatever)was a great  villain, because he believed what he did would help (and he was right).  What he didn't realize was that his solution would only work in the short term.  They wouldn't focus on the squid/manhattan forever.  There would always be conflict.  And I think that makes a great antagonist.  You begin to feel bad for him, because he doesn't realize that he's doing more harm than good. 

TL;DR, Villains who make you feel violated or feel sorry for are the best.

I've never held any outright anger towards any antagonist in any medium... except Dolores Umbridge.

That bitch got under my skin.

Yes many times. I remember when I raced full length season in NASCAR Racing 2003. In very first race Daytona 500 AI driver took me out blatantly when I was leading. I used to push he in to the wall in every next race when I had opportunity, oh that rage.

Also in Civilization 2 I remember nuking China into a extinction after they nuked some of my cities without reason. I've always hated China and Mongolia in that game.

Villains that stay in the background and send their troops after you are not really as hateable as those who personally come to ruin your day, and relish your bitter tears. Extra bonus hate points if they trick you into trusting them as well.

From a narrative standpoint, the villains I've hated most, off the top of my head in no particular order:

Kefka (Final Fantasy 6)
Pokey (Earthbound)
SHODAN (System Shock 2)

I think the traits that particularly piss me off that they all share are taunting and cowardice. I had no problem with Sephiroth in FF7 either, in fact, I remember hating Rufus Shinra quite a bit more when I played through it. But to know for a fact that you could kick that character's ass, and in all three of the above examples, you did on more than one occasion, and to have them still gain the upper hand and then laugh in your face made me want to ANNIHILATE them.

Also, in non-game land, I've always hated lawful evil characters. These are the badguys who take advantage of the system and do things that are perfectly legal but are morally heinous. They manipulate psychologically and emotionally but never physically assault anyone, so they can't be brought to justice. Dolores Umbridge and Nurse Ratchet type characters.

PHOENIX WRIGHT 3 SPOILERS:

I absolutely DESPISED Dahlia Hawthorne. She is probably my #1 hated antagonist ever. I could be alone -- but I have never wanted to see someone go down more than I wanted to see her go down.

In addition, it seems like every Phoenix Wright antagonist, at least to me, is really a pleasure to see go down in the end. Could be a little skewed for me since I'm a huge fan of visual novels though!

MOTHER 3/EARTHBOUND SPOILERS:

In a way, I also really hated Fassad. He just kept coming back, and the fact that he was torturing an innocent (and very lovable) character was, although comical at times, a good reason to hate him.

I also really, really hated Pokey/Porky. Didn't even expect him to turn up, but when I finally realized he was behind much of the game's negative events, I was in angry disbelief for a moment.

I think that, for me, any antagonist that ends up recurring within a single title (especially after they're already supposed to be gone/dead/redeemed!) seem to be the ones I hate the most.

Also Fontaine as said above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI%27s_100_Years..._100_Heroes_and_Villains

this may be relevant here. it's the top 50 villains (and top 50 heros) in movies as judged by the american film institute

I don't want an antagonist I hate

While it's not easy to do, it's still not as interesting as an antagonist I can understand/identify with or etc

Being conflicted by a game is so much more interesting (and difficult to induce, I think) than being mad at it

how to make you hate a villian? they take away your best weapon and never return it in a fight. the other easy way: annoy you. it's quite easy to create the antagonist you hate than antagonist you like.

I recall hearing somewhere that a story is often only as good as its antagonist(s). That aside, I think everyone's already pretty much covered the basics in this thread.

Whether or not you'll hate a villain probably boils down to the setting of the game, and how immersive (which in gaming, as I understand it, stands for 'ease for a player to imagine oneself in their player character's shoes whilst using the least possible amount of their own imagination') the experience is.

Being acutely aware that you are not the ridiculously-haired guy wielding a weapon three times their body weight like an origami paper crane is probably a good way to be detached from the plight of said character's fellows and environment. "Oh, the planet's going to get crushed by a giant rock? Why don't I just fly up there and use my thousand-slash-move to cut it into harmless bits, like I did with the forty dudes that were harshing our mellow?"

