Hmm... this is a little something I found rotting on my HDD. Apparently a full article, but never uploaded. Let me know if there's any flaws in there that stopped me from uploading it before.


(Article partly inspired by some of the tips on creating super-villains floating around the internet)

Preface
Every (good) game has a villain. They're the big bosses who usually control everything, boss people around, trouble you in games, and go around with big machines. Just about every genre has a villain. Here's a short list of my favorites (sorry if I forget their names, it's not like those games mention it every time):

Arcade/action - Dr Robotnik, Vlad in Max Payne 2

Strategy - That paladin/death knight guy in Warcraft 3, Dr Thrax (C&C generals)

RPG - Sephiroth, the ending bosses in Baldur's Gate 2 (Fallout had suprisingly crappy villains)

Board games - The queen in chess, the players with all those hotels in Monopoly


The point is, villains are probably the best part of the game. They're the very climax of a game. They're the part that tests a player's skills to the limit. They're what the players have been building up their characters to defeat. If you want to create a masterpiece, you need a masterwork villain. Maybe even more than one.


Villanous atmospheres
Most villains have this evil atmosphere about them. It's part of bringing the mood up. Sadly, most games don't give the villain that atmosphere.

Part of what creates a villanous atmosphere is tension. Or mystery. If you don't know who your enemy is, you'll tend to feel more scared than you would be otherwise. If you've never seen him and have only fought his underlings so far, you'll also feel more tension. I mean, his little hirelings were tough, the big boss must be REALLY tough.

Of course, don't throw away that tension in the end. Give the villain some evil looking clothes, like the ones M. Bison wears. You can also give him some janitor's suit, just as long as he looks evil. Give him some evil-like aura, like flames coming out from nowhere. Finally, don't make him weak. Nothing's a bigger turn-off than killing the super-duper villain on the first try, while you had to spend hours killing his lieutenant. Nothing wrong with a intimidating, yet weak looking villain, though.


Villains = Storyline
Out of ideas for a storyline? Then make up some villain, then carve the storyline from that villain.

First of all, every villain needs a goal. If the villain wants to destroy everything, then that's the goal. If he wants to just be evil and scare people, that's a goal too. Whatever it is, a villain won't be a villain without a goal. Just create a villain and give her a goal.

Now, she'll have to find a way to accomplish the goal. Let's say you've got a classic medieval fantasy game and your villain wants to take over the world. Here's a list of other goals she'd need to accomplish her quest...
1. Take over the world.
2. Create an unstoppable army.
3. Obtain some magical item to create an unstoppable army
4. Hire some troops to get the magical item
5. Alternatively, hire the super-character who killed your troops to get the item
6. Capture the hero's girlfriend as a motivator to get him to get the item
7. Create a decoy army to destroy a faraway village so the hero would go there so the villain may kidnap girlfriend
8. Alternatively, obtain a LOT of gold (or little magic items) as motivator for hero
9. Raid villages and ancient ruins to get gold, which would be given/bribed to the hero for the item. (Nice little dilemma there - gold or revenge?)

Get the picture yet? You can just go on and on with it and choose the story you like from your own home-made villain to-do list.


Traps
Now if you bothered to take a few minutes to jot down a to-do list, you'd probably notice a few flaws or too much trouble in your plans. This is where a prime part of villain ingenuity comes into action: Traps.

Super-villains don't go directly from Point A to Point B. They know that there's always something in the way. So they always get someone to go first just to clean it out and they run to Point B as soon as that someone is too tired.

Confused? Here's an example:
Lady Myra, evil super-villain wants to summon some demons just because she finds demons very attractive. The problem is, she needs some uh... pixie dust. Pixies live far away in some distant forest and don't like her.

So, Lady Myra hires the resident hero to get the pixie dust. She convinces them that the pixie is some evil sorcerer and that the woods around them have been corrupted. Heroes are remarkably gullible, so they often overlook the fact that all woods look evil and that pixies attack anything offensive, so eventually, Lady Myra gets her pixie dust and gives the heroes an extra enemy to deal with in the meantime.




Villains don't do their own dirty work
What's the point of being powerful when you can't force your power on someone else? Villains often hire someone else to do their work while they laze around their fortress.

Why? Let's say the villain wanted to pick up her own dirty little relic. For one thing, she'd get noticed by her enemies. She puts herself at risk out in the open. Now she realises that if she gets killed, her plans are foiled, especially since they're quite self-centred.

Besides, adventurers just LOVE doing quests. You tell them to get an artifact from some far-away ruin and they'll do so, in one piece, and with remarkably little pay. Why do the work when someone else will pay themselves just to do it (and if they failed, they'd at least have cleaned out some of the traps).

Gameplay-wise, it lets the villain stay hidden for most of the game. And for some reason, asking people to do things then not saying 'thanks' makes them seem eviler.


Super-powers
Every villain needs some super powers or at least some super skills. Now don't make an 'unavoidable instant attack that kills immediately'. That's just gonna frustrate the player. Nor should you make them delay the super power for 5 seconds before attacking (unless it's a "finishing move" against a stunned character). That just makes the villain too easy, predictable, and anti-climactic.

What you really want is something that exploits the game's rules yet looks cool. If your player's main tactic will be jumping onto their enemies' heads, then just give them a helmet or make them hide under something. If your player will be rush-attacking a lot, give the villain some teleportation skill. If the game involves a lot of fire-fights, make the villain take cover a lot and attack from behind cover (grenades) and another attack for when the player gets too close for grenades (shotguns).

Even worse, you can give the super-villain the most dreaded thing of all - excellent AI, ala Invasion of the Muz. Computers are able to calculate things and (potentially) have faster reflexes than humans. A villain with super-reflexes in a beat-em-up would be nearly impossible to defeat, like that.. boss guy in the old Mortal Kombat. Of course, being beaten by pure skill often pisses off some players, so you might want to hold out on this.


Intelligence
Last but not least, every super-villain should be intelligent. They know the weakness and physics of their land and will make sure no one exploits them, besides themselves.

Let's say that with many of the lesser villains, the hero wins a lot by making the turrets fire upon each other or with shoot-dodges. The player would run between two firing turrets, shoot-dodge some troops along the way, and get the turrets to shoot each other or some other enemies.

The super-villain would just solve this problem by making the turrets unable to rotate enough to shoot each other, staying away from the player, putting henchmen behind the turrets (maybe even as way of giving them cover), and telling everyone to shoot in front of the player whenever he's attempting a shoot-dodge.

That way, the player will be forced to change his plans. The new plan doesn't even have to be hard to do, it's hard enough changing ideas from something you've practiced and mastered throughout the game.


Of course, remember to test your game before you decide on your tactics. It's what a super-villain would do.