Making a Better Villian

I’ve seen a lot of people on other forums needing help developing a villain, and some people on this forum I know have trouble designing good villains, so I decided to start giving oput game design tips, the first tip is building a better villain for your game. The following are by no means facts, but my own personal opinions that seem to work.

Most human villains should follow what I like to call the SPDS forumla in contrary to the main character. SPDS stands for:

Same
Person
Different
Side

This means that the villains will be, more or less, like the main character, in terms of personality. What makes them seem different is their moral standing, hence the different side. I will use Hao and Yoh Asakura from Shaman King, as they are a literal example of the SPDS formula, and they both fit with my formula.

Yoh and Hao are more or less the same person, and they have the exact same goal. To win the Shaman tournament and make the world what they think it should be. They both somewhat value their allies (Yoh more than Hao obviously), both use their power as necessary, and both believe in their beliefs with all their heart. But Hao want’s to rid the world of humans, while Yoh just wants the world to live peacefully. While Hao’s desires do seem evil, let’s take a look through his eyes.

Hao has seen that human kind repeatedly violates the earth in so many ways, despite the fact that the earth is their home, and the only home they have. Being a shaman, he is in tune with the world and the spirits, and can see the pain that humankind causes. He wants to win the Shaman tournament so that he can rid the world of humans, but he will leave the Shaman on earth because he want’s to save the world from the indecency of human kind, and make the earth a beautiful place once more that Shaman can live on and be happy.

See? He doesn’t seem so evil now, does he? But he also suffers from what I call the GIBE formula. GIBE stands for:

Good
Intentions,
Bad
Execution.

This basically means that he has good intentions in his heart, and if you strip away the evil acts, his acts do make sense, but he is going about it the wrong way, and making himself more evil and antagonizing himself, hence the Bad Execution.

Yoh, for the most part, wants the same as Hao. He wants the world to be peaceful, but he also wants everyone to be able to live happily on the world. This seems like a great intention compared to Hao, but to some people, Hao’s seems like a better intention, because he wants to free the world from the evils of man.

In this way, you can sort of sympathize with Hao. Even more to the point that he fights so hard for it. I think the only way you could feel more sorry for him is if after he was beaten, he was sort of lightly crying or something, realizing his desires cannot be fulfilled before he died.

In this way, by giving the villains a goal that seems like it is good intentions, and by making them an emotional person about their desires, like, oh I don’t know, HUMAN, than you will have a better villain that you may even make the player feel sorry for. But above all, remember this:

Even evil villains are still human.