That's probably another thing. Whether or not you feel hatred for a villain or whether or not you re-direct that hatred for the game's design might also depend on whether the gameplay clashes heavily with the plot; If you have a bunch of guys who seem to be able to basically summon Captain Planet several times over for the maximum amount of damage, it's a lot harder to think they're in any real danger unless the game suddenly decides to change the rules ("you can't use those ridiculous attacks unless the PLOT lets you!").

Gameplay and plot dissonance aside, people are unique. It's impossible to make people hate (or like) specific characters consistently. You can certainly try, though, and hope for the best. The standard 'would I feel this way about this type of person' sort of mentality probably helps, the same way it does for most other things that are subjective.

tl;dr: No guaranteed way to make people feel a particular way about fictional characters, it's all a gamble, lots of variables.

In a strange way, the idea of hating the antagonist because the way they respond IN GAME - ie they steal your weapons, they have a particularly annoying hard-to-dodge attack, etc - seems almost like a bit of metagaming. Surely if you hate the antagonist and want to defeat them because of a plot reason, that's good, but if you hate them because of the way that sprite/character/boss/whatever behaves in-game, that's just a game design issue and shows you've created something which really annoys people. A small number would respond to that by being more determined to win, but the majority lose interest in fighting a foe they find to be 'unfair'.

I think as well as working on making you dislike the antagonist, the best way to create the affect you want is to make a protagonist that the player really really identifies with and wants to succeed - that'll amplify anynoe who stands in the way.

Phoenix Wright in general has some of my favorite love-to-hate characters. Perhaps it's because they are so blatantly lying and/or evil that it compels me to do everything in my power to slap their lies right back in their stupid faces.

Perhaps the most reliable way to make people dislike a character is to make them a sadist or a bully.
Just show them intentionally causing pain to someone else. Whether physical or mental doesn't matter.
The effect is amplified if they enjoy it, and if the abused is a sympathetic character.
Having them destroy whole towns usually wont work. The way it is done is to impersonal in most games.
Also, making the villain an obsessed torturer is less effective than you might think.
Mainly because it is not very believable. Small things can be far more effective for characterization than grandiose ones.
Mainly because they are more believable.   

i think Paul probably nailed it in the first response.  The problem is that the antagonist is usually either too much of a buffoon to take seriously to actually hate, or the hatred is 'forced' by making them hugely irritating. and if the antagonist is neither of those then they usually end up too cool to hate!

I think this is probably the key to making a 'hated' antagonist, someone you had helped and looked after in the game and considered part of your 'team'.
I never really played much FF7, so i'm sure it wouldn't make much sense specifically, but as a possible example maybe if Aeris hadn't been killed, but betrayed the player and revealed that she was the 'baddie' all along...might have stirred even more emotion in the players and created a genuinely hated antagonist

Gary Oak.

That is all.

Bit of a huge necro, but I'll bite.

Antagonists, to truly be good characters, have to be innately likable. The problem is that people tend to empathize with others when they are genuine characters rather than two-dimensional facades, and they will do it even when the person is a complete monster. I'm sure if you met Hitler or Stalin you could empathize with them, even though they were total and utter monstrous human beings.

Nothing hurts more than having a character you like do terrible things, because you don't want them to be evil. But they are, and you understand why. But you can't let them.

Is it me or does there seem to be a trend toward 'misunderstood' villains at the moment? I love a balls-out baddie who's not afraid to be hated and (usually) mad as a hatter! That said Kuja from FFIX was really annoying -  enjoyed every second taking him down.

I think frienemies are the ones you will hate the most. People who are nice to you but screw you in some subtle ways.
The antagonist can even be a friend of the player character, and somehow betray him or do something that would make you hate him.

I find that the 'friendly rivals' employed by games like Pokemon that can't just have BADDIES are always annoying. Are there any games that really do take a friend character and slowly change them? I know that 'Star Ocean: The Last Hope' tried it, but it felt really forced and last minute.

This isn't related to the "friend turning evil" thing, but Pokemon actually most certainly does have a villain that is very despicable. In Black and White, Ghetsis manipulates the sympathetic villain for his own ends. So when you finally get to fight him, it feels rewarding.

Pretty much all Pokemon rivals that appear after you beat a dungeon, and nearly all your pokemon are dead
And Ghirahim (skyward sword), he is a bitch

I've had plenty of them, though recently in the Star Wars: The Old Republic as I was leveling my Sith Inquisitor on Taris, I forgot her name but it's the complete pain in the ass girl who is through the story line there. She wasn't a boss, but I wanted her dead in every cut scene.

If anyone played Bulletstorm, General Serano is completely unlike-able for me.

It's not even the fact he's a murdering dictator who's been using you to silence innocent people, it's just his attitude, and what the game does really well is forcing you to put up with that attitude when you're forced to fight side by side again.

In a game primarily driven by the protagonists drive to murder the antagonist, forcing them to cooperate was really well done.

Space Pirates and Zombies spoilers (Highlight to read)

In SPAZ, one of the main Characters, Don, turns out to be a final boss type creature. The game starts by building trust for the 3 main characters of the game, to the point where you feel like you're playing as them. When Don turned on me, I went into a rage mode and played for 14 hours straight to beat him.

Megaman X Command Mission pretty much did the same thing.

spoiler
Spider is invited to the party where you use him for quite a while and love everything about him (because he's fucking cool and has cool attacks) but then he leaves for a while and you face him in the end as Redips (Spider backwards how can we all have been so blind) i hated him so.. i leveled him up and this is how he repayed me

My favorite villains are Kefka (Final Fantasy 6), Sephiroth (Final Fantasy 7), and Dhoulmagus (Dragon Quest 8). The all have a vendetta-fueled madness stemming from a tragic past but they operate with such cold detached surgical precision that everything they do in the game radiates with true villainy. The way Kefka's laugh and Dhoulmagus' sinister "What a pity..." signal they're about to do something evil or serve as the exclamation point for something evil they just did are pure genius.

One thing that makes the 3 villains especially effective is that they don't just burn down the main character's village and then slink off into the shadows, they hit the main characters hard and keep taking shot after brutal shot at them escalating the damage every step of the way until that final confrontation becomes something more than just beat the boss and save the day, it becomes payback.

what about Braid? you played as the antagonist in that lol

Off the top of my head, the only truly "hated" villain I could think of was Luca Blight. (http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/9794/luca3uk0.png) He's the kind of guy who only knows how to do horrible things. Kefka was at least funny while doing horrible things, and that made him more likable to me.

I think it's fine to have a completely evil antagonist if you do it right. It largely depends on what kind of game you're going for. In a game like Diablo, for example, you don't want to sympathize with the enemies you're killing. It is a dungeon crawl, pure and simple, so forcing the player to think about the consequences of their actions would only slow them down.

Kefka - he was original.

The dude who hit me with his car in GTA? Fucker.

That dude who threw me out of his car after I threw him out of it, in GTA? Fucker.

The bitch who called me a name (in GTA)? I'll show you....

Dr. "Eggman"? Meh.

Pokey from Earthbound? Hell yes. Hell, yes.

My recipe:
  1. Make an interesting character.
  2. Give this character a goal that will regularly conflict with the character's goal.
  3. Have the antagonist's, and the protagonist's, journey's towards their goals develop, so their point of conflict and nature of conflict shifts.
  4. Root this conflict in the mechanics.

Pokey? Interesting because he's rooted in reality. He's cocky without being cliche. Spoiled by his parents, a friend in some ways, legitimately, but also kind of fake. He cares for his family, but also looks down on each of them in interesting ways. Dislikes Ness for his ease of making friends. Has a stronger work ethic. Is more practical, less idealistic. Doesn't fit in with his surroundings, dreams of a bigger life - like Ness. Comes from the same hometown; contrasts with the main character.

Pokey is real, filled with detail, subtle, and driven. I can understand who he is. I have expectations of how he should behave but don't know nearly enough to not be surprised by what he does.

His goals evolve over the course of the story. What he wants changes. How we gets it changes. We can't predict how we'll conflict with him next, or if we will.

Pokey's behaviour directly affects gameplay. The knock at the door in the middle-of-the-night at the beginning of the game is incredible. He makes decisions in battle, forces you to do things, to lead him places. His family life is accentuated by his parents' reaction to Buzz Buzz (they kill him). You have to face him occasionally. He is behind circumstances that impede you.

It all depends on what he DOES, not what he says. If people were defined by what they say and not what they do, then nobody should be left alive. I was so pissed when Toroko died. The thing is, most games want to have the antagonist be "EVIL" not corrupt. Being evil is like saying "Mwahaha, Im soooooooo evil byorka byork!!!" While being corrupt is more like contemplating "This person is not what he once was. He was probably an innocent kid once. Wtf led to this!? Why is he doing thins that hurt others?" kindof like that.

Dahlia Hawthorne in Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations. For what she did to Terry Fawles. I never thought that I could feel like that towards a video game character.


For me personally the trick is to first make me either like or get invested in something in the game, and then make the villain take that thing away, do something bad to it. Destroying cities or countries I've never been to in game has no effect, but killing my sidekick who's been with me for three previous games (assuming likable sidekick)?

For instance, revenge stories such as some dude killing the main charactrer's family at the start of the game don't really get to me, since hey, the family has been dead since the beginning of the game, I never met them. I don't really care. But someone I meet at the same time as the player character meets them. spending time with them, and then see them be killed, that's something that gets me motivated and aligned with a game's storyline of revenge.


To me they both seem equally difficult - it involves getting me to care about something in the game. Anger or conflicting feelings, either way I need to care enough about the game world or its characters and their fate, and that is not too easy to pull off. One way to cause this that comes to mind is to make me work for something, make me go through gameplay for something - if I've seen effort to gain or achieve something, and it's then taken away from me, chances are I'm going to be pissed.

This guy here from Phoenix Wright:
(http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/2164/1510066-gyakutensaiban407.png)

He is introduced as a "legendary attorney"; he costantly acts superior, alters the evidence, uses confusing rethoric and corruption in the court, later recurring to downright intimidation and even violence when you step too far.
Fortunately he is later found to be [SPOILER]the actual murder after a quite satisfying investigation[/SPOILER] so you can get some righteous revenge >:D

He is a villain that you really hate imo because he constantly breaks the game's moral rules, playing above the law and using a power that you don't have. It just feels so wrong, and makes you feel powerless and useless. And destroying him means winning, but also restoring your faith in your values of correctness and whatever (in the game).

Also I didn't expect to find an antagonist as interesting as Ghirahim in Zelda, as zeldas are made of canned cliches in that respect.

For me to hate the antagonist the character has to be fully unsympathic. I have never truely despised the antagonist unless it's just a terrible character. Characters like Wheatly and Glad0s are really interesting antagonists and well realized. They have human resemblance but at the end of the day they are just robots. In Portal 2 I felt truely deceived and backstabbed by Wheatly. I also like villains you can sympathize like Skullkid from LoZ:MM.

I don't know if it makes me hate the antagonist, but perhaps the most frustrating thing a character can do is act out of complete irrationality, especially knowingly. Unfortunately, this is more common of badly written protagonists rather than well written antagonists.

Antagonists that gleefully subvert the values and morals of the audience should fair pretty well in garnering hatred. Though too much evil will break the suspension of disbelief.

What do you think of characters like Joker from Batman, whose main "point" is the irrationality?

Well, isn't the reaction of frustration the exact thing that is trying to be extracted from me by the writer in such cases? Frustration, just like hate, is not a pleasent emotion. But experienced in the overall whole of a narrative it can serve a larger purpose. And such, while not pleasurable, I am not condemning the writer for making me feel frustration (that is, when it is intentionally and carefully done). In the case of the Joker, the pain he applys to Batman is shared with the audience. And thus, the Joker is a villian who is easy to hate (though also easy to love as well, which points to the idea that perhaps the best antagonists are more complex than simple hate-bags). If the author is wielding frustration with control, it can be a powerful tool. I just lament the many times it is unintentionally provoked by bad writing and bad characters, leading to bad experiences.

Like this guy?
(http://gwcpoetry.edublogs.org/files/2011/12/250px-ozymandias1-2k8hbqu.png)

Antagonist hating is really easy with a MMO.

In most single player games, it seems scripted, though. Like I don't care what he does, it's all part of the story. It's easier to hate a reality show contestant than a supervillain in a movie because of this.

I think you have to humanize them somehow, make them believable as real characters. Then introduce something the player would really disagree with. You'd have to make it so it doesn't become scripted, like maybe have a really emo character who turns on you if you say the wrong things (like Myron in Fallout). I also hated Yoshimo in Baldur's Gate 2 because I trusted him! Gave him good stuff, put a lot of effort into leveling him up, then suddenly he turns on me.

Betrayal works well in games because you're putting effort into something and suddenly they betray your trust. Like maybe you can have a banker who borrows money and gives you tons of excuses when you ask for it back. Or someone who just kills off the best characters in your party.

Sengoku Rance (18+) did that really well.. some characters were hard to get, and the villains were downright brutal. The game actually told you that characters were meant to die, so you eventually stop savescumming and live with it. But you get really pissed when the character you spent half the game bringing up is killed.

Making an antagonist that you hate is easy, it always has been. Vilification is a time-honored tradition, and has been refined over the centuries. There are certain types of behavior that are universally regarded with disdain. Pulling out any of these in your narrative is a sure-fire way to get your audience to hate a particular character.

I would point to Game of Thrones as a recent example. Specifically, I would point to the character of Joffrey. George Martin does a great job of making this character despicable. Joffrey is not especially capable by himself. But his every action seems intentionally crafted to encourage the readers to loathe him. He is petty, vain, vicious, vindictive, and rather dim. He isn't even competent at being villainous, and all the audience is left with is annoyance and disgust. In almost every way, Joffrey is the perfect "hatable" villain.

One key component of his loathsomeness is the fact that the author never, ever jumps into Joffrey's point of view. While the novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series jump between character perspectives in every chapter, Joffrey is never given a chapter of his own. We never see the story through his eyes. Even monstrous characters can be humanized somewhat if the audience is better informed of their personal perspective. If you want to demonize an antagonist, make sure to avoid telling the story from their perspective.

I would like to briefly re-emphasize the point of competence. Characters that are good at what they do are easier for the audience to like. A truly despicable character should be as incompetent as possible.

Some writers might assume that this means that the villain should also fail. Not so. A sure-fire way to encourage hatred is to have your villain succeed, in spite of their own incompetence. This turn of events is always seen as unfair, and is a wonderful way of stoking the fires of hatred. Just as everyone loves an underdog, everyone despises when someone wins because of an overwhelming advantage. This is also in keeping with the portrayal of Joffrey. He regularly gets to win, and enjoy the spoils of victory, without ever contributing to success.

Disagree somewhat. I think humanized antagonists are believable.. the ones who are plain evil seem shallow. It's a little different between games and other media - with games, the experience is personal. Everyone expects a movie to be scripted, but people hate it when games are scripted.

Make them too competent and it starts to seem like cheating.

I'd say the key to a good villain is to have the player understand them, but disagree. I think Lord Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame was the best villain ever made. You understood him perfectly, but he was just... wrong. You could sympathize with him, you can understand his love/lust (but he refuses to call himself lustful. He'd push your beliefs to an extreme fanaticism.

Traits like arrogance really help in pulling it off too, the kind of person who refuses to admit to being wrong. If you want to make them overcompetent, their Achilles Heel could be their arrogance, a refusal to do something any other way.

Or some could be just completely selfish. Like the typical capitalist, who destroys everything around him for a little personal gain. Make it a little personal, maybe have a little tax every level where the king takes like 30% of your adventuring bounty, and have guards around your area complain about how much the king takes.

The discussion isn't about making believable antagonists. It's about making hateful antagonists. And nothing takes the edge off a good hate like understanding. Providing perspective for an antagonist is a great way to flesh out their character and make them more believable. But it will also make it easier for the audience to sympathize with them, no matter how monstrous their actions or twisted their motivations. The more you inform your audience about your antagonist, the harder it becomes to hate them.

We're not talking about making "good" antagonists. A villain that you want to last and become a major character doesn't really need to be hated. It's quite possible for such villains to be loved by the audience, and even to upstage the protagonists. There is no rule against this.

But sometimes, you need to make use of a villain who's only function is to inspire hatred in the audience. That's what I'm trying to get at here. There are specific methods you can use to really inspire loathing in the audience. And one of the biggest is to limit potential understanding or empathy for the target of antagonism.

Yeah, I mean, that's where I disagree. Pretty much every antagonist that I hate is someone who I can understand. An antagonist that I don't understand is usually just a plot hole. Even true when you look at it IRL.


E.g.
Antagonist kidnaps princess (for no reason) - no hate
Antagonist kidnaps princess to rape her. Or to sacrifice her for personal youth. Or because he's a creepy lonely stalker guy who dresses her nice and chains her trying to stockholm syndrome her - a little more hate


I think the most shocking antagonist I've ever faced in a game was in Live a Live, that final boss guy. He was a former player character, so you understood him perfectly, you understand why he's so angry and bitter. You'd completely sympathize with him, because you play as him before he became evil. He tries to kill off your other player characters, point out how they were also selfish and evil. You end up hating him because he's a fucking hypocrite. Also because he's tough to beat.

An article on that guy I found through google (http://wwwthinkinginsidethebox.blogspot.com/2008/10/general-rpg-lists-greatest-villains.html). (also has a lot of great case studies on hateable villains)

I'm not sure if this is a surefire way to make somebody hate the villain, but this almost always works for me:

Make the villain weak in some way, be it through cowardice, arrogance, fear, and so on. This is the first step, show a flaw that they are incapable of coping with. This shows that they are relatable, making them easier to hate.

If the villain is effective in what they do, this unlocks some kind of psychological keyhole in my mind, because I know that they are weak. Therefore they shouldn't be a problem, yet they are. Kind of like a fly that's buzzing around your head.

I like that idea, from Mustafa.

Villains with a human weakness make them relatable, then justify their behaviour (the negative kind). When you see a villain like that you get fired up because you can relate their flaw to the issues that you have to deal with because of them. In your head you're like, "fuck. if they just saw life this way then I/others wouldn't have to deal with this problem."

I end up hating antagonists if they're simply dicks, as opposed to being evil (okay I guess the difference between them is hard to see but hear me out).

If the antagonist is just plain rude, where it's not funny, or witty, then I'm going to hate the antagonist. Because he / she's a dick.

But give me some funny, clever antagonist, who makes the game more fun (I would say ironically but this is really the role of the antagonist), rather than a chore.

So yeah, that's kind of the most common dividing point between me liking and disliking the antagonist. (I don't have any examples to hand, sorry).

Everyone says Kefka & Sephiroth but I actually adore their insanity much like Genesis from Crisis Core, Kadaj from Advent Children & Sydney from Vagrant Story...their execution was perfect, they stomped around the world like they didn't care, I wanted to follow them & leave my party behind.

The antagonist that irked me was  actually Emperor Gesthal from FF6 because he was a lying bastard, I cheered when Kefka tossed him to his fate but angry I didn't do myself. Hojo from FF7. Also Smithy from Super Mario RPG & Queen Brahne from FF9. Lastly RIVAL from Pokemon Blue &..the Grim Reaper from any Castlevania game.

@Muz and Kain

You guys are disagreeing over terms. Antagonists you hate are beings that you can't sympathize with, otherwise you will stop hating them.

Muz, you are talking about making an antagonist that is a real person, who isn't flat. I agree that doing that is very important. If you can't see the antagonist as a human being then you can't get any feelings going towards him(/her) at all. But this is a different idea than seeing the world from his perspective.

A good villain has to make sense to the writer. That's the important bit. You, the writer, must relate. If you only do so a little it will knock the edge off of your creation.

No writer ever sympathizes completely with their antagonist, I'm sure. Complete sympathy is just like a holy grail to dream about. ... but one day someone will do it.

The audience however must only see a piece of what the antagonist is going through if you want to generate hate/anger/etc. If they see the whole thing then the antagonist may still remain the antagonist but become something to empathize with.

There is a careful balance to achieve.

Sometimes you want the audience to be conflicted, in which case you want the audience to sympathize with some of the things the antagonist does but not understand the others.

You need to show just enough of a person to get someone to relate but not enough to stop them from feeling hate. (yeah!) All the people we hate in real life are ones we can relate to in some big way but don't understand in some other big way.

Speaking from personal experience.... Married couples (parents) often hate each other more than anyone if things go sour. They hate the person they understand very well but also don't understand. If you fix the understanding the hate disappears.

Note. You do not need to hate the antagonist for the antagonist to be compelling. He just has to be a breathing force that prevents you from reaching your goals.

No one ever said you're supposed to hate the antagonist. A good antagonist isn't one you hate, a good antagonist is a worthy adversary to the protagonist. This can be anything from a friendly rival to a murderous oppressor. The job of the antagonist is to draw out the very worst and best of the protagonist and expose his strengths and weaknesses (and vice versa).

The antagonist doesn't even have to be human or sentient, it can be a beast, a force of nature, the elements, etc.

Sometimes hate is nice. Hate is like fear or humour. It's one more ingredient for the mixing pot.

You can use it or not use it. Normally I just think about characters that are interesting and varied. I think about hate but I don't normally try to construct it.

In the end all you care about is engagement. I suppose it comes down to the mechanics, maybe. Different feelings suit different games. "Rage" induction might be good for a boxer, at least some of the time.

I like the idea of playing with the player's interpretation with the antagonist, like: I make the player feel one way, then make them feel another and just move the needle around, just to show 'em how variable their feelings can be based on perception.

But that's me.

What you understand,
you can forgive.


Do you want to forgive?

Totally agree. The best (worst?) antagonists I've seen in games are the ones that change the opinion or actions of the protagonist. Like in Uncharted 2, Lazarevic didn't inspire hatred or disgust in or of himself, but because he made Drake change from indifference to heroism you changed your view of him too.

trunchbull

Hmm... I think horror movies have been quite good at inspiring hatred. A horror movie often makes you hate the protagonist, and sometimes sympathize with the antagonist, such that you feel good when the monster kills the hero's slutty girlfriend. It's such a strong trope that you can almost predict who gets killed by how much you hate the protagonists.

Some useful ways include:

• Killing animals - it's easier and more logical than killing people and shows what the character would do if they could get away with anything.
• Being ruthless to people close to them - they beat up their children (out of love), slap their wives, takes money from under the bed of his dying father.
• Sluts/whores - I think women relate to them differently than men. They're willing to drop all morals and self-worth for a little personal gain.
• Ruthless to poor people, natives... have them shoot or rob the poor at will, maybe even burn down their houses for fun or rape their women. Basically illustrate that if they can get away with being evil, they just don't see anything wrong with being evil.
• Spoiled brats who take a lot from everyone, and act like they deserve it
• Spoiled brats who throw tantrums when they don't get what they want... and then get what they want.
• Liars who reach the top by backstabbing a close friend and stealing credit for other people's work.

My favorite form of this were the SAW movies. They just had these utterly fucked up protagonists. You'd also hate the antagonist for being too extreme with their vigilante methods. It neatly subverts the trope that everyone you hate will die, because you'll hate all the main characters of the movie.

For my money I think the first antagonist in Suikoden 2 takes the cake.  He was decently written, made you hate him,and even in his death was still a prick.  Plus the fight to kill him was one of the more epic ones I've played.

BIOSHOCK SPOILERZ!

I think the only antagonist gaming wise were the antagonists of both Bioshock games. Not Ryan, but rather Fontaine in the original. I think it's because it felt like he had tricked me, and as the game wants you to it felt like I'd been manipulated all along (as was obviously in keeping with the main theme of choice in Bioshock.) I also felt angry at him because in a way Ryan had a great idea and just wanted to make something he felt was better than the surface world, and Fontaine saw the flaws in it and tore it down. (Of course the problem was that his libertarian utopia was an impossible concept and Ryan had failed to account for a whole host of flaws, but initially I felt angry at Fontaine for destroying it just for his own gain)

I hated Lamb because she is basically everything I am against, and her whole thing of deindividualising people, brainwashing, controlling people through 'socialism' and basically enslaving the desperate people of rapture was pretty disgusting. I spent the whole game wanting to kill that condescending bitch. Also again the notion of control that it felt like she was exerting over Delta due to her having his Little Sister was another form of frustrating manipulation.


Essentially a good way for an antagonist to seem really hateable to me is if they're manipulative, controlling, and use people for their own ends. A lot of soaps have villains that are truly hateworthy due to their domestic abuse methods, which entails a whole lot of this. It's also much more believable and relatable than say some guy who blows up dogs for fun or something, which while awful isn't really as easy to identify with.

How to bring hatred to your antagonist:

• Make him an asshole

That's all, folks.