Why are all the "bad guys" "cooler" nowadays?

[Rapamaha]

becose bad guys are way more interesting characters than good guys, (what made the guy bad?, why is he doing this?)also the bad guys allways look alot cooler than your avarage good guy.
As for gaming where you play either the good guy or bad guy (RPG's mostly) the morality usually affects gameplay aswell, if you are playing as bad guy you will rob&kill people for money/other items when as a good guy you practically give away your stuff for free to other insignificant people of the world (poor people,beggars)

 

[Kurokami]

So I was reading the "Rebels or Empire" thread and someone made a very good point. Cheering for the "bad guy", despite (or maybe because of?) them usually being a giant prick regardless of your views on morality, seems to be the "in" thing in the last couple years. More and more games are allowing players to control the villain or morph the protagonist into a villain, and in so many media nowadays it seems a lot more time and effort has gone into characterization of antagonists than heroes. Why are we empathizing more with and caring so much more about villains than heroes today? It really is starting to get annoying. I can pity the evil mastermind if his mother didn't love him, but I'm not going to suddenly cheer for him to take over/destroy the world for it.

Honestly? Because being 'good' implies perfection often times. When you look at Batman, even in the face of death, even in the face of someone else's death, he would not kill, he would simply 'pull through'. It is this magical 'perfect good' image that comes with most protagonists that makes me cheer for the antagonist, provided he isn't simply 'evil'.

At least that's part of my theory on it.

Because they have better music then the good guys.


AmIrite?

Anyway, a Well written bad guy will ALWAYS make you question your beliefs and make you think think they are not evil.

And that. How could I overlook that?

 

[Elosandi]

n as a good guy you practically give away your stuff for free to other insignificant people of the world (poor people,beggars)

That never actually occured to me...

There needs to be a game where you can instead hire beggars to extend your inventory.

 

[DigitalAtlas]

>Bad guys are cooler nowadays

Spoiler

Ya know only three of these villains are recent, yes?

 

[TelHybrid]

My thoughts on this subject matter:

It's representative of the postmodern condition. People are more inclined to question morality. Why does this villain commit these crimes? What are they trying to achieve? What makes them think it's right? What's the difference between a villain, and a freedom fighter?

With social realism being a dominant aspect of our culture, people want a villain to be more in depth than just simply a guy with a moustache tieing women to train tracks, someone they can identify with, or even like. They need to have some understandable motive for their crimes, or a reason why they're psychologically inclined to a life of crime.

When you look at most video game villains that are described as 'cool', they've usually suffered some sort of trauma to make them that way, a famous example being Sephiroth's mother issues.

 

[9Darksoul6]

too much generalising here, good guys arnt boring because they are good, they are boroing because they are badly written

good guys can be interesting

Why are we empathizing more with and caring so much more about villains than heroes today?

Because we as an intellecutally maturing society are starting to realize that righteousness is synonym for stupidity, and if you think about it, 'heroes' are nothing but damaged people with a god-complex.
Besides, doing the 'right thing' is always inherently less fun, and most of the time has no pragmatic sense to it.
In short, to answer your question, because illiteracy is slowly dissapearing.

then what are the villans?

bottom line is villans are cool, but I mean we have good guys because I simply dont care if all the charachters are douchbage or complete monsters and would find such a story hard to watch/read, the Idea of the "anti-hero" fills both sides of the spectrum

also Honest to god I cant think of ANY good guy more or less recently thats been "100% perfect goody goody" because that makes a terrible charachter, people have worked that out by now

of coarse from what Ive read over time I feel there are quite a few sociapathic wanna be super villans on this site...

Thank you very much.
By the way, I'm curious - your poor spelling and lack of sentence structure - are they stylistic choices?

 

[Brandon237]

Because the good guys are boring, flat and useless. They are less ambitious, they feel less human, there is a difference between evil and greedy, subtle, but it is their, and many bad guys are often just vengeful, greedy or some other human characteristic, it is hard for people to associate with overly moral and correct people, and this is the observations of me, a goody-two-shoes who cannot play evil in RPGs... The villains feel human and deep and they have FLAIR, the heroes are often boring and kooky-cutter models in comparison.

 

[Terminate421]

I guess people enjoy changes in story.

My favorite kind of bad guys are either:
A. Ones who believe they are doing good. (Saren)
B. Ones who have fun with what they do. (Joker)

 

[Terminate421]

Rooting for the villain has been in play for ages. Notice how the biggest legion of Star Wars fans is a Storm Trooper unit? In the new Transformers movie, one of the characters says, "Why do the Decepticons ALWAYS get the good stuff?" Bad guys are always cooler, get the best stuff, get the hot girls. It makes it all the more satisfying when they are brought down to me.

Personally, I've never rooted for any bad guy because I have a strong moral compass. I don't mean to imply others don't. Mine is simply extremely straight. I just don't like evil or bad guys.

Adding to that. The badguys are usually the cleverist (Word exist?).
In the new Transformers Laserbeak shows that a few times (Via Transforming and people he kills) and is now my new favorite Decepticon (Was Originally Starscream).

Bad Guys, usually have the edge, making them interesting. Its kind of like a game of chess. You anticipate the enemies move making it much more interesting until you try to find your own way to go around the move.

 

[Vault101]

too much generalising here, good guys arnt boring because they are good, they are boroing because they are badly written

good guys can be interesting

Why are we empathizing more with and caring so much more about villains than heroes today?

Because we as an intellecutally maturing society are starting to realize that righteousness is synonym for stupidity, and if you think about it, 'heroes' are nothing but damaged people with a god-complex.
Besides, doing the 'right thing' is always inherently less fun, and most of the time has no pragmatic sense to it.
In short, to answer your question, because illiteracy is slowly dissapearing.

then what are the villans?

bottom line is villans are cool, but I mean we have good guys because I simply dont care if all the charachters are douchbage or complete monsters and would find such a story hard to watch/read, the Idea of the "anti-hero" fills both sides of the spectrum

also Honest to god I cant think of ANY good guy more or less recently thats been "100% perfect goody goody" because that makes a terrible charachter, people have worked that out by now

of coarse from what Ive read over time I feel there are quite a few sociapathic wanna be super villans on this site...

Thank you very much.
By the way, I'm curious - your poor spelling and lack of sentence structure - are they stylistic choices?

Yeah, it's kinda like My trademark "thing